UK Will Have to Improve after ‘Punch in the Mouth’
Kentucky had a built-in excuse: The Wildcats were without Reid Travis at Tennessee.
They just weren’t interested in making it.
“It wasn’t that,” John Calipari said. “They beat us. There are no excuses. We got beat every which way. Our young kids played like freshmen, played like deer in headlights.”
Without question, No. 4 UK (24-5, 13-3 SEC) could have used the player whose physical presence was so important in the Cats’ win over Tennessee two weeks ago. Even so, his absence does not explain away UK falling to the No. 7 Volunteers (26-3, 14-2 SEC), 71-52.
“We just missed that tonight, but we can’t blame it on that,” PJ Washington said. “We just gotta be better as a team and come out the next game and bring some energy.”
UK raced out to a 6-0 lead, but Tennessee quickly had an answer behind the dynamic Jordan Bone and a raucous home crowd at Thompson-Boling Arena. The Cats managed to hang around until the eight-minute mark of the first half, when Washington picked up his second foul. By halftime, the Volunteers would turn a one-point lead into 13. The Cats would never get closer than that in the second half.
“We didn’t have it,” Calipari said. “And they played. They came with a purpose and it was the first game in a while where we did not play for each other. It was kind of like every man for himself.”
For this team, that’s the very last thing the Cats can afford and the results were plain to see. UK managed a paltry 0.79 points per possession, far worse than its previous season low of 0.97 against Alabama.
“The team I’m coaching, they absolutely need each other,” Calipari said. “They’ve gotta have each other. And if one guy goes off on his own—today we had three and four guys go off. But we’ll learn and move on.”
UK will have to move on quickly, as the Cats head to Oxford, Mississippi, to face an Ole Miss team surely bound for the NCAA Tournament. In so doing, they will need a strike a balance between gleaning motivation from the loss and dwelling on defeat.
“I don’t think anybody liked that,” Washington said. “We didn’t play to our abilities at all. They took us out of everything on their defensive end. We didn’t feel like we played our style of basketball at all and we just gotta get back to that.”
Though experiencing it is unpleasant, the fact that UK took a step back in Knoxville is not altogether surprising to Calipari.
“This is college basketball,” Calipari said. “Especially when you’re playing freshmen and sophomores, you have games like this. These kids are not machines, they’re not robots and sometimes they play bad and sometimes the other team’s more inspired to play and they beat you.”
Calipari will by no means ignore what happened Saturday. Addressing what led to the Volunteers being more inspired and ensuring that doesn’t happen again will be essential. Even still, it doesn’t change the way he feels about his team.
“I’m loving my team,” Calipari said. “This was a great lesson. It’s kind of like you get a punch in the mouth and just like Tennessee did by us, we gotta go to Mississippi, have a tough game, Florida home. Our last two are tough. This is time to grow up.”
