When he coached Kentucky's team, Rick Pitino likened losing to fertilizer. From such stuff, teams can grow stronger and healthier.

John Calipari sounded much the same note after South Carolina upset visiting UK 68-62 Tuesday night. Disappointing as it was to see dreams of an unbeaten season dashed and a seven-years-in-the-making No. 1 ranking immediately tarnished, it could be an "L" of a way to improve.

"It's a great lesson," the UK coach said. "... A lot of times, until you take an 'L,' they don't want to believe you, especially with how young we are."

Meanwhile, South Carolina rode a proven Cat-killer in fifth-year senior Devan Downey and a well-executed game plan to the program's first victory over a No. 1 team. The seeds of this upset also included the Gamecocks' stunning ability to rebound with the previously dominant UK front line, surprising contributions from heretofore nondescript players, an inspiring sellout crowd and, Calipari suggested, Kentucky's false sense of confidence.

"We've had this happen in other games where we're just good enough at the end to win it, anyway," the UK coach said. "For our team, this is what happens when you have young guys think you're going to win it in the last minute of the game."

Kentucky players had plenty of reasons to believe they'd win again in the final reel. That worked against Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Louisville, Stanford, Connecticut, North Carolina, Sam Houston State, Miami (Ohio), etc., etc.

"We've done that all year," Calipari said. "We may have been undefeated, but we were lucky to be undefeated."

This time, South Carolina never stopped outhustling Kentucky, as reflected in a 44-40 rebounding advantage and the Cats getting about half of what Calipari considers the normal "hustle points."

As Calipari saw it, Kentucky's irresistible urge to show its undeniable talent also got in the way of winning.

"This is what happens to a young team," he said. "We weren't really listening to how we're trying to execute down the stretch. We're trying to make hero plays. We had layups we were trying to make fancy."

None was more nakedly obvious than Darnell Dodson's miss on a breakaway dunk. Kentucky trailed 51-49 with less than six minutes left when the sophomore in his first season on the Division I level made a steal, but then lost control of the ball as he rose for a planned one-hand slam.

"On national TV," Calipari said of the ESPN-heightened embarrassment factor for Dodson. "Probably not a good feeling right now. These are all lessons. This isn't an AAU game. It's not a pickup game. You make the play. There's no degree of difficulty. Just make the play. And we had a degree of difficulty."

Calipari made sure not to single out Dodson as the lone culprit. Quite the opposite. The UK coach said he asked each player after the game to reflect on ill-advised impulses to showboat or relax.

"I want you to think of one or two plays you tried to make a fancy play," he said he told the players. "(Or) you stopped playing. You didn't block out."

Even in the blowout of Arkansas last weekend, the Cats saw big leads as an invitation to entertain: Ahead 34-13, DeMarcus Cousins launched a three-pointer in hopes of his second basket from beyond the arc this season; ahead 46-23 and then 50-23, Eric Bledsoe went on flights of fancy.

No harm done at home against an Arkansas team playing its second game in three days.

South Carolina, which plotted to stay close and then take its chances with arguably the best point guard in the Southeastern Conference, fed off such lapses.

Calipari noted how UK's big men stood flat-footed as Downey came off screens for scoring opportunities.

"Instead of being in a (defensive) stance," the UK coach said. "... Now, all of a sudden, our big guys are screeners, too."

In other words, UK's big men got in the way of any teammate wishing to contest Downey's shot.

Downey, smart as well as quick, seized on the moment. "I told Coach at the end of the game, let's just run ball screens," he said.

Because of injury (Dominique Archie) and dismissal (Mike Holmes), South Carolina cannot afford the luxury of fancy plays. Coach Darrin Horn, the former Tates Creek High School star, called the Gamecocks "more of a game-plan type of team."

Calipari saluted Horn's plan, which called for milking the shot clock and then giving Downey the ball on offense. Defensively, the Gamecocks stressed getting back in transition to force Kentucky to play in half-court sets. Once there, South Carolina guarded Cousins one-on-one in the low post rather than double-teaming and having to rush outside the lane to cover his passes out of traps.

Horn acknowledged the risk. He called Cousins, who equaled a career high of 27 points, "unguardable" and "the best I've seen in 15 years of coaching."

But, Horn added, you have to make decisions on what to try to take away from Kentucky.

While lamenting his team's play, Calipari did not want to detract from South Carolina's performance.

"They made us play the way we played," he said of the Gamecocks. "I'm not taking anything away from them. They deserved to win."

Not that the UK coach absolved his players of responsibility. He suggested some players might be trying to justify the hype surrounding their arrival at Kentucky by attempting memorable plays.

"I keep trying to tell them, you've got nothing to prove," Calipari said. "Just go play ball. You don't have to prove you're this (and) you're that."

Junior All-America candidate Patrick Patterson was strangely subdued: four shots and five points in 35 minutes. When asked if Patterson could have done more to lead his youthful teammates, Calipari said, "I would hope so. But we had our chances to win even with him playing that way."

No doubt, those chances will come again and again. Perhaps the defeat will help the Cats to make the most of those chances.