Michigan State’s
Cassius Winston.
Out of the gate, it’s
Michigan State
By ZACK KLEMME Th e Daily Independent
I
Defending SEC co-defensive Player of the
Year Ashton Hagans has the unenviable
task of defending Big Ten Player of the
Year, Michigan State’s Cassius Winston in
the Champions Classic on Nov. 5.
36 | UK Basketball Preview 2019/2020N
t wasn’t the end-all, be-all for Kentucky’s 2018-19 basketball
season — after all, it happened in November — but it
certainly made an impression on John Calipari.
“We got beat by 100 fi rst game?”
The Wildcats’ coach, seated on the dais in the media room in
the bowels of Memorial Coliseum at media day, 11 months after
a 118-84 humbling by Duke, paused his stream of consciousness
and glanced over his right shoulder for faux confi rmation from
media relations consigliere Eric Lindsey.
“Close to it, yeah,” Lindsey played along, grinning.
As it turned out, Duke and Kentucky were much closer in skill
and accomplishment than that score might have indicated. An
uber-talented and youthful Blue Devils outfi t gained an air of
invincibility that night in the Champions Classic in Indianapolis,
but it evaporated in the Elite Eight, in which Duke lost to
Michigan State.