Cats Get a Lesson in Discipline in Rivalry Loss

Many a family Christmas gathering in the Bluegrass will be spent breaking down Kentucky’s loss to Louisville in the annual showdown between the in-state rivals.

Some Wildcat fans will bemoan their team’s missed free throws down the stretch. Others will point to Malik Monk’s cold shooting night as the reason why UK’s four-game winning streak in the series was snapped.

John Calipari has a much simpler explanation.

“The biggest thing tonight is we didn’t have discipline,” Calipari said.

That lack of discipline, to Calipari, was to blame for easy baskets given up on defense, as well as poor shots taken and missed instead of driving to the basket or feeding Bam Adebayo. The result was a 73-70 defeat in which a UK rally couldn’t quite overcome a six-point UofL lead in the final two minutes.

“We had some mental errors toward the beginning of the game, and then we missed a big rebound at the end of the game where they made a layup,” De’Aaron Fox said, referencing Jaylen Johnson’s put-back with 16 seconds left. “We had some small things that turned out to be big problems at the end.”

No one knows better than Coach Cal that the margin between victory and defeat is slim at this level, particularly on the road. His young team, on the other hand, is just beginning to learn that.

“On the 21st of December we’re not good enough to go on an opponent’s court that’s a top-10 team and win,” Calipari said. “We’re not. They’re better than us right now. December 21st. And that’s what we wanted to see.”

Calipari will never brush off a loss. Neither will his team. They’re too competitive for that. Christmas, Calipari said, will be better for the No. 10/11 Cardinals (11-1) than the No. 6/5 Cats (10-2) because of that, but it was going to be back to work after the break regardless of Wednesday night’s outcome.

“It was good for us to have a game like this,” Fox said. “First true road game. There’s not too many environments like this in the country, especially with this rivalry we have. We probably won’t go into another arena like this one, even in the tournament. It was good. I’m not going to say it was a good loss for us, but it was good to have this game as our first road game.”

Playing in the KFC Yum! Center in front of a raucous crowd eager to see its team end a losing streak against its rival was always going to be difficult, but it was a challenge Calipari was eager to see his team face. Every experience like this one serves as a progress report for the Cats with which Calipari shapes his approach to coaching his team. 

“It’s a tough environment,” Calipari said. “This is – they have to go through these kind of growing pains, and then I’ve gotta be able to see what I have to do as a coach. Unless you’re doing this kind of stuff – the North Carolina game, the Michigan State game, the Kansas game coming up, the game at Mississippi coming up. Those are – that’s why we do this. And we’re playing young guys and it’s hard. It’s hard.”

Because of UK’s youth, it was Calipari who took the blame for the lack of discipline that felled the Cats rather than casting blame on his team.

“Because if they’re playing this way, I’ve accepted it,” Calipari said. “That’s why it’s my fault. And I told them then, in there, ‘When we tell you to do something and you don’t do it, you’re coming out. So if I tell you how we’re playing, if you break down defensively and do your own thing, you’re out.’ It’s the easiest way. Bench is my friend.”

UK might not face a team quite the caliber of UofL in an environment as intense as Wednesday’s, but there are plenty of stiff challenges ahead. The Cats are going to take what they learned in a loss and move on.

“We’re not ready to go on an opponent’s court that’s a top-10 team and win,” Calipari said. “We’re just not. And thank God it’s December 21st. I’ve got a lot of time.”