Kentucky was in desperate need of a little break in the midst of a two-week, three-loss slump. Rick Stansbury offered the perfect cure.Mississippi State’s head coach wasn’t solely to blame for the Bulldogs’ loss to Kentucky on Tuesday night — after all, UK shot 66.7 percent in the second half — but he sure gave the struggling Cats a helping hand. Stansbury picked up a critical and untimely technical late for arguing a call in the first half of Kentucky’s 85-79 come-from-behind win.The T almost single handily changing the momentum of the game heading into the locker room. With UK charging from an 11-point deficit, a foul to give and only a few seconds on the clock, Stansbury inserted seldom-used reserve Brian Bryant into the game to prevent Kentucky from getting off a clean last-second shot. After successfully fouling Knight on the first attempt, Knight wisely went into a shooting motion as Bryant fouled him again to get to the line.”I want you to understand I told Brandon to shoot the ball. ‘They’re going to foul you,” Calipari told Knight.  “He didn’t shoot the first one. I looked at him and said, ‘Do you understand what I’m telling you to do? They are going to foul you.  Shoot the ball.’ “Knight shot the ball and the whistle blew. The refs convened and said Knight was in a shooting motion, but obviously Stansbury didn’t believe it.”Print what I think,” was all Stansbury chose to say about the call after leaving the postgame podium.Over the next 60 seconds, Stansbury went into a sideline tirade that would have made Bobby Knight blush. He pulled his hair, stomped his feet and berated the officials. Referee Jamie Luckie stared at Stansbury and gave him a warning, but Stansbury was getting his money’s worth after the foul. Luckie T’ed up Stansbury, giving Knight the oh-so-normal five-shot free-throw visit.Knight, who scored a game-high 24 points, made 4 of 5 to cut MSU’s first-half lead to one heading into the locker room. As large as the four points loomed, it was the change in momentum that mattered most. Stansbury’s tantrum changed the entire complexion of the game. “How we were down one at half, I have no idea,” Calipari said. “We should have been down 15 at half.”  With an anxious crowd of 23,196 fans getting restless over the first-half start and the last two weeks hanging over their heads like a dark storm cloud, the technical awoke both the crowd and the Wildcats. Rupp Arena boomed and the Bulldogs started to wilt. When the Cats took the floor in the second half, they looked like a different team. UK opened the half with a 19-10 run.”I didn’t help our team any with that last three seconds before halftime,” Stansbury said.Ultimately, Stanbury’s technical didn’t determine the game, but it went a long way in helping the Cats hold on. It overshadowed Mississippi State’s 3-point shooting clinic (12 of 22) and Ravern Johnson’s 21 points. More importantly for UK, it may have been the difference between nearly blowing a double-digit lead and an actual collapse.After Kentucky had seemingly iced the game at 82-70 with Knight’s 3-pointer at the 3:39 mark, the Cats took a page out of their late-game losses of the last two weeks and let MSU back into the game. Free-throw misses, bad shots and ill-timed turnovers allowed the Bulldogs to crawl within four points with 43 seconds left. Imagine Stansbury had not picked up that technical late in the first half. What if it wouldn’t have ignited an early second-half UK run? Just think about how big those final four points were in the outcome.Kentucky will gladly take the gift, but it couldn’t cover up for an ongoing problem to close out games.”Down the stretch, it just bothers me,” Calipari said. “At the end of this game, we missed free throws. If we make those it still is what it is, but how about the air-ball shot and the two turnovers? What are we doing? My thing with this team is ‘Forget about the score, let’s execute. Don’t look at the score. I’ll look at the score. You just play and execute.’ “Calipari sarcastically said his team must not have looked at the score and decided to just shoot instead. Either way, the late-game tensions have not been solved.Two solutions that may have been figured out, at least temporarily, were Darius Miller and UK’s full-court press. Three days since injurying his groin in the Vanderbilt loss, Miller came off the bench to score 13 points. Stansbury said reporters were kidding themselves if they didn’t think Miller was going to play, but he apparently didn’t think Miller was going to make a difference as he was overheard during the first half telling his team to leave Miller open and let him shoot it.”I don’t mind them playing off of me,” Miller said. “I’m glad he’s saying it. I don’t have a problem with it at all. I hope everybody says that.”UK’s pressure defense also made a big difference in the second half. In turning a 41-40 halftime deficit into a 58-52 lead, the Cats forced six turnovers in seven-and-a-half minutes.”We just had no fire, no fight,” Calipari said of the defensive switch. “I said, ‘You know what, we’re pressing man to man. If you choose to go back, I’m subbing you. I did it so you can sub guys out. If you don’t want to get up there and battle, then I’m taking you out.’ “

The moves worked and Kentucky won to preserve its now 31-game home winning streak, but you have to wonder how much Stansbury’s technical helped cover up for some still glaring problems.

“I’m happy we won,” Calipari said. “You take it and you march on.”