Kentucky Enters Louisville Game ‘Refocused’ after UCLA Loss

It doesn’t matter the sport, it doesn’t matter the age and it doesn’t matter the experience. Teams never want to lose games.
 
That doesn’t mean lessons can’t be learned from losses, or that losses can’t ultimately be beneficial down the road.
 
Head coach John Calipari is hoping for the latter with his young Wildcats (9-2) coming off a disappointing eight-point loss to UCLA at the CBS Sports Classic in New Orleans.
 
Unfortunately for Calipari, he won’t know for sure what the loss meant to his team until the Wildcats’ next game begins Friday at 1 p.m. ET against intrastate rival Louisville (10-2) at Rupp Arena.
 
“I don’t know. We’re going to see,” Calipari said. “We had no aggressiveness. We showed them the 12 3s that (UCLA) made. We didn’t guard them. It was a set shot. We weren’t aggressive on the ball. We weren’t aggressive going after balls.
 
“It kind of reminds me of last year when we beat Arizona State by a bunch and come back, play UCLA here, get up 12, should’ve put the game away and all of a sudden it’s anybody’s game and they end up beating us in the second half. Very similar.”
 
Last season, UK followed that 46-point drumming of Arizona State and an exciting 103-100 win over North Carolina with losses to UCLA and Louisville, respectively.
 
Now, Coach Cal, and the whole of Big Blue Nation for that matter, are hoping for a role reversal with the Wildcats coming off a loss.
 
“We just came off a loss, so it’s definitely going to be a sense of urgency and we’re definitely going to want to get a win,” freshman guard Hamidou Diallo said. “We don’t like losing, so we’re going to bring a different level of energy and refocus on things that we messed up during UCLA.”
 
Kentucky is 39-8 in “bounce-back games” following a loss under Calipari. This particular loss just so happened to come immediately before the Wildcats went their separate ways to spend a couple days at home with family for the Christmas break. With the loss sitting there, stewing in their minds, sophomore Sacha Killeya-Jones said the Cats have come back to Lexington “refocused” and ready to get after it.
 
“Everybody has come back thinking that we can’t let that happen again,” Killeya-Jones said. “We know people aren’t happy. It’s not really our concern, but we just gotta come back and prove that we are who we are and we’re not going to get disrespected by anybody. We’re a really good team and we’re going to keep building. We lost the game and we’re going to come back and show everybody who we are.”
 
Following Kentucky’s four-point loss to then-No. 4/3 Kansas in the State Farm Champions Classic, Coach Cal warned all who would listen about the potential pitfalls that could have occurred had the Wildcats ended up winning that game against the Jayhawks.
 
“If we had beaten Kansas – we were up one with a minute to go – if we had beaten them, what would that have done to this team? Not so sure,” Calipari said at the time. “Would we have lost one of these other games? Possibly. We would’ve been No. 2 in the country. We’re not No. 2 in the country. We’re not that team. Now, let’s hope by the end of the year we’re that team, but we’re not that team right now.
 
“You go through the season and they learn about each other, they learn about themselves, we as coaches learn. That’s why you play games.”
 
Similarly, had Kentucky pulled out a victory over UCLA could it have given the Wildcats a false sense of confidence? Could the Wildcats possibly have grown complacent and not come out with the necessary mindset against an experienced Louisville team that ranks second nationally in blocks per game?
 
Coach Cal said after the game that his team didn’t deserve to win the game against UCLA. That may be true, but UK still had possession of the ball down by just four points with less than 90 seconds left in the game despite allowing the Bruins to knock down a season-high 12 3-pointers and shoot 47.5 percent from the field.
 
Instead, Kentucky’s seven-game winning streak was snapped and a harsh lesson was learned with a capital L in the win/loss column. And now the Cats will enter Friday’s game versus UofL looking to improve on their mistakes from one game prior.
 
“Every loss makes us mad,” Diallo said. “Losing isn’t fun. It’s a tough road and you just gotta know as a whole that maybe it was a lesson.”