Kentucky has been up and down pretty much all season. One game, it’s a loss to UNCW. Two games later, it’s a win over North Carolina. One Saturday, it’s a third straight loss inside Rupp Arena for the first time in school history. Two Saturdays later, it’s a total thrashing of Alabama that followed a loss at LSU that followed a double-digit win at Auburn.
You never know what you’re getting.
With that as the backdrop, UK visited Mississippi State on Tuesday in pursuit of a second straight Quadrant 1 victory. For most of the night, it looked like the Wildcats would fail to capitalize; they trailed by as many as 13 points in the second half. But then Reed Sheppard got going and turned in an all-time great performance for one of the sport’s biggest brands. The 6-foot-3 freshman was the main reason UK erased the deficit. He assisted on the bucket that gave the Wildcats their first lead with 4:24 remaining. Then he buried a runner with less than a second left to break a tie, avoid overtime and lift Kentucky to a 91-89 victory inside Humphrey Coliseum.
“A lot of that comes from my teammates giving me confidence,” Sheppard said. “The whole game, they’re telling me in the huddles, ‘Just keep playing. Keep attacking. Lead us.’ That’s huge. They just kept putting confidence in me the whole game.”
Calling what Sheppard did an “all-time great performance for one of the sport’s biggest brands” is not hyperbole. At Mississippi State, the projected one-and-done lottery pick (if he wants to be) took 14 shots, made 11 of them and finished with 32 points, seven assists, five rebounds, two steals and two blocks in 35 minutes off the bench. Those numbers allowed Sheppard to become the first Wildcat to score at least 30 points, grab at least five rebounds and dish at least five assists in the same game since Derek Anderson did it in January 1996 for a team that finished 34-2 and won the national championship under Naismith…
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