End of ‘Magical’ Season Brings Disappointment, Pride
The equalizer just never did come.
Though Kentucky applied an onslaught of pressure over the match’s final third, the Wildcats couldn’t find the goal they needed to prolong a historic season and reach the College Cup.
“We go in 1-0 at halftime and then we talk, make some adjustments and I think we were all over them in the second half, but it’s just one of those where that final product, final touch, losing your marker, whatever you want to say,” Johan Cedergren said. “Quality of the cross. We just weren’t able to produce today.”
Having fallen short against Maryland, the Wildcats’ saw that magical season end in the Elite Eight with a 1-0 loss. UK closes the year with a 19-2-1 record following the deepest NCAA Tournament run in program history.
“Even though we battled—you can see on JJ (Williams), you can see on Tanner (Hummel),” Cedergren said. “They have nothing left in the tank. They worked their tails off today. The whole team did, but I just don’t think we produced that last five percent that we needed to get from an Elite Eight to a Final Four. Incredibly disappointed, but at the same time very proud of the season that we’ve had.”
Cedergren has good reason to be proud.
Unquestionably, the 2018 season was the most successful in school history. The Wildcats swept Conference USA regular-season and tournament championships to earn a No. 3 national seed a year after they missed out on the NCAA Tournament altogether. There, they tripled the program’s all-time tournament win total, building enough excitement in Lexington to convince 3,228 fans to spend the last Friday night of November at the Wendell & Vickie Bell Soccer Complex.
“If you go all the way back to January when we started working on this to get to this point today, it’s just been an incredible journey and these guys have given 100 percent every step of the way,” Cedergren said. “They’ve never been perfect, but they’ve always worked as hard as they can and we’ve learned and we’ve gotten better.
UK did it all with an extraordinary youth and only one senior on the roster in Hummel. Other players could have professional opportunities, but the Wildcats will return a talented group in 2019 regardless.
“I think now, you see on Tanner and JJ, they’re destroyed,” Cedergen said. “This is everything to them. They give up so much. They sacrifice so many things to put in what the team needs. I think for us it’s those guys that are all coming back, is let’s harness this feeling. We don’t ever want to be here again.”
A year ago this time, Cedergren had already spent a few weeks ruminating on how to reinvent the program he was tabbed to lead before the 2012 season. Now, following a season Cedergren described as “magical, inspiring, incredibly fun”, no reinvention will be necessary.
There is still much work to be done.
“I think we’re in a very different spot now, but it’s also one of those where an Elite Eight is not enough,” Cedergren said. “I don’t work at Kentucky. (Executive Associate Athletics Director) Kevin (Saal) and (Athletics Director) Mitch (Barnhart) didn’t hire me at Kentucky to make an Elite Eight. With as many guys as we have coming back, the goal is can we do even better next year?”
