Kentucky Looks to Bounce Back Against Utah Valley
John Calipari will never be accused of shirking ownership when his team falls short.
He’s proving it yet again in the wake of a shocking defeat at the hands of Evansville last week. He’s proving it by admitting the defeat shocked him as much as anyone else.
“What these teams do every year I coach, they’re going to follow my lead,” Coach Cal said. “Well, they probably followed my lead. I thought we were going to win the game, too.”
Of course, the Wildcats didn’t. A mere week after being the biggest story in sports for taking down the nation’s top-ranked team, UK was again the biggest story in sports after being taken down as the nation’s top-ranked team.
The symmetry is obvious. So are the lessons.
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| Kentucky vs. Evansville | ||
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Mon., Nov. 14 – 7 p.m. ET |
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| Coverage | ||
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TV: ESPN2 |
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| UK | Stats | UVU |
| 2-1 | Record | 3-1 |
| 0-0 | Conference Record | 0-0 |
| 74.7 | PPG | 75.3 |
| 59.3 | Opp PPG | 63.5 |
| .440 | FG% | .461 |
| .339 | Opp FG% | .417 |
| 39.7 | RPG | 42.5 |
| .245 | 3PT FG% | .296 |
| .247 | Opp 3PT FG% | .373 |
| .742 | FT% | .725 |
| 10.7 | APG | 13.0 |
| 6.0 | SPG | 6.8 |
| 3.7 | BPG | 8.5 |
“I didn’t think we would have that much of a struggle with those guys,” Calipari said. “And so they followed my lead, and it woke me up more than it woke them up. But I think they know now that every game, we have a chance to beat anybody – and lose to anybody if we don’t compete.”
His team might not have agreed, but Calipari was glad Kentucky (2-1) had nearly a week to wait to stew on that fact. For about 24 hours, Calipari joked he did so hiding “under the covers.” When he emerged, he did so with a positive approach.
“I was really grateful for what happened up in New York,” Calipari said. “But if you’re going to do that, you’ve gotta be grateful for what Evansville should do for us. You’ve gotta be grateful about it. Let’s be grateful. I know everybody out there – ‘Oh my gosh, he’s grateful we lost a game.’ But if you’re going to be grateful for stuff that happens that’s good, you better also be thankful for the bad stuff and grateful for what it does for you and then you look at it.
“Now it took me 24 hours to do that and to think in those terms, but I’m looking at this and saying: Hey, I’m grateful. Let’s go and use it. Let’s benefit by it. We’ll go from here.”
That begins Monday night, when UK returns to action to face Utah Valley (3-1) at Rupp Arena. To that Cats, 7 p.m. can’t come soon enough.
“I think we’re pretty eager,” Johnny Juzang said. “It’s been like a week, so we’ve had a long time to just sit on it. Excited to get back out there.”
In spite of that excitement, Coach Cal doesn’t know what to expect at tipoff. He does know what to expect in terms of the challenge the Cats will face.
“My guess is we’ll start the game tentative just because you’ll have the dregs of the last game, and then hopefully they’ll just get going and play basketball and play free and literally play like you have nothing to lose – because they will,” Calipari said. “And the tape I’ve watched of them down at UAB (a 66-55 win last Friday), whew! They’re doing a great job.”
Ashton Hagans is closer to 100% after he was hobbled in a three-point, four-turnover performance against Evansville, but UK is likely to have to face that challenge without EJ Montgomery, who Calipari anticipates will miss his second straight game with an ankle injury. Nonetheless, the Cats are being challenged to improve on their 226th-ranked offensive-rebounding rate in practice.
“If the ball goes up, he wants four guys going to the rim,” Nick Richards said. “If four guys don’t touch the paint, he basically is going to make us run.”
Offensive rebounding is but one area for improvement for the Cats. The hope is that a loss is a push toward addressing all of them.
“Coach, he always preaches to us, ‘Take every loss as a lesson,’ ” Richards said. “We’re just going to take it as a lesson and then the next day watched a lot of film and then the day after that went on the court and just practiced the stuff we did, trying to make up for our mistakes so hopefully we don’t do it in the next game.”
Bounce Back
The Wildcats don’t lose very often during the John Calipari era, but when they do, they almost always bounce back. UK is 50-12 under Calipari following a loss (record does not count end-of-season losses).
The Wildcats have only lost back-to-back games 12 times during the Calipari era with three of those losses having come during a four-game losing streak from Feb. 3-14, 2018. That was the first four-game losing streak under Calipari.
Previously, the last time UK lost four games in a row was in February 2009, when the Wildcats dropped four straight games to end the regular season. It was the first time Calipari had lost four straight since the end of the 2004-05 season at Memphis.
UK has never lost back-to-back home games under Calipari.
Walter McCarty’s Evansville Squad Upsets Kentucky in Rupp Arena
Immanuel Quickley had 14 points and a career-high eight rebounds, but top-ranked Kentucky fell to Evansville 67-64 on Tuesday night at Rupp Arena in a historic upset.
It marked just the third loss ever by Kentucky in 57 games at Rupp Arena as the No. 1 team in the country. It also snapped UK’s 52-game home winning streak vs. unranked nonconference opponents.
Kentucky (2-1) got 13 points from defending Southeastern Conference Freshman of the Week Tyrese Maxey, while Nate Sestina had nine points and five rebounds for UK.
The Cats grabbed an early three-point lead, 8-5, before Evansville scored five straight to lead 10-8. The lead would change hands four times before the Aces went on a 9-0 run to take a 24-16 advantage with 6:13 to play in the first half. Kentucky would cut into the lead, but Evansville took a 34-30 advantage into the break.
Early in the second half, Evansville maintained its lead before Kentucky assembled an 11-2 run to take a 48-46 advantage with 11:17 to play. That lead lasted all of 17 seconds, as Evansville’s Shamar Givance nailed a 3-pointer to give the Aces the lead back, 49-48.
Kentucky would fight back to tie the game at 53-53 with 8:00 to play on a layup by Sestina. But Evansville grabbed the advantage yet again, 56-53, on a 3-pointer by K.J. Riley with 7:15 to play. The Aces would never trail again.
The Cats got within one on a layup by Maxey with eight seconds left. But a pair of Sam Cunliffe free throws with six seconds remaining sealed the upset for Evansville.
Evansville (2-0) took advantage of its opportunities from behind the arc, hitting nine of 30 from 3-point land. Kentucky was able to hit just 4 of 16 from behind the arc. Overall, Evansville hit 23 of 60 (38.3%) from the floor, while Kentucky connected on 20 of 54 (37.0%) of its shots.
Evansville’s Riley led all scorers with 18 points, while Cunliffe added 15 for the Aces.
Of note …
• Kentucky made a season-best 80% at the free throw line (20 of 25)
• UK fell to 189-17 (.917) under John Calipari when holding the opponent to 40% or worse from the field
• Kentucky is now 220-31 all-time when ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press 25 and 69-8 under Calipari
• All-time, Kentucky is now 53-12 against former players coaching at opposing programs
• It marked just the fourth home loss for UK as an AP No. 1 ranked team in program history. All four losses have come by three points or less
