American College Basketball - There Was Nothing Meek About Meeks Performance

All Meeks had in mind was to make sure his side won the game. However, it was a night Meek is never going to forget and neither are fans of American college football. He scored the highest score in school-record with 54 points that took his team to a 90-72 victory over No. 2 Tennessee.

Later, Meeks said that it was "mind-boggling" for him to be considered in the same league as Dan Issel specially since he was just "playing to win". Meeks surpassed Issel's record that had been unbeaten since 39 years of 53 points. His jubilant teammates mobbed him right in the center of the Thompson-Bowling Arena court. The wildcats defeated the Volunteers 13-4, 2-0 SEC. This was the 3rd time the Volunteers' had lost a match this January.

Meeks improved upon his previous score of 46 points which he had scored against the Appalachian State last December. With just 4:50 left of the game, he hit an open 3 which was just one of the 10 3 pointers he went on to make Tuesday night. It was free throws that saw him set his record with only 1:31 left. When entering the game, Meek had been ranked as 4th in the nation for having a score average of 24.2 points in each game.

I agree with Coach Billy Gillipsie who was overjoyed at Meeks' performance that the 46 he scored against Appalachian State were in itself something to write home about but setting a record against a team like Tennessee which was much superior than AS and that too on home turf was mind blowing. While keeping myself up to date with the basketball live results I couldn't believe what I was seeing. US College basketball results were never that exciting for me personally. But after Meek's amazing record I must admit I have become more interested in following college level basketball games. He scored not only the highest for his team but it also happened to be the second biggest individual SEC score since Chris Jackson's 55 in 1989 in a LSU vs. Mississippi game.

At one point in the game, Tennessee almost caught up with Kentucky' lead of 43-41 thanks to a fast-break basket by Wayne Chism. But due to the flawed defense of the Vol's Meeks remained unstoppable. He hit 2 3 pointers and a layup which took the Wildcats to a 10-0 run and put them up 53-41. Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl said his team tried everything to stop him "but none of our guards could guard him".
With just 9:34 left Kentucky started to have foul trouble and Tennessee scored all of 11 bonus shots. This somewhat worked in containing the Wildcats' lead to 71-64 with 6:52 remaining.

However, Meeks settled the score and spurred way ahead of the Tennessee team by scoring 9 straight points. No other teammate was able to score in the double figures with Patrick Patterson snatching 12 rebounds. Tennessee lead scorers were Tyler Smith (19 points), Chism (18 points) and Bobby Maze (11 points). Several times in the first half of the game Tennessee got easy opportunities to score but they were unable to benefit from them. They shot only 37.9 % from the field as against 56.6% by Kentucky. As Pearl said they were simply "not competitive".