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Wednesday, Jan. 5 7:00pm ET
Prince leads Wildcats to 5th straight | |||||
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BOX SCORE
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- Kentucky coach Tubby Smith had heard the rumors about Jules Camara. Talk that the 6-foot-11 forward was unhappy with being benched when the Wildcats (No. 24 ESPN/USA Today, No. 25 AP) went to a smaller starting lineup last month. Speculation that the native of Senegal was thinking about transferring. So Smith sat down and had what he described earlier this week as a "positive" conversation with Camara about his role on the team. Camara responded with his best game of the season against Georgia Tech on Wednesday night, tying a career-high with 15 points in an 80-71 victory. "We've been talking about taking the ball to the basket stronger, and you could see he was more aggressive offensively as well as defensively," Smith said. "He's getting stronger, starting to mature. Age does that for most of us." For Camara, getting used to a reserve's role after starting the first eight games of the season has demanded that he mature quickly. "I don't think there's anybody in the country sitting the bench and being happy," he said. "I wasn't happy, probably, sitting on the bench, but that's part of the game. He (Smith) was doing the best for the team. Because we were winning, you can't complain on the whole." The win over the Yellow Jackets (7-5) in a home-away-from-home game at Louisville's Freedom Hall was the fifth straight for Kentucky (9-4). The Wildcats led most of the way but never quite shook Georgia Tech, which rallied from nine points down in the first half to take a four-point lead early in the second half. The Yellow Jackets lost that lead but refused to let Kentucky string together a game-ending run until the final seconds. "I thought we played a good ballgame, with a chance to win," Tech coach Bobby Cremins said. "We're not looking for moral victories. Kentucky embarrassed us last year (in an 80-39 win in Atlanta), and we wanted to play much better up here." Tayshaun Prince led Kentucky with 21 points and 10 rebounds, while Keith Bogans had 14 points and Jamaal Magloire added 12. Jason Collier had 21 points and eight rebounds for Georgia Tech. Center Alvin Jones, who spent much of the game in fierce elbow-to-elbow combat with Magloire, had nine rebounds. With Kentucky leading 74-68, Georgia Tech point guard Tony Akins hit his fourth 3-pointer of the game with 1:24 left to cut the lead to three. That was the closest Georgia Tech would get. At the other end, Jones fouled out defending a dunk attempt by Prince, who made one of two free throws for a 75-71 lead. On Georgia Tech's next possession, Akins missed a drive in the lane and Bogans got the rebound to Prince, who again made one of two free throws. Desmond Allison later added two more free throws and Prince had a final dunk on an alley-oop from Bogans with four seconds left. The most spectacular play of the night, though, belonged to Camara, whose reverse slam off a feed from Prince with 7:24 remaining gave Kentucky a 65-57 lead and drew the loudest roar of the night. Camara admitted he was going for style points with the reverse dunk. "I love it. I do it a lot in practice," he said. "If I get a chance to do it in a game, I'm going to do it." On a night when the Wildcats again struggled with their shooting, they overcame a lack of quality with quantity, making 30 of a season-high 73 shots (41.1 percent). Against Georgia Tech's free-wheeling style, the Wildcats abandoned their normally patient half-court offense, shooting their way out of an 0-for-16 slump that bridged the end of the first half and the start of the second. Tech, meanwhile, was shooting 28-of-66 from the field (42.4 percent), a figure that included 12-of-34 from 3-point range. In addition to Akins' four 3s, Collier had three. With Jones ailing, Cremins said his team relied too much on its perimeter game. "We've got to utilize our inside game," he said. "We shot too many 3s. With Alvin being under the weather, we looked to go outside. We need to take the ball inside to take advantage of our height." Tech's tandem of the 7-foot Collier and the 6-11 Jones was the tallest Kentucky had faced this season, but the Wildcats finished with a 49-34 rebounding edge, including a 20-9 advantage on the offensive boards. | ALSO SEE Mens College Basketball Scoreboard
AUDIO/VIDEO   Tayshaun Prince throws down the alley-oop late in the game.avi: 773 k RealVideo: 56.6 | ISDN | T1 Souleymane Jules Camara makes the nice one-on-one move.avi: 486 k RealVideo: 56.6 | ISDN | T1 | |||||