By LARRY VAUGHT
Archie Goodwin did his part for Kentucky Saturday at Arkansas in his homecoming game in front of 40 family members and friends.
Goodwin had a team-high 14 points, made five of eight shots, grabbed five rebounds, handed out two assists and had one steal in 37 minutes — and he played with some intensity that some teammates did not.
“I was proud of Archie to come back home in this environment, how he played. He fought. He tried. Now, he did some things that are like, ‘What are you doing?’ but he does that whether we’re at home or in Arkansas or at Florida. He’s going to do two or three things that you just look at like, ‘What in the world?’ But he plays hard. He competes. He tried,” said Kentucky coach John Calipari. “And for him to come back and do that, I was really proud of him.”
Goodwin said after the game he had felt “a lot more confident” in UK’s play going into the game than he did before the Cats put together a three-game win streak that included a victory over Missouri.
“I thought we had jumped over that breaking point and we were going to be able to run through the rest of these teams but, I mean, these guys played hard tonight,” Goodwin said after the game. “They’re tough to beat at home but I think we still should have been able to win that game. We just didn’t execute like we should have. We have to go back to practice and continue to find ways to get better.”
What about worrying now about whether UK will make the NCAA Tournament field?
“Whether we get in the NCAA Tournament or not is not something we can control, so we just have to go try to win these last two games that we have coming up and see what happens from there. We can’t dwell on this loss because we have another game coming up and we have to try and make an imprint on that one,” Goodwin said.
5 Responses to Calipari felt Goodwin fought and tried; Goodwin thought team was past breakdowns
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Kentucky can hang thier uniforms in the closet and give up, season is over they cannot beat a good team. they are out of excuses..
Archie did play under control yesterday, and I too was proud of him blocking out the derisive cheers of the Arkansas faithful.
It doesn’t matter what they thought….what matters is how they played, and they didn’t play like a team in Blue that has 30 games under belt.
I love the way Archie plays and attacks the basket. I think people are too hard on him. I hope he returns and plays with the team coming in next year! I felt for him yesterday the way he was treated by Arkansas fans. Remember he is a freshman!
I like our team. They are doing exactly what they are at Kentucky to do. They are learning to be professional basketball players. Some learn faster than others.