This is what we expected, isn’t it?

We expected Kentucky, the No. 1 team in the nation, to come in to Athens and leave with a victory — which it did, 57-44.

We expected them to not only leave with that victory, but for it to be a double-digit, no-doubt-about-it blowout, it’s-over-at-halftime victory.

RYAN BLACK

But I’m not sure we expected the Wildcats to win by only 13 points.

I’m not sure we expected the visitors to score only 57 points, either.

This is a Kentucky team whose low point total for the season prior to Tuesday had been 62 points on Nov. 20 in a 62-52 win over Old Dominion.

Holding the other team to a season-low in the points department doesn’t mean much when you can only muster up 44 points yourself, though.

And there was a simple reason why the Wildcats made it so tough for the Bulldogs on both ends of the floor — other than the fact the Wildcats are uber-talented, of course.

“Their length in size just overpowers you,” Georgia head coach Mark Fox said of the Wildcats, who boasted four players in their starting lineup that stood 6-foot-7 or taller. “When your two guard is as big as [Darius] Miller is, and then you have [Michael] Kidd-Gilchrist at the three — and those guys are the size of power forwards — they can just overpower you.”

Fox was every bit as impressed with his top-ranked counterpart on the defensive end.

“They can switch everything and maintain a size advantage, and then you add in [Anthony] Davis, who is just a great protector of the basket,” he said. “They have a lot of great defensive pieces and they use them well together.”

And work well together, the Wildcats did, as they clamped down on the Bulldogs in the final four minutes of the first half, turning what had been a close, single-digit game into a 12-point lead heading into the locker room.

That halftime advantage proved to be a barrier that Georgia could not tear down, as the closest it would get for the remainder of the contest was when it trailed by 10, 38-28, after Donte’ Williams hit a jumper to begin the second half.

Even the points the Bulldogs were able to score didn’t come easy, as they hit on just 34.5 percent of their field goal attempts against the Wildcats, which is even lower than their league-worst mark in that department at 39.9 percent.

Meanwhile, the Wildcats one-upped themselves in a category they already led the nation in — blocks per game.

Kentucky averages an NCAA-best 9.3 blocks per contest, and it had 10 against Georgia, led by shot blocker extraordinaire Anthony Davis, who had five of them himself.

However, Davis and his shot-blocking prowess was just one part of Kentucky’s well-balanced, well-oiled machine.

All seven players who entered the game for the Wildcats scored, and all but one snagged a rebound — and that player was Darius Miller, who made up for it by putting in a game-high 19 points.

And that’s what this game boiled down to in the end — the Wildcats had better players on the floor, many who will be dotting NBA rosters in the near future.

And those future pro players made the plays the Wildcats needed to head back to Lexington, Ky., with a victory and their No. 1 ranking intact.

The Bulldogs certainly felt that the Wildcats lived up to the hype that came along with their lofty ranking.
“They are, they are,” forward Nemanja Djurisic said when asked if he felt like the Wildcats were the top team in college basketball. “No one can take that from them.”

Nobody can take it away for the moment, anyway.

There is still a lot of basketball to be played this season.

But on this night, against this Bulldogs squad, the Wildcats took care of business the way they were supposed to, a point Georgia senior guard Dustin Ware couldn’t dispute.

“It’s hard to be surprised by the No. 1 team in the country,” he said.

Exactly what I expected him to say.

— Ryan Black is the sports editor of The Red & Black