NASHVILLE — If there was ever such a thing as a boiling-point loss, surely Kentucky’s heartbreaking defeat to Vanderbilt on Saturday had to have been it, right?After all, Kentucky lost its fifth Southeastern Conference road game of the season, basically fell out of the conference title race and dropped to 0-5 in games decided by four points or less.One could only assume this loss was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and will send UK to a quick and miserable postseason. Or maybe not.Anticipating a morbid postgame news conference with head coach John Calipari, the UK coach surprised everyone by putting a positive spin about the progress of his team. “We really matured” was how senior forward Josh Harrellson chose to portray it.”I’m going to be honest,” head coach John Calipari said, “we didn’t play that bad.”But it still wasn’t good enough. UK lost for the third time in the last four outings, losing 81-77 in front of 14,316 boisterous, black-clad fans. It was Kentucky’s fifth loss in its last six games at Memorial Gymnasium.Terrence Jones paced the Cats with 25 points and nine rebounds in what Calipari described as a very good game, but Kentucky couldn’t overcome Vanderbilt’s 11 3-pointers and John Jenkins’ career-high 32 points.”I thought Vanderbilt played great,” Calipari said.There was a lot of truth to Calipari’s assessment after the game. Jenkins, for one, played lights out.The sophomore guard got the better end of the hyped DeAndre Liggins matchup and torched freshman Brandon Knight when Liggins was out of the game. Jenkins hit 11-of-17 shots overall, including 4 of 5 from behind the 3-point line.Vanderbilt also received a huge lift from its bench, including 12 points from reserve center Steve Tchiengang.But for whatever reason, even when UK executes, as Calipari said they did frequently, the Cats cannot pull out a game on the road. Where last year’s bunch appeared to thrive on the road, this team wilts.”You’re in a dogfight,” Calipari said. “We’ve got a couple of guys that don’t have that mentality. They don’t come up with the ball, maybe don’t attempt to.”Inexperience has been the scapegoat all season long in close road losses, but Kentucky is now 24 games into the year. How much of it is inexperience and how much of it is just a winning instinct is now a very real question.Take Saturday’s game. As Calipari emphasized afterwards, UK really didn’t play all that bad. Vanderbilt dealt devastating blow after devastating blow, but Kentucky hung tough nearly every time.From Darius Miller’s groin injury, to Kentucky’s constant foul trouble, to Jenkins’ demoralizing daggers, the Cats almost always had an answer.Even after Jenkins blew past Knight and hit an off-balance shot over Harrellson to give the Commodores a five-point lead with 3:47 to go, Jones responded with an old-fashioned 3-point play on a put-back. That cut the Vanderbilt lead to 71-69.But when Vanderbilt staggered and Kentucky had a chance to tie or take the lead on back-to-back possessions, the Cats turned it over twice in a row. Liggins’ errant pass in the lane resulted in a spinning Jeffery Taylor layup, and Jenkins picked the pocket of Jones and raced the other way for an easy layup.That put the ‘Dores on top 75-69 with 2:18 to go.Jones hit a 3-pointer out of a timeout and Knight followed a pair of Ezeli free throws with a triple to cut the lead to 77-75.”I like how we executed down the stretch,” Calipari said. Said Knight, who scored 20 points: “Down six is only two baskets. Terrence was able to hit a 3 and then I was able to hit a 3, so that’s your six-point spread right there. It’s just a matter of getting stops on the other end.”Kentucky didn’t get those stops, though, and Brad Tinsley hits four free throws in the final 32 seconds to ice the game.Sure, the Cats executed to make it interesting, but they always seem to do it when they fall behind, never when the game is on the line.  “It’s just like the rest of them,” Harrellson said of the close loss. “It comes down to the wire and there a few things we don’t do right.”It’s a disturbing trend for sure, but is it a correctable one? Can poise in crunch time be found in a month?Asked if he was encouraged by what he saw from his team Saturday despite the result, Calipari wasn’t sure. “I don’t know until I watch the tape,” Calipari said. “What I like is we did a lot of good stuff today. We really did. We missed so many wide-open 3s – like, wide-open 3s. Guys couldn’t make it today. … Short of that, (we) rebounded the ball against a big team, we only had eight turnovers and I’m playing all freshmen in that game on CBS at that high level. “There was a lot of good. I just don’t like losing.” Is it possible to have both at this point in the season? Was there progress in another road loss?You be the judge.