It was a stretch the likes of which Kentucky will never face again.Six games. Eight days. Three opponents with rosters comprised of established professionals.Playing the final leg of their Big Blue Bahamas Tour, the Wildcats finally showed the effects of what ESPN analyst Jay Bilas equated to playing two Southeastern Conference Tournaments back to back.”We kind of died,” Calipari said. “We didn’t have it physically.”Through 31 minutes, UK successfully battled through that fatigue. But over the final 8:48, the Cats watched a 59-46 lead disappear little by little. Shots they made over their first five games in the Kendal Isaacs G.L. National Gymnasium in Nassau, Bahamas didn’t fall. Loose balls they grabbed before went to the Dominican Republic national team. In the end, the Dominicans avenged a Friday defeat and UK fell 63-62 after shooting 39.7 percent from the field and being outrebounded 38-34.Jack Michael Martinez made the game-winning basket on a fall-away jumper with 2.6 seconds left. There was still time for last-second heroics like what Aaron Harrison delivered in the NCAA Tournament five months ago, but the Cats couldn’t overcome their tired legs with the kind of execution they needed as Karl-Anthony Town’s pass to Harrison was deflected away.”You saw when we had to execute, we weren’t able to,” Calipari said. “When we had to get ball movement, we don’t have enough in. When we needed out-of-bounds plays to score, we don’t have anything in.”In other words, UK executed like a team that’s only been together for a handful of August practices.In the final minutes, John Robic — filling in for Calipari, who watched from the stands for the fifth straight games — scrapped the two-platoon system in favor of a lineup of Tyler Ulis, Andrew and Aaron Harrison, Marcus Lee and Karl Towns. Absent was Alex Poythress, who was on the bench for most of the second half and played only 12 minutes total.”He was exhausted,” Calipari said. “I told him before the game, with the way he played yesterday, play five minutes today. Play 10 minutes today. Don’t go out there and not play. Don’t hurt your team. Just don’t play. We’ve got other guys that want to play. So he was tired. He just pulled himself, which was fine.”Poythress, showcasing what Robic called a “rebuilt engine” yet again, expended the last of his energy in scoring all six of his points in the first half. He accounted for all but two points as the starting five were outscored 16-8 by the Dominicans in the first half.Ulis, Dominique Hawkins, Derek Willis, Lee and Towns, however, provided a spark off the bench. After the Dominicans used a 14-3 run to claim a 24-17 lead, the Cats’ so-called second unit turned UK’s largest deficit of the week into a 36-29 halftime lead when Ulis buried a buzzer-beating runner.Ulis scored 10 of his 12 points in the first half in leading the second group to a 28-13 margin in its first half minutes, playing the kind of pesky defense and sound offense that has Coach Cal thinking he has two very capable point guards.”He was good,” Calipari said. “He was good. You want him to make every play, but Andrew was terrific. Andrew’s game yesterday was unbelievable. I mean, what he did yesterday – so you’ve got two guys.”And that’s just at one position.The Cats have tantalized their fans with depth on the Big Blue Bahamas Tour, sending waves of talented, athletic players at opponents. Sunday’s result shed some additional light on what that depth means as players compete for roles and playing time.”The lesson I told them that you walk away from (is) there’s no birthright to be on that court,” Calipari said. “You’ve got to play with energy and you’ve got to compete. If you don’t, you’re not playing. Either your group won’t play as much or you won’t play as much. It’s just how it is.”So there’s no like, ‘Well, today I’m not going to play and I’m still getting 20 minutes.’ No. ‘Well, I’m still getting–‘ No. You may get five minutes. And then you’ve got to bring it. This was the first game where we had guys with no competitive spirit, but it’s easy to say (that with) six games in eight days. It was a tough run.”A tough run, but an undisputedly good one, even after it ended in defeat.In planning the trip, Calipari had a different set of goals than most coaches who take teams on foreign tours. Television forced him to compress the schedule and placed some added stress on his team, but Calipari still got what he wanted.”Most teams are using this for 10 days of practice,” Calipari said. “Don’t care who they play, don’t care if they (win). Well, they don’t care if they win or lose until they lose. Then it matters. But we needed it for more. I needed professional-level teams. I needed men. I needed experienced, physical guys that knew how to play.”Those grown men revealed plenty to Calipari about his team. He learned he has a well-conditioned group. He saw his highly touted freshman class is as advertised. But more than anything else, he found out his team is unselfish.”I think they share the ball,” Calipari said. “They’ve figured out how to share the ball more than any team I’ve had this early. Where most guys, you got ball stoppers trying to do their thing, trying to figure out who they are, versus move it, get it and make plays for each other. When we do that, we’re real good. When we don’t do that, we’re like everybody else. So this team has picked it up pretty good.”UK got plenty done off the floor too.Through three dominant performances, the Cats heard the hype and they began to grasp what it would mean. They listened as Bilas warned them against succumbing to the pressure pundits will place on them in picking apart roles and rotations. Most importantly, they were simply around each other.”Well they got closer together,” Calipari said. “There was great time that we could spend talking about different things that we’re going to encounter this year, and we had the time to do it. There were some lessons and some different things. But they spent a lot of time together, so it was both spending time, vacation, but we played six games in eight days — and against grown men, which was a great challenge for us.”With that experience in hand, the Cats have a much more solid grasp on the task facing them when they reconvene for practice this fall with a healthy Willie Cauley-Stein and Trey Lyles.”This was a great run of games and experiences for these young people,” Calipari said.