‘Curable’ Ills Fell Cats against Kansas

The spotlight doesn’t get much brighter than the one that shined on the Kentucky Wildcats on Saturday night.

A capacity crowd was on hand to watch the Cats take on an experienced, highly ranked and blue-blooded Kansas team. They wanted desperately to win, but couldn’t quite pull it off.

“We’re just not there yet,” Isaiah Briscoe said. “Like (Coach Cal) said, we got a team full of freshmen and sophomores and today Kansas’ experience showed. They were down early, kept fighting. Give them credit, but a lot of that’s on us.”

No. 4/4 UK (17-4) had the No. 2/1 Jayhawks (19-2) down 12 on multiple first-half occasions, but Kansas cut the margin to five by halftime and took control in the second half. The Cats would rally and have their chances in the final minutes to make a game of it, but it wasn’t enough in a 79-73 defeat.

The loss was UK’s second in a row and only the sixth in 135 games at Rupp Arena under John Calipari. Considering some bracket experts pegged this as a must-win game for the Cats to get a No. 1 seed come March, the defeat brought some heartache. Coach Cal shares in that feeling, of course, but he spends much more of his time thinking about what the loss reveals about where the Cats must go.

“This was, we got out-toughed and we didn’t guard the way we need to guard, which is all curable,” Calipari said.

The toughness manifested itself in the 10 offensive rebounds that UK gave up, which led to 17 second-chance points. The poor defense showed up in Kansas exploding for 52 points after halftime and shooting 50 percent from the field for the game.

“As a coach, you look at this and say, OK, where do we go and what do we zero in on?” Calipari said. “And I think it’s toughness and defense. We got to be a better defensive team than we are. We had some guys that just broke down on crossover moves their layups. Post ups where we don’t help. Down screens where we lose guys. We switch and we have a chance to switch back and we just stop playing.”

On the other end of the floor Calipari said the Cats made gains in sharing the ball compared to where they were in a midweek loss at Tennessee, but issues persisted. Take, for example, the fact that Malik Monk went more than six minutes without a field-goal attempt during a stretch that spanned the end of the first half and beginning of the second. Or the fact that UK committed 17 turnovers – 10 by De’Aaron Fox, Briscoe and Monk. 

“I think, again, the whole thing for us turnover-wise is when we make easy plays, we don’t turn it over,” Calipari said. “When we’re trying to make a harder play, like if a guy’s open in the corner, just throw it to him. Why would you ball fake him and then run a guy over? Why would you, versus an extra pass to the wing, you’re going to try to force one inside, which gets tipped away. You’re driving and they’re in, there is no drive, it’s a swing and then a drive. I mean it’s all freshman kind of stuff.”

Aggression, in many ways, was the driving force behind UK’s early-season offensive success. The Cats attacked at every opportunity, flying down the floor for fast-break baskets that didn’t even seem to be there. Now that teams have adjusted and UK isn’t getting as many of the stops that create those chances, they’re falling into the trap of trying to force things.

“We’re a fast team so we’re trying to get to the basket as quick as we can,” Hawkins said. “And we’re young. Our guards are really young and they’re trying to make plays, but they haven’t learned yet that we have to control the ball and take every possession one at a time. I feel like if we kept the ball and got a shot up at least maybe we get a put back or something because each possession actually counts.”

Those mistakes on both ends of the floor might be ones the Cats have repeated more than once in defeat this season, but it’s not as if this kind of situation is foreign to Coach Cal.

“Every day you start zeroing in on the areas that we need work,” Calipari said. “The crazy thing, you may not believe this, but we’re in this mode every year. There’s something that the team needs to work on that we’ll zero in on.”

After all, turning a talented group of young players into a team that contends come tournament time is kind of Coach Cal’s thing.

“Look, this is always a process here when you’re talking young players,” Calipari said. “I can remember in 2014, we were dying and then they got it at one point and all of a sudden we took off. This team came together a little bit faster, yet you find out all the execution stuff that I’ve been talking about will come back and haunt you.”

Now, the Cats have gone through a week in which they were smacked over the head with that lesson. It’s time to regroup.

“All those little things that you, if you really want to be one of those teams, and I keep saying we’re not yet, but we got great post presence, we got long players, we got some guys that can make shots, we shoot a high percentage,” Calipari said. “Normally we don’t turn it over like we do the last few games. And so it’s all doable.”

Well, that’s pretty simple.

“A young team, you got to learn to fight,” Calipari said. “That’s what we’re going to have to learn to do.”