Stanford Player Discusses Experiences Against Kentucky

Stanford Player Discusses Experiences Against Kentucky

Stanford senior Landry Fields is doing a guest blog for Draftexpress.com and his last piece focused on the Kentucky Wildcats.

Fields discusses the Cancun Challenge and his experiences in playing against UK and specifically, the five Wildcats that have declared for the NBA Draft.

Here is and excerpt:

My dealings with those guys is somewhat altered from one man to the next. Bledsoe is a tremendous athlete who had an OK game against us. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t outstanding. However, he does have an extreme amount of talent. I love his intensity for the game though. While sometimes he can let his emotions get the best of him, his passion goes unmatched and it showed against us. A few plays he just wanted it more than us.

Patrick Patterson had a good game. We were a bit short this year in terms of our big men because we lost a key element in Josh Owens, but we had some walk-on big men that had a good year for us, and I think played Patterson pretty well. But at moments during the game you could just see the physicality and athleticism he possessed and no one was able to really match it.

Daniel Orton, if you haven’t played against him, is solid. Many people, and by people I mean crowds who think they know basketball, but truly don’t, only look at his numbers this year and try to judge based off of that. Well after playing him, good for him for leaving. While I think next year he would kill for Callipari, he was solid against us.


I remember a play in particular where I got past my defender on the wing and saw Daniel Orton at the basket. Ok, it’s a televised game, lots of people are watching, if I go hard enough I’ll at least get fouled. Nope. I took one last dribble after getting by my defender and decided I wanted to dunk on Orton, but he gladly rejected my request. He had a presence all game in the paint, which made me have to alter a few shots when I got into the lane. He’s big and a great secondary helper for them. I actually like him a lot. Any team would have loved to have him this year, I know we would have.

DeMarcus Cousins, if I’m being honest, I didn’t think he would have been where he was at now after we played against him. Although just a freshman, I thought our bigs, most of whom are walk-ons, played him very well. Now don’t get me wrong, that man has blossomed after his game against us. He definitely showed great potential when we played him, but I didn’t think he’d get to where he’s at now, well at least not this year.

Finally, John Wall. There are many words to describe Wall, but the word I have chosen is, winner. No one had more hype in the nation than this guy so when we heard we would have a chance to play him we gladly accepted the challenge. His game against us ended just OK but I don’t think that reflected his entire game. His last five minutes going into overtime were outstanding. That’s why I call him a winner. Even in a game where he wasn’t playing all his best, he still found a way to will his team to victory. Not to mention he’s a pretty decent defender. I remember 4 or 5 different guys having to guard me that game and he was one of them. Anyway, he was the one to knock down the clutch free throws for them to send it into overtime. Then he proceeded to have a great last five minutes. Game over.

For some reason, people always talk about how “we almost had Kentucky.” To the people who know basketball, “almost” doesn’t cut it. We lost. They won. You can’t take any credit away from those guys. The best teams find ways to win even when their star-studded cast isn’t performing on all cylinders. We had our chances to win that game, but didn’t. No reason to hang our hat on almost beating someone; that’s a loser’s mentality, not a characteristic of a championship caliber team. But from that game we learned a great deal about who were as a team and the capabilities we could possess.

Next time, I’ll take a step away from the whole college routine and leap into the early world of things you have to go through when you are a guy in my position and want to play in the NBA. I’ll speak about a time in basketball where the term, “playing together as a team,” doesn’t hold much value even though if players did it, they’d be looked at in a much higher light; you guessed it, next time I’ll give you my insight into the time I had at the all-NCAA senior draft camp in Portsmouth, Virginia.