Cats Seek Return to Form at Ole Miss
The most important lessons don’t come without pain. It also oftentimes takes some reinforcement for them to truly sink in.
Kentucky got a little of both last weekend in a blowout loss at Tennessee.
The result, John Calipari hopes, is that the Wildcats absorb the most important lesson of all for good.
“The team I’m coaching, they absolutely need each other,” Coach Cal said Saturday. “They’ve gotta have each other.”
UK showed what it looks like when functioning as a unit in winning 14 times in 15 tries prior to a 71-52 loss, the Cats firmly establishing themselves as national contenders in the process. At Tennessee, UK showed what it looks like when that’s not the case, resulting in a reversal of an 86-69 win over the Volunteers just two weeks prior.
“You could just see it throughout the game,” Keldon Johnson said. “We really weren’t making extra passes, things like that. You could tell, we really need each other out there for us to be successful. You could tell and it really opened up our eyes.”
It was an eye-opening experience the Cats would have preferred avoiding, but it could end up being to their benefit in the long run.
“This team is connected to each other and the minute that they start worrying more about their own performance we don’t trust each other, which means you’re not aggressive,” Calipari said. “Which means you don’t take chances. Which means you’re not pushing up. So, we’ve just got to get back to where we were.”
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| Kentucky at Ole Miss | ||
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Tue., March 5 – 9 p.m. ET |
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TV: ESPN |
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| UK | 2018-19 Stats | UM |
| 24-5 | Record | 19-10 |
| 13-3 | Conference Record | 9-7 |
| 77.1 | PPG | 76.1 |
| 65.1 | Opp PPG | 70.4 |
| .476 | FG% | .464 |
| .403 | Opp FG% | .437 |
| 38.8 | RPG | 34.7 |
| .358 | 3PT FG% | .363 |
| .353 | Opp 3PT FG% | .371 |
| .741 | FT% | .775 |
| 13.9 | APG | 14.7 |
| 6.2 | SPG | 7.6 |
| 5.0 | BPG | 3.5 |
Selfishness, generally, is generally thought of an offensive problem. It certainly was at Tennessee, as UK had season-worst totals in points, points per possession and effective field-goal percentage, but defense should not be ignored.
“When you’re supposed to be helping in the concepts that we do defensively and you’re focused in on your man and you’re looking in at your man and he doesn’t have the ball,” assistant coach Tony Barbee said. “There’s a lot of different ways you can be selfish defensively. Not playing your role in our concepts defensively can cause you to be selfish and breaks down your defense because defense isn’t any individual. You’ve got to be good individually on the ball, but defense is five guys playing as one.”
When UK’s defense is at its swarming best, the Cats contest shots, force turnovers and protect the glass. UK has contested shots and rebounded reasonably well on a consistent basis, but opponent turnovers have seen a steady decline of late. The Cats have committed more turnovers than their opponents in six straight games and forced no more than 12 turnovers in any game since Feb. 5. That culminated with the game in Knoxville, Tennessee, when the Cats forced just five turnovers against their own 17.
“We just gotta turn up the intensity,” Johnson said. “That’s it. We just gotta come in more focused with intensity. There’s nothing in particular. We just gotta come together and lock in like we usually do.”
No. 6 Kentucky (24-5, 13-3 SEC) will have its next opportunity to do so in its final road trip of the regular season. The Wildcats will head to Oxford, Mississippi, to face Ole Miss (19-10, 9-7 SEC), which projects as an NCAA Tournament team in spite of losing back-to-back games to Tennessee and Arkansas by three combined points.
“They’re a team that’s played well, been aggressive and played well all season,” Calipari said. “I’d imagine – are there still tickets for sale down there? I would say there’s not. It’s going to be a war and they know it and their team will be ready. Look, we don’t face anybody that’s not ready to play. Some games we play better than others, but the other teams that we play we understand what we’re getting. I fully expect those guys to really get after it. It should be a high-flying kind of game.”
The Rebels, led by first-year head coach Kermit Davis, have been one of the SEC’s biggest surprises behind a group of guards that features Ole Miss’s top four scorers. The group is led by junior Breein Tyree and senior Terence Davis, who combine to average 33.8 points per game.
“Well, they’re two of the better guards in the conference if not the country,” Barbee said. “Those are guys that have been around college basketball for a while now. When you watch them play on film you see that. You see the experience that they have of going through the battles at this level in this conference so it’s a challenge especially on their home court because they play extremely well at home.”
Kentucky fully expects to match them.
“I think we’re going to go out there and do what we usually do,” Johnson said. “I think that definitely makes us hungrier that we lost like how we did, but I think we just learn from it and we’re ready for our next game.”
Tennessee Gets Even with Kentucky in Rematch
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – PJ Washington scored 13 points and grabbed three rebounds, but fourth-ranked Kentucky lost at No. 7 Tennessee 71-52 on Saturday inside Thompson-Boling Arena.
No other Kentucky player scored in double figures in Saturday’s game. Nick Richards had eight points, seven rebounds and three blocks, while Immanuel Quickley also had eight points. Keldon Johnson had seven points and seven boards for the Cats, who saw their four-game winning streak snapped with Saturday’s loss.
Kentucky (24-5, 13-3 Southeastern Conference) struggled from the field for most of the game. The Cats hit just 14 of 44 (31.8 percent) overall and only 5 of 19 (26.3 percent) from behind the arc. UK did hit 19 of its 29 free throw attempts in the game.
Tennessee (26-3, 14-2) had only five turnovers on Saturday, while forcing Kentucky into 17 miscues. The Vols scored 18 points off UK turnovers, while the Cats scored eight points off the Vols’ miscues. Tennessee also had a 28-10 advantage in points in the paint.
Kentucky won the rebounding battle 39-36 and outscored Tennessee 13-11 in second-chance points. The Cats also held a 13-9 edge in bench points.
UK got off to a quick start, taking a 6-0 lead early in the game. Tennessee answered by scoring the next nine points to lead by three. After the Vols took an 11-7 lead, the Cats scored five in a row to lead 12-11. After Tennessee led 13-12, Kentucky grabbed a 14-13 advantage on a Tyler Herro basket. But that would be Kentucky’s last lead of the game.
Tennessee would assemble a 9-0 run to take a 28-18 lead with 4:03 to play in the half. The Vols would lead by as many as 14 before settling for a 37-24 advantage at the break. Kentucky hit just 6 of 26 (23.1 percent) in the first half, including just 2 of 9 (22.2 percent) from behind the arc. Washington, who was limited due to foul trouble, led UK with six points in the first 20 minutes.
When Washington, UK’s leading scorer this season, went out with two fouls at the 8:23 mark, UK was outscored 18-6 under halftime. The Wildcats went 9:32 of game time in the first half without a field goal under Jemarl Baker Jr. knocked down a 3 with 51 seconds left in the half.
Early in the second half, the Vols went on a 10-3 run to take their biggest lead of the game, 47-27, with 16:17 to play. The Cats would not go away quietly, scoring the next seven points to cut the lead to 47-34 with 14:27 remaining. That would be as close as Kentucky would get for the remainder of the game.
The Vols earned a split of the regular season series with the Cats, who had won in Lexington 86-69 on Feb. 16. Tennessee got 27 points from
Jordan Bone and 24 from Grant Williams in Saturday’s game.
• UK fell behind by a game in the SEC standings behind Tennessee and LSU with the loss
• The Wildcats still lead their most played series 155-72
• UK still leads the series in Knoxville 54-52 but Tennessee has won four straight there, the Wildcats’ longest losing streak on the road to Tennessee since dropping seven straight in Knoxville from 1979 to 1985
• Kentucky is now 12-9 vs. Tennessee when both teams are ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 at the time of the matchup
• UK’s road winning streak was stopped at six games. It was the longest road winning streak since the magical 2014-15 season
• Kentucky is now 5-3 vs. AP Top 25 opponents this season and 3-2 vs. top-10 foes
• UK’s 52 points were its lowest in a game since netting just 48 in a loss to Vanderbilt on March 15, 2013, in the SEC Tournament
• The Wildcats’ 31.5-percent shooting was a season low, and its 14 made field goals tied for the lowest of the Calipari era (also made just 14 vs. South Carolina on March 1, 2014)
• After dominating the Volunteers 36-20 in points in the paint in the first matchup, UK scored just 10 in the rematch
• It was just the third time in 23 games Kentucky lost when winning the rebounding battle (39-36)
• Washington has scored in double figures in 13 of the last 14 games
Cats Trail by a Game in SEC Race with Two to Go
Kentucky’s loss at Tennessee on Saturday was a costly one but not an insurmountable one. With just two games to go, UK trails both LSU and Tennessee by a game.
UK still has hopes of capturing a 49th Southeastern Conference regular-season championship and sixth under John Calipari, but the Cats will need some things to go their way. Here are the scenarios for Kentucky to capture at least a share of the SEC championship:
• UK wins both games and Tennessee and LSU lose both games. The Wildcats would win the title outright
• UK wins both games and both Tennessee and LSU each lose at least one game
• UK wins one of its next two games and both Tennessee and LSU lose both games
As far as SEC Tournament seeding is concerned, the outlook for the No. 1 seed is bleak but not impossible at this point. At the very least, LSU has to lose both of its games for the Wildcats to get the No. 1 seed because LSU owns all tiebreakers over UK at this point.
Even if LSU were to lose both games and UK were to win both, it still wouldn’t guarantee Kentucky the top seed. In the scenario that UK and Tennessee tie atop the SEC standings, they would split the head-to-head tiebreaker. The next tiebreaker is won-lost record vs. the next-highest seed and proceeding until the tie is broken. If Kentucky and Tennessee tied at No. 1, the scenarios are still plentiful at this point because UK and UT both went 0-1 vs. LSU and the No. 4 seed is very much up in the air right now.
UK will end the season with a trip to Ole Miss and at home vs. Florida, both of who are playing for an NCAA Tournament at-large berth. LSU goes to Florida and then hosts Vanderbilt. Tennessee hosts Mississippi State and then ends its season at Auburn.
At the very least, Kentucky has clinched no worse than the No. 3 seed and the double bye. Kentucky has never played earlier than the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament in all 10 seasons under Calipari.
Calipari Moves into Second Place on UK’s All-Time Wins List
A 66-58 win on the road at Missouri may have seemed like business as usual for the Wildcats, but it served as a major coaching milestone for head coach John Calipari. The win signified No. 297 as UK’s head coach, which tied him with Joe B. Hall for the second most by a Kentucky head coach. He moved past Hall last week with an 80-53 win over Auburn.
Now, only Adolph Rupp owns more victories as UK’s head coach than Calipari.
Having coached 368 games to date with the Wildcats, he would become the fourth fastest coach to 300 wins at one program in NCAA history with a win vs. Ole Miss. Bill Self at Kansas won his 300th game in the fastest time span of 358 games. Claire Bee did it in 359 games at Long Island and Rupp achieved win No. 300 in just 366 career games.
