Notes: Cats rush to locker room before Vandy fans storm court

With Vanderbilt fans poised to rush the court, most Kentucky players did not stick around for the final seconds of Saturday’s game.

UK Coach John Calipari sent the players on the bench to the locker room with 34.8 seconds left.

Once Vandy completed its 74-62 victory, Calipari congratulated Commodores Coach Kevin Stallings and accompanied the remaining five players to the locker room.

With the memory of Vandy fans rushing the court still fresh, Calipari said Florida fans might do likewise if Kentucky loses in Gainesville on Tuesday.

“I’ll do what I did down at Auburn and here,” Calipari said. “Tell the guys, ‘Go to the locker room. Go. Beat it.’

“I’m not going to get anybody hurt.”

As for the post-game formalities, Calipari said he would “look at the coach, (and say) ‘Peace, brother. Good win.’

“And I run.”

Stallings was not offended by Kentucky’s early exit.

“I’m not a big fan of storming the court, and I’m not a big fan of opposing players being put at risk,” the Vandy coach said. “I saw Cal was trying to get his players out, which I understood and appreciated. So I wanted to get over and shake his hand quickly. He was able to get his guys out and that was good.”

Defending Murray

Vandy saluted Jamal Murray after he scored 33 points.

Matthew Fisher-Davis, who took a turn trying to defend Murray, said the task involved “one screen after another. Kind of tiring.”

Teammate Jeff Roberson noted how Murray made 12 of 20 shots (six of 10 from three-point range).

“One false step, and you’ll be paying for it,” Roberson said. “You have to rely on help from your teammates, and be locked in at all times.”

“By design, they’re running him around a bunch of stuff to get his defender tired,” Stallings said. “And when his defender gets tired, he busts open and he’s unbelievable. We started switching people, changing up and I think that helped us slow him down a tad.

“But we didn’t slow him down a whole lot because he had 33.”

Everybody hurts

Calipari was philosophical about Kentucky’s abrupt downturn and Vandy’s recent resurgence.

“Hey, look,” he told reporters. “A&M struggled a little bit. We struggled a little bit.

“But I could go around the country and tell you 15 teams that this year at some point struggled. This is different.”

Poythress puzzling

Alex Poythress continued to puzzle.

Coming off a triumphant 14-point return from injury against Alabama on Tuesday, he made no impact against Vandy.

When asked to explain the disparity, Calipari said, “You’ll have to ask him. Next question.”

Poythress went scoreless for the sixth time in his career. He last failed to score a point against Georgia in the 2014 SEC Tournament. This was the first time in his career he did not take a shot.

A 92-second sequence in the second half showed how frustrating the game was for Poythress. He entered the game at the 17:10 mark. Four seconds later, he committed his third foul.

That led to being replaced by Skal Labissisere at 16:57. Poythress returned 23 seconds later when Labissiere fouled as Damian Jones scored on a putback.

A minute later, Poythress picked up his fourth foul and returned to the bench.

NCAA bid?

Calipari proclaimed Vanderbilt a NCAA Tournament team.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Absolutely.”

Vandy forward Jeff Roberson agreed, but Stallings was cautious.

“It’s not hard for me to downplay it because it doesn’t guarantee us anything,” he said. “If they gave us two wins for this, I’d put more emphasis on it. But they don’t, so it’s no more or less important than Tuesday against Tennessee.”

Kornet shines

With his parents watching from the front row near the Vandy bench, Luke Kornet easily had his most productive game against Kentucky.

Kornet, whose ties to Lexington extend to his grandfather Milton (a retired UK professor) and father Frank (Lexington Catholic grad), scored eight points and grabbed 11 rebounds.

In three previous games against UK, Kornet made only three of 20 shots (two of 14 from three-point range) and scored 10 points.

‘Demoralizing misses’

UK made only 10 of 23 free throws (43.5 percent).

That marked the program’s worst free-throw accuracy in games where the Cats shot at least 20 free throws since Nov. 12, 2010. On that date, UK made nine of 23 free throws against East Tennessee State (39.1 percent).

Calipari noted how some were “badly missed, like demoralizing misses.”

Isaiah Briscoe missed all four of his attempts, which made him nine of 24 from the line in the last seven games.

Marcus Lee made a career-high five free throws. But he also missed four. In the last 18 games, he’s 8-for-25 from the line.

Etc.

Kentucky fell to 3-5 on the road in the SEC and 5-8 away from Rupp Arena overall. Vandy improved its home record to 7-1 in the league and 13-2 overall. … It was the fifth time UK has lost a road game in which it led at halftime. That happened earlier at Auburn, Kansas, Tennessee and Texas A&M. … Vandy improved to 3-7 in games against teams in the RPI top 30.

This story was originally published February 27, 2016 at 9:18 PM with the headline "Notes: Cats rush to locker room before Vandy fans storm court."