ESPN Men's Basketball

Andy Katz discusses Miami's Angel Rodriguez, New Mexico State's Cullen Neal and the beginning of a potentially historic season for Kentucky.

1. Kentucky coach John Calipari said he can already tell who his leaders may be for the upcoming season. Calipari said freshman Julius Randle and the Harrison twins, Aaron and Andrew, "are going to be the leaders." He said Randle has already proven in summer workouts just how much of an impact he'll have for the Wildcats. Calipari added freshman center Dakari Johnson has been the surprise so far and is producing at a higher clip than the Wildcats thought. What does this mean? "[Sophomore] Willie [Cauley-Stein] is going to have work for it," Calipari said about his returning big man getting challenged for minutes. Meanwhile, the other high-profile returnee, forward Alex Poythress isn't being asked to be a leader for Kentucky. "I just need him to play," said Calipari, "just play. He's not going to be a guy who stands up and tells people where to go. He's not that vocal. He just needs to play. Our leadership will come from one of those freshmen." Calipari said he's been impressed with the overall chemistry of this group, meshing quicker than he imagined.

2. New Big East commissioner Val Ackerman said the Big East is a few weeks away from finishing the conference schedule. The old Big East was traditionally one of the last conferences to get their schedule out because of pro commitments in arenas. The Big East and Fox Sports 1 teased the schedule in late June with the announcement of a five-game, New Year's Eve lineup starting at noon with St. John's at Xavier; followed at 2:30 p.m. with Seton Hall at Providence and then DePaul at Georgetown at 5 p.m., followed by Villanova at Butler at 7:30 p.m. and then closing with a headliner of Marquette at Creighton at 10 p.m. EST. Ackerman said she is still looking to make a significant number of hires, especially a full-time person to deal with television relationships. Former Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe continues to act as a consultant for the league and has helped in championship planning. Ackerman is working from a makeshift office in Manhattan but is still searching for long-term office space.

3. Angie Cretors was a creative hire by UConn athletic director Warde Manuel and one that will certainly help the continuing stabilization of the Huskies' athletic department. Cretors, named the school's Senior Associate Athletic Director, was respected by a number of Division I coaches while she was in NCAA enforcement. She had a presence at the Final Four and was not seen as intimidating at all, but rather a source of counsel for coaches to bounce things off of in dealing with compliance. Cretors built relationships which should bode well for her at UConn. Manuel's decision of hiring from the NCAA isn't new (Kentucky hired Rachel Newman Baker), but is yet another example of schools shoring up their own compliance departments and athletic department staff with people who know what the NCAA is looking for and how to handle any kind of issues which may arise. The continued attrition at the NCAA headquarters maybe weakening the home office but it's strengthening the membership.

Editor's Note: This month, ESPN Insider's college basketball and recruiting experts are teaming up to examine how 15 of the nation's best recruiting classes will fit in with their teams in the 2013-14 season. Today's featured program: Kentucky . Check out the Nation blog each morning for a corresponding post on the key returnee for each of the 15 teams.

Remember when Kentucky freaked everyone out?

It wasn't hard to figure out why. To the untrained eye, Kentucky's 2011-12 national title was the product of nothing more than John Calipari's immense recruiting advantage over everyone else in the sport. To many, the dominant triumph of Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist proved that all Calipari had to do every year was get the best players, coax them into playing his typically stifling defense and let the talent do the rest. He had cracked the code. The sport would never be the same.

A year later, as the Wildcats ended their season in Moon, Pa., in the first round of the NIT, losing to a Northeast Conference team (Robert Morris) that has lost more games in its history than it has won, the noise diverged. Suddenly, Kentucky couldn't recruit; it had missed on Alex Poythress and Archie Goodwin; only pre-ACL tear Nerlens Noel panned out as planned. Or: Maybe you can't win a national title relying on talented freshmen after all! Maybe 2012 was just luck! Ha!

All of this stuff misses the point.

Kentucky 2011-12 wasn't the best team in the country because it comprised only talented freshmen. The freshmen UK did have were special, but just as important were Terrence Jones, Doron Lamb and Darius Miller. None was a freshmen. Jones would have been a lottery pick had he left during the lockout uncertainty. Miller was a fourth-year senior who came off the bench.

The 2012-13 team didn't have any of these things. The freshmen, particularly Poythress and Goodwin, disappointed. But save the inconsistent Kyle Wiltjer, there were no veterans, let alone veteran leaders, to provide any semblance of core consistency, confidence or backbone. When Noel tore his ACL at Florida and UK lost 88-58 at Tennessee, you could just see it. There was nothing there, particularly on the defensive end, where a team's cohesion and heart shine brightest. And the Wildcats were hardly impenetrable with Noel in the lineup, either.

The lesson in all this exists on neither extreme of the rhetorical continuum. Calipari didn't lose his touch or totally whiff on recruits last season any more than his 2011-12 team changed college basketball forever.

The lesson here is something more fundamental about the game itself, and it's true whether you're playing in your pickup game or in the NBA: Talent isn't everything. Championships don't just happen. Personalities matter. Intelligence matters. Defense matters. Veterans matter.

That's why, even as Calipari prepares to bring the best recruiting class in college hoops history into the fold, Kentucky can't merely hope to glide by on glimmering talent. If UK is going to upend the reigning national champs at Louisville and avoid challenges from every corner, the Wildcats will need the scattered returners to step up, too.

None will be more important than Willie Cauley-Stein.

With Goodwin and Noel off to the NBA and Ryan Harrow having transferred to Georgia State, Cauley-Stein, Poythress and Wiltjer were the only three candidates for this prestigious position. I was actually torn about this Tuesday night, so I ran an informal poll among Kentucky fans on Twitter. Dozens of replies later, the consensus was overwhelmingly in favor of Cauley-Stein. Some made the case for Poythress, particularly in light of Andrew Wiggins' decision to play at Kansas (thus preserving Poythress plenty of minutes and possibly a starting spot). Few made the case for Wiltjer, even though I would contend his length and shooting -- he finished at 36.7 percent from 3 last season, which isn't bad for a 6-foot-10 guy -- could still be crucial in 2013-14.

But Cauley-Stein's case really is the most convincing. You won't find many 7-footers as athletic as Cauley-Stein at any level, full stop, and the big man already demonstrated solid rebounding on both ends of the floor and competent finishing ability around the rim. He ended the season having shot 62.1 percent from the field, which is great pretty much any way you slice it. Despite that output, though, Cauley-Stein couldn't be relied on to score over a competent defender. According to Synergy scouting data, Cauley-Stein scored 1.55 points per possession when he cut to the rim and 1.05 on offensive rebound putbacks but just .067 points per trip the 75 times he was put in a legitimate post-up opportunity.

This is rawness personified. A little more touch and one or two reliable moves, and there's no reason an athletic 7-footer can't score over even the best collegiate post defenders.

But that would be a bonus. After all, Kentucky shouldn't have much trouble scoring the basketball next season. The Harrison twins (Andrew and Aaron) will be deadly on the perimeter, and power forward Julius Randle -- the No. 3-ranked player in the class, behind only Wiggins and Duke's Jabari Parker -- will be the go-to post force. Also, Kentucky has the No. 2 center in the class, Dakari Johnson, whose chief strength is his offensive polish.

No, what Kentucky needs -- what has made Calipari such a consistently successful coach in the past decade -- is defense. Last season's Wildcats finished ranked No. 77 in KenPom.com's adjusted efficiency rankings. That was the first time since the 2004-05 Memphis Tigers that a Calipari-coached defense wasn't among the 15 stingiest in the country. In five of those years, it ranked in the top 10. This is Calipari's formula: His offenses are usually excellent, but sometimes they're merely good. What sets his teams apart is his ability to meld young players into a lockdown defensive group.

Cauley-Stein will be massive in this effort. He blocked a shot on 8.4 percent of his available possessions last season, which is a totally respectable rate on its own and especially impressive given that he was playing on the same team as human block-sponge Noel. Johnson is not known as an elite athlete or defender, beyond his ability to clog the lane. Cauley-Stein, on the other hand, has a chance to be a dominant defensive presence. He could be the prohibitive force that makes interior penetration against Kentucky impossible, the player who lets the rest of the team's talent press out on shooters, unafraid of either (A) inefficient midrange shots or (B) deep drives. Cauley-Stein can be on that wall. He should be on that wall.

The great luxury of Calipari's signing five of the best nine players in recent history's most loaded incoming class is that none of his three returners will be seen as the team's most important player. That title likely will go to either Aaron or Andrew Harrison, or Randle. Neither Poythress nor Cauley-Stein is guaranteed a starting spot; Wiltjer, veteran of a national title team, is practically guaranteed to come off the bench. And we haven't even talked about James Young (a 6-foot-6 lefty scorer ranked eighth overall in the class) or Marcus Lee (the best oh-yeah-they-have-that-guy in recruiting history).

Conceivably, UK could start five freshmen -- the Harrisons, Young, Randle and Johnson -- and still be a legitimate national title threat, if not the favorite. But it is hard to imagine Kentucky approaching its incredibly lofty ceiling if Cauley-Stein isn't contributing in big ways to that effort. The Wildcats need his size, his shot-blocking, his rebounding. They need the size and strength borne of a full offseason spent in an elite training and conditioning program.

They also need his anger. Few players were more vocal about the frustration of last season, how embarrassing getting walked off in Moon, Pa., really was.

"I feel like something’s empty, and I want to fill it," Cauley-Stein told the Courier-Journal's Kyle Tucker in April. Kentucky needs Cauley-Stein to be that guy -- the guy who has been through it before, who knows it isn't easy, that no matter how bad it gets in practice, he has seen worse. On every rotation and every box-out, Kentucky needs someone who feels an emptiness that can be filled only by winning.

In short, Kentucky needs a veteran. Poythress or Wiltjer might be that guy. Maybe all three are. Maybe there's an MKG in the freshman mix. Someone must embrace the role, tangible or otherwise. Kentucky will be very good the minute it begins the season. Whether it will be great is another matter entirely, one up to Cauley-Stein and, to a lesser extent, Poythress and Wiltjer.

Because that is the real lesson of the past two seasons of Kentucky basketball. Talent is great, but greatness is about so much more than talent. Sometimes we need a reminder, you know?

1. Kentucky cured any hangover from the Robert Morris loss by getting a commitment Wednesday from Julius Randle. The Wildcats will have as heralded an incoming class next season as they did in John Calipari's first and third seasons in Lexington. But there will have to be scholarship discussions in the coming weeks. This is nothing new -- and Kentucky is hardly alone in this type of scenario. Players who don't turn out as expected can see coaches recruit new talent for their roster spots, especially at elite programs -- thus creating scholarship issues. Of course, the Wildcats have a few players -- like Willie Cauley-Stein, Alex Poythress and Archie Goodwin -- who could be drafted based on potential. But the only player on Kentucky's roster who could contribute next season in the NBA is a healthy Nerlens Noel. No one else. Don't be surprised if there is some natural attrition on this roster. Any time a team underachieves and reaches the NIT instead of the NCAA, roster changes are possible.

2. Boise State lost to an unheralded La Salle team in the First Four on Wednesday night. But the Broncos were way ahead of schedule this season. Boise State coach Leon Rice said earlier in the week on ESPNU that he told the administration in the preseason he had no idea how good this team would be by season's end. The Broncos' appearance in the NCAA tournament could be akin to Colorado State's a year ago. The Rams popped up a year early and are back again this season. The Broncos now have to ensure that this season was hardly a fluke -- with the added expectations of repeat NCAA appearance. Rice has done wonders in making Boise State relevant in hoops. There's no reason to believe he won't continue to do so.

3. Two of the biggest winners in this alignment game will ultimately be the fan bases at Creighton and Butler. Just think about the change on the schedule for these two programs. The Bluejays are going from hosting Bradley or Evansville to having Georgetown, Marquette and Villanova come to Omaha, Neb. And within two years, Butler will have gone from hosting Youngstown State to welcoming Georgetown to Indianapolis. Bulldogs coach Brad Stevens said that this will be a challenge for the coaching staffs, which now have to learn new systems and styles on the fly. Butler had to try to figure out the Atlantic 10; now, within a year, the Bulldogs will be in another league, playing a true round-robin schedule.

John Calipari has tried numerous tactics in recent weeks to light a spark within his Kentucky basketball team. One afternoon, he even staged an impromptu dodgeball game to loosen the mood and improve chemistry.

Nothing has worked.

Thursday’s 72-62 loss at Georgia marked the fourth defeat in the past seven games for the Wildcats, who will probably need to beat Florida in Saturday’s regular-season finale to have any shot of making the NCAA tournament.

Center Willie Cauley-Stein shrugged his shoulders when he was asked what Kentucky could do to turn things around.

“Have faith?” he said. “Go to church? Maybe that’s what we need to -- go to church as a team and pray for each other.”

Even divine intervention might not be enough to help the Wildcats at this point. If Kentucky can’t beat Arkansas and Georgia, there is no reason to believe it can get past a Florida squad many pundits have tagged as a Final Four contender.

The Gators defeated Calipari’s team 69-52 in Gainesville on Feb. 12. Nerlens Noel, Kentucky’s best player, tore his anterior cruciate ligament in that contest and UK hasn’t been the same since. Granted, even before Noel’s injury, the Wildcats weren’t very good. Kentucky’s résumé includes very few quality wins -- and a bunch of bad losses.

“I’m mad,” guard Archie Goodwin told reporters after Thursday’s loss. “There’s no way we should lose to Georgia. There’s no way we should lose to Arkansas.

“When we play like we’re supposed to, there’s not anyone in the country we can’t beat. When we play like this, when we play soft as a team, anyone can beat us.”

Calipari, to his credit, said he is to blame for his squad’s collapse.

“I’m so disappointed in the job I’ve done with this team,” he said Thursday night. “I’ve never had a team not cohesive at this time of year. Every one of my teams ... cohesive. Every one of them had a will to win. Every one of them had a fight.

“If this team doesn’t have that, that’s on me.”

Here are a few other observations from Thursday’s games:

1. Does anyone want to win the Pac-12?

UCLA and Oregon entered the week tied for first in the conference standings with two games to play. Somehow, though, UCLA lost to last-place Washington State in Pullman on Wednesday, which meant Oregon could’ve clinched at least a share of the league's regular-season crown by beating Colorado on Thursday.

The Ducks responded by losing 76-53 in Boulder. And the Buffs didn’t even have Andre Roberson, who missed the game with a viral illness. Each team has one game remaining. UCLA plays at Washington on Saturday; Oregon takes on Utah in Salt Lake City the same day.

Whatever happens, no one can argue that the parity in the Pac-12 is greater than any conference in the country. Next week’s league tournament should be fun.

2. I loved the shot of Michigan State coach Tom Izzo jumping up and wrapping his arms around the neck of 6-foot-10 forward Adreian Payne during a timeout in the Spartans’ 58-43 victory over Wisconsin. Payne had just taken a hard fall under the basket after missing a dunk, but he eventually popped back up. Izzo loved seeing that toughness and resiliency -- not just from Payne, but from his entire team.

Michigan State entered the game toting three consecutive losses, all by single digits and all against ranked opponents. But by winning Thursday, Michigan State put itself in a position to clinch a share of the Big Ten title. Indiana sits atop the conference standings at 13-4. Three other teams (Michigan, Ohio State and Michigan State) are 12-5.

If Michigan defeats Indiana on Sunday in Ann Arbor, four teams will finish in a tie for first. That’s assuming, of course, that Michigan State and Ohio State take care of business in their regular-season finales against Northwestern and Illinois, respectively.

Whatever happens, Michigan State should feel good about itself entering the Big Ten tournament following Thursday’s dominating victory over an excellent Wisconsin squad.

3. I’ve got to think Northwestern’s loss to Penn State on Thursday marked Bill Carmody’s final home game as the Wildcats’ head coach. Northwestern has never made the NCAA tournament and it won’t get there this year under Carmody, who is in his 13th season. Losing to the Big Ten’s worst team on Senior Night is about as bad as it gets. Duke assistant Chris Collins has been mentioned as a possible replacement. Another coach who would be a good fit: Valparaiso’s Bryce Drew.

4. Michael Snaer’s ability to come through in the clutch continues to amaze me. The Florida State guard scored on a left-handed runner in traffic with 4 seconds remaining to propel the Seminoles past Virginia 53-51. Snaer was fouled on the play, and he made the ensuing free throw.

The game winner was the fourth for Snaer this season and his sixth over the past two.

Virginia, which had fought back from an 11-point deficit to take the lead, has now lost four of its past six games. The Cavaliers are on the NCAA tournament bubble.

Just last week, NCAA tournament selection committee chair Mike Bobinski hosted the first of a handful of teleconferences heading toward Selection Sunday. It was just a day after Nerlens Noel tore his anterior cruciate ligament, so naturally Bobinski was asked how the loss of Kentucky’s best player would affect the Wildcats’ chance at an NCAA tourney berth.

Here’s what he said:

“The reality is we have about 4 1/2 weeks of basketball left to be able to watch Kentucky play and see how they perform without him in the lineup now, and that will really tell the story I think of how we ultimately judge and view Kentucky."

Well, here’s what the committee saw:

Tennessee 88, Kentucky 58. Tied for the fourth-worst loss for UK in the past 80 years. John Calipari's worst loss since Feb. 18, 1989. That was a lifetime ago, in his first season at Massachusetts, when the Minutemen lost to Duquesne by 31. He didn’t have quite as many McDonald's All Americans on that roster.

If this were an audition for the tourney bracket, the director would be yelling, "Next!"

Just barely on the bubble to begin with -- Kentucky has zero top-50 RPI wins now that free-falling Ole Miss has dropped to 51 -- the Wildcats were quickly dumped to the First Four Out by Joe Lunardi on Saturday afternoon (remember, even before Noel got hurt, UK was getting essentially run out of the gym by Florida).

There is no question that losing Noel is a huge blow, but it is not just in terms of X's and O's. That Tennessee loss -- and give the Vols credit for playing a near-flawless game (especially point guard Trae Golden) -- exposed the real crux of the problem for Kentucky sans Noel.

For most of the season, he has been the only one playing with a combination of consistent ferocity and passion. The rest of the team tends to disappear frequently, lollygags on defense often and shows such dispassionate body language at times that you have to wonder whether the players are clock-watching.

In Noel’s absence, his freshman classmates Willie Cauley-Stein, Alex Poythress and Archie Goodwin combined for 13 points, 13 fouls and nine turnovers.

A year after coaching one of the best collections of hard-working, unselfish players, Calipari has a group he cannot cajole, bullwhip or beg into cohesion. It has gotten so bad that the coach spent the week before the Florida game talking about his team’s need to find love. Not the Valentine kind, but the bromance of basketball.

Thanks to the cottony soft bubble, Kentucky isn’t dead yet. But the Grim Reaper is standing by. The Wildcats have six regular-season games left -- four that can only hurt them (against Vanderbilt, Mississippi State, Arkansas and Georgia) and two that will mean everything (visits from Missouri and Florida).

Noel, of course, won’t be there for any of them, but for Kentucky right now, it’s more about channeling the way he played.

Some other observations from Saturday afternoon:

1. Opportunity knocked ... And North Carolina answered. Oklahoma couldn’t unlock the door. Stanford didn’t hear the doorbell. In what might go down as an ACC bracket-buster game, the Tar Heels topped Virginia, 93-81. That doesn’t officially seal either team’s fate, but certainly it’s a feather for UNC and a glancing blow for the Cavaliers.

Meanwhile, in the Big 12, Oklahoma blew an 11-point lead and lost 84-79 in overtime at Oklahoma State, which has won seven consecutive league games for the first time in nearly a decade. It’s a body blow for the rival Sooners, who have a confusing NCAA résumé -- an RPI of 20 but a 3-5 record against the RPI top 50.

As for Stanford, Bill Walton quite naturally put it best. Somebody, the analyst said, needs to start watering the roots of the Tree. Just two weeks ago, the Cardinal looked like the team that promised to capitalize on its NIT run from last season, winning three games in a row, including one against hot Oregon. Now, Stanford has lost three of four, blowing show-me opportunities against both Arizona and now UCLA.

2. Pay attention to Marcus Smart: The Oklahoma State guard might be the most unheralded player in the country right now. Seriously. The reason might be that on their own, none of his numbers jumps off the stat line -- he averages 14.4 points, 5.8 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 3.0 steals per game -- but then go back and look at that list collectively.

He’s good at everything. Offense, defense, scoring and sharing, he is the consummate individual player and the consummate teammate. In the victory against the Sooners, he had 28 points, seven rebounds and four assists. Just another day at the office. He's also the reason the Cowboys are poised for their first NCAA tournament bid since 2010. Oklahoma State has won seven in a row. In that stretch, Smart is averaging 19.1 points, 6.1 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 3.4 steals.

3. What would happen if ... Arkansas and Missouri played on a neutral court? Would the game ever end? Or better yet, would it ever start? Would both teams be turned into pillars of salt, frozen in fear by the unfamiliar, away-from-home surroundings? Give the Hogs credit -- they're now 15-1 at home after squeaking past Mizzou, 73-71. But neither team can win on the road, which is something the selection committee kind of likes to see every once in a while.

4. Can a player win national player of the year and not make the NCAA tournament? It has never happened with a Wooden winner, but Doug McDermott might be on the verge of rewriting history in a decidedly twisted way. McDermott is continuing to put up huge numbers -- he is averaging 23 points per game and just eclipsed the 2,000-point plateau -- but his team isn’t doing much to prove it belongs in the field of 68.

The Bluejays rallied from a double-digit deficit to win 71-68 at Evansville and end their three-game skid. Feel free to celebrate the end of the losing streak, but then realize that Evansville is 14-13 overall and just 7-8 in the league, so skating to a three-point win doesn’t exactly inspire a lot of confidence, does it?

In the latest player-of-the-year straw poll of actual voters, collected by Michael Rothstein, McDermott was second behind Michigan’s Trey Burke. He had 118 points and 21 first-place votes to Burke’s 136 and 30 (the poll is done every two weeks), and the next-closest vote getter, Mason Plumlee, wasn’t even in the neighborhood, with 35 points and only four first-place votes.

Numbers matter in player of the year ballots, but don’t think for a minute winning isn’t (and shouldn’t be) a factor. If Creighton doesn’t right the ship well enough soon, it will be interesting to see whether McDermott is part of the collateral damage.

5. Watch out for Providence: No, I’m not joking. Done in by injuries and down to five scholarship players early, the Friars appeared destined for their annual bottom-third-of-the-Big East finish. Not so fast. Coach Ed Cooley has talent -- Bryce Cotton, Kadeem Batts, Vincent Council and Kris Dunn -- and now he's getting something out of it. Providence has won four consecutive Big East games for the first time since 2004, including wins against Cincinnati and today's 71-54 victory over Notre Dame, which snapped a nine-game losing streak to the Irish.

I’m not sure whether the Friars are good enough to keep that streak going -- they go to Syracuse next -- but after too many lean years to count, Cooley has this team headed in the right direction. In a confusing Big East -- explain Villanova, please? -- Providence is good enough to make things even more confounding.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Casey Prather left the Florida locker room after the Gators’ 69-52 victory over Kentucky with a small red bump on his lower lip near the corner of his mouth.

That wasn’t a lot of damage for the 6-foot-6 swingman despite an evening of playing inside against the nation’s top shot-blocker and a 7-footer. The Gators hope he can hold up that well throughout the rest of the regular season.

That’s pretty much the only way UF can weather the loss of Will Yeguete and put itself in position to make another deep NCAA tournament run.

"It [stepping in for Yeguete] wasn’t really in the back of my mind," Prather said after scoring 12 points, grabbing three rebounds, blocking two shots, and dishing out two assists. "I would just say I was trying to give the team a big boost, big energy boost, and so I was just glad to help the team out any way I could."

The 6-7 Yeguete -- the Gators’ second-leading rebounder, best post defender, and the key to UF’s full-court press -- underwent surgery last Friday to clean out loose bodies in his right knee. Replacing part of Yeguete’s production fell to Prather, and he has embraced the challenge. He had 12 points and five rebounds in the Gators’ rout of Mississippi State last Saturday, but the Bulldogs sit in the SEC’s cellar and have won just seven games. It was going to be a much bigger task to do it against Kentucky and 6-10 Nerlens Noel, the nation’s leading shot-blocker (4.5 per game), and 7-foot center Willie Cauley-Stein.

Prather not only held his own, he drew three charges and had a big first half to help the Gators rally from a slow start. With Erik Murphy on the bench for much of the first half with two fouls, Prather scored eight points -- two of which came on a dunk in front of Cauley-Stein.

"It's just a matter of confidence with that guy," UF center Patric Young said. "Because, I know he can do that day in and day out. He's just really athletic with really active hands. It was a night where he could show what he can do."

Prather has had limited opportunities to do that in his three seasons. He had trouble getting off the bench because he turned the ball over too much and just didn’t fit in the backcourt. He also has battled injuries throughout his career, including two concussions and a sprained ankle this season. He has played well in spurts -- he had 14 points in an NCAA tournament victory over Virginia last season -- but struggled with consistency.

Florida coach Billy Donovan, though, challenged Prather after Yeguete’s injury, and so far he has responded the way Donovan wanted.

And Prather relishes the task.

"I kind of like the challenge because I’m not as strong as them, or tall as them [inside], so I just take the challenge and try to use my quickness to my advantage," he said. "I like being able to just help the team. Coach challenged me so I had to just take it on to myself as a challenge."

The key will be Prather duplicating what he did against Kentucky -- not necessarily the points, but his defensive effort and work on the boards -- the rest of the regular season, beginning with Saturday’s game at Auburn. The hope is Yeguete will be able to return for the SEC tournament March 13-17.

After the past two games, he’s got his teammates’ confidence.

"I commend Casey a lot because he had a lot of bumpy roads since he’s been here and I feel like this is his opportunity to step up and he’s taking advantage of that," guard Mike Rosario said. "And I commend him because he never lost sight of getting better every day. And even though he went through his little injuries and he missed a couple games, he bounced back for us, especially when we needed him to. That shows a lot about his character and how much he cares about the team"

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Quick thoughts from Notre Dame's 64-50 victory over No. 8 Kentucky, the program's fourth straight win over a top-10 team:

Overview: For the first five minutes, as UK's highly touted young players carved up Notre Dame's less touted veterans, it appeared as if sheer talent might be enough to carry this group through its first true road test as a team. That notion ended quickly and without ceremony. The Irish turned their 3-for-8 shooting in the first five minutes into a tidy 15-for-27 first half, working for good shots and making most of them, all the while containing Kentucky on the other end of the floor.

By the time the half was over, ND led 36-25, and UK looked a bit lost, content to take bad shots, unable to get free on its basic dribble actions, forcing wild shots in a congested lane. The story didn't change in the second half. The Irish opened a 53-35 lead with 11 minutes, 35 seconds remaining thanks to a clock-countdown heave of a 3 from ND guard Jerian Grant. With no offensive burst left in them, and facing a Notre Dame coach whose teams happen to specialize in extending possessions and burning clock, the young Wildcats were essentially done.

Turning point: It would be tempting to look at Alex Poythress' second foul, at the 14:38 mark, when UK held a 12-6 lead, as the game's obvious turning point. It would also be facile. Poythress' absence was noticeable, no doubt, but Notre Dame was simply better for more of the game, including when Poythress was involved. Everything the Irish wanted to do -- pick-and-rolls with Jack Cooley and Eric Atkins, corner 3s for Grant and Cameron Biedscheid -- they did, while Kentucky failed to find anything remotely easy on the other end.

Key player: Atkins. Grant hit big shots, as did Biedscheid, and Cooley led the way on the boards (as usual), but Atkins was the steadiest and most efficient presence for the Irish. He shot 7-of-11 from the field, dicing UK's defense along the way.

Key stat: Kentucky shot 19-of-47 from the field (a season-low 40.4 percent. The Irish were good offensively, and they deserve plenty of credit for physical play on the offensive end, but the obvious key is UK just didn't make any shots. (This was true even of good post moves for Nerlens Noel and Willie Cauley-Stein. UK has some things to work on, but it won't shoot as badly as this again for a while.)

Miscellany: There was a particularly weird moment in the second half when UK guard Julius Mays dribbled the ball off Noel's foot. It immediately went out of bounds ... but no one on the floor but Mays noticed. He stood there, angry, then realized he had a chance to sneak the ball back into play. Notre Dame fans freaked out, the refs turned and saw the play and the ball was called dead. Then the ref reprimanded an ND cheerleader, apparently for yelling at him during the play. It was a thoroughly unusual 30 seconds of basketball. ... In the second half, veteran Irish forward Scott Martin made a nice step-back move on Cauley-Stein that caused the UK forward to turn all the way around. By the time Cauley-Stein recovered, Martin had already sunk his 3-pointer. So much for Notre Dame as the boring utilitarian, huh? ... Ryan Harrow, Kentucky's mysteriously absent guard, shaved his flat-top and got minutes, though they were limited, and he was largely ineffective. Harrow's limits have forced Archie Goodwin into the point guard role, and while Goodwin has handled the transition well to date, he did not look at all comfortable in the Joyce Center. ... In the arena, Notre Dame's black-on-black-on-black uniforms looked pretty awesome. Judging from my Twitter feed, they were not so warmly received on TV. ... According to ESPN Stats & Info, UK's 50 points were its fewest-ever under Calipari and the fourth-fewest of any Kentucky game in the past 15 years. The 14-point loss was also the second-most lopsided in the Calipari era.

What's next: Notre Dame has some time off before a Dec. 8 home game against Brown followed by a Dec. 15 matchup with Purdue. Kentucky, on the other hand, has exactly two days to cure what ails it, as a talented but struggling Baylor team comes to Rupp Arena on Saturday.