UK’s Fight in Loss Reinforces Coach Cal’s Belief
Back-to-back losses are normally cause for alarm in the Big Blue Nation. A road loss to South Carolina followed by a rare home defeat to Florida on Saturday certainly has some fans feeling that way.
Just don’t expect John Calipari to follow suit.
“I know there’s some people out there that will be panicked and all this,” Calipari said. “Be panicked. I’m glad I’m not sitting with you because I am fine.”
If you had asked Coach Cal after the South Carolina game you might have gotten a different answer. But the way the No. 18/16 Wildcats (14-5, 4-3 Southeastern Conference) faced down the Gators (14-5, 6-1 SEC) had him feeling much better, in spite of the 66-64 final score.
“I was worried after South Carolina now,” Calipari said. “I’m not worried after this. We’ll be fine. I was worried after Vanderbilt to be honest with you, and we won that game. They do this and they stay this course and this is who we are, we’ll be fine.”
What had Calipari feeling optimistic was the way UK defended a Florida team that came in as one of the best offensive units in the country. A 39.7-percent 3-point shooting team coming in, the Gators were held to 6-of-30 (20 percent) from beyond the arc.
“What I saw today—that is one of the best offensive teams in the country,” Calipari said. “We held them to 33 percent and 20 percent from the 3-point line. We didn’t come up with some loose balls. We didn’t understand the importance of it. We had some freshman mistakes: Up three and throw the ball out-of-bounds, what in the world are you thinking? A blocked shot, a kid doesn’t have a shot, he ball fakes and shoots an air — what? Whoa. Those, I can cure those.”
In the postgame locker room, the Cats didn’t see quite the same sunny version of Calipari that appeared at his press conference, but they did hear some of the same positive messages about how they fought. That doesn’t dull the pain altogether though.
“That’s showing his confidence in us,” Wenyen Gabriel said. “We had some good practices prior to this game and I thought we were going to come out with a W today. This loss definitely hurt, but this might be the type of loss that brings us back together going forward with SEC play.”
The loss was very nearly a win, as UK led with as little as 4:38 on the clock and had the ball with a chance to tie or take the lead on the game’s last possession. Things might have ended differently had the Cats executed a little better in the final seconds or if a miracle shot had fallen, but that wouldn’t have erased the mistakes that truly caused them to fall.
Not coming up on the winning end of 50-50 balls, to name one.
“You’re talking 18- and 19-year-olds and there were balls we didn’t come up with,” Calipari said. “There were plays that we should have grabbed. There were offensive rebounds we accepted being blocked out. In other words, the shot goes up and the guy blocks — goes to block, you don’t stand there. You work to get even with him and if it bounces this way, you get it and if it bounces the other way, he gets it. It’s a 50/50. If you stay behind him, it’s a zero. We stayed behind most of the game. We’ve been working on it, but it’s hard for these kids.”
UK outrebounded Florida 49-38, but gave up 14 offensive rebounds in spite of a significant size advantage.
“There’s no secret to getting 50-50 balls,” Gabriel said. “It’s the guy who wants the ball more. You have to go get it. Eventually you’re going to have to learn how to fight more. Just me, as a leader, I feel like I need to figure out what more I can do to try to spread that on to my teammates and how we can all get on the same page about this fighting thing.”
Something else about which the Cats need to get on the same page is half-court execution. There would be stretches where UK would get what it wanted on offense – typically by posting up or attacking the basket – then even longer stretches where the Cats were lucky to even heave a contested shot.
“That’s one of the things that’s real frustrating for us,” Gabriel said. “We have our game plan. We’re trying to post the ball and we kind of end up straying away from that. It’s frustrating we have all this talent and we keep making these mistakes day in and day out. It gets frustrating at this point, but the season’s not over. It’s a long season. We have to keep working and focusing on that. We can’t go up a few points and start straying away and doing our own thing.”
Therein lies the exact problem, in Calipari’s mind.
“I see somebody trying to get their own, and now it leads to a turnover or a missed play,” Calipari said. “When we move that ball, and we drive and find people, we’re really good. But you have to trust your teammates are going to pass it just like you. If you don’t think they are passing it, when you get it, you’re not passing it.”
Calipari, of course, would rather be coaching something closer to a finished product with February fast approaching. Even so, he has a group that did the most important thing in a losing effort: battle.
“Do we have a ways to go?” Calipari said. “Yeah, I’ve got to clean up some stuff. But if they don’t share the ball; if they don’t play with the spirit to try to win games, all that other stuff doesn’t matter. They shared the ball today. They defended pretty well. We defended well enough to win this game. That’s what’s kind of disappointing.
“But at the end of the day, we had our chances, and I love the fact that we fought.”
