Cats Will Have to Answer Wakeup Call
Even as they rounded into form in winning 16 of 18 games, the Kentucky Wildcats too often played with fire.
On Tuesday, they finally burned themselves.
No. 6/6 UK (24-6, 14-3 Southeastern Conference) gave up a 51-34 second-half lead, with visiting Tennessee (17-13, 9-8 SEC) charging back to hand the Cats an 81-73 defeat in their home finale. The result, in John Calipari’s mind, came down to one thing and one thing alone.
“If we don’t play physical, we’re not going to win,” Calipari said. “We won’t advance.”
From the preseason on, Calipari has cited the ability to respond to physical play as the determining factor in how far this Kentucky team will go this season. In their first game in March, the Cats got a clear lesson in exactly how true that is.
The outcome was a surprising one, and not just because of the lead UK gave up. The game came mere days after UK delivered one of its toughest performances to date in a win over Auburn to clinch the outright SEC regular-season title. But on Tuesday, the Cats were outrebounded by 11 in the second half and entirely unable to stop John Fulkerson, who went off for 27 points.
“Just not tough enough,” Tyrese Maxey said. “We lost some loose balls. We dropped some crucial rebounds. Big, crucial rebounds that we dropped.”
As much as Coach Cal would like to toss the game tape from this one, he knows that’s the last thing he can afford to do. Lessons, with the regular-season finale looming on Saturday at Florida leading into tournament play, must be learned.
“We’re going to have to watch the film just to see exactly what happened,” Immanuel Quickley said. “Honestly, for myself on the floor, I just felt like we didn’t fight as hard as we could have, myself included, and we really just didn’t get it done. That’s the bottom line.”
As it was all happening – particularly during 11 jarring minutes during which that 17-point lead disappeared into a deficit – the Wildcats wore their frustration on their faces. The same was true postgame, as Coach Cal, Maxey, Quickley and Johnny Juzang dutifully answered questions from the press.
“A loss makes anybody mad,” Maxey said. “We all want to win, so people were sick. But like I said, we got 24 hours. Twenty-four hours to grieve and we gotta let it go. We’ll be back at the drawing board and get ready to go to Florida on Saturday.”
Therein lies the balancing act the Cats will have to undertake this week: to walk the fine line between absorbing necessary lessons and not dwelling on the defeat.
“You got to learn from this, guys,” Calipari said. “You let go of one. You got to learn. And you got to take responsibility yourself and how you played.”
