Kentucky Basketball Looks To Use Speed As Primary Weapon This Season

As Kentucky approaches for their second and final exhibition game of the season tonight before traveling to New York next Tuesday to take on Duke in the Champions Classic, assistant coach Jai Lucas said the staff is preparing their team to play with speed - one of their strengths they will amplify all season long.

"We think we have the team that can play that way, especially with a small guard with Sahvir (Wheeler), you kind of have to play that way," Lucas said. "We have other pieces that kind of fit in, like TyTy. We play fast, it can open up shooting for CJ (Fredrick), Kellan (Grady) and Dontaie (Allen). We're built for speed."

Jai Lucas said he also likes the combination of having two ball-dominant point guards in TyTy Washington and Sahvir Wheeler. "We're playing two point guards. It's one of those things, whoever gets the ball is the point guard," Lucas said. "We just see it as an advantage. Good college teams, most of them who have won championships here in the past couple of years play more than one point guard at a time. Two point guards give us an advantage. You have two guys who can create shots for others."

While the Cats offense last year struggled at pushing the ball up court, and just creating offense in general, they look to be very stocked up with having four legit options to run the show at any given moment. TyTy Washington, Sahvir Wheeler, Davion Mintz or Kellan Grady can do exactly that. We seen in the Kentucky Wesleyan exhibition that they lean heavy on TyTy as the number one, co-sided with Sahvir as the shooting guard in which they can switch on different plays. When Washington came out of the game, Sahvir was used more to a drive and kick kind of guard, creating shooting opportunities for the rest of his teammates.

Also, don't let it be slept on that the other two guys, Davion Mintz and Kellan Grady, were Kentucky's leading scorer last year and co-captain of this team (Mintz), and a four year all Atlantic-10 and 2,000+ career scorer (Grady) who will be extremely valuable when it's their turn in the game. Truly one of the nations deepest back-courts.