‘Disappointing.’ ‘Devastating.’ Kentucky makes a quick exit from NCAA Tournament.
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Men’s NCAA Tournament: Saint Peter’s stuns Kentucky
Click below to view more content from the Lexington Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com on the Kentucky’s men’s basketball team’s loss to 15th-seeded Saint Peter’s on Thursday night in the NCAA East Regional at Indianapolis.
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The irony of the Kentucky season hit home Thursday night in the NCAA Tournament’s first round.
Though an unusually experienced team by UK standards, the Wildcats were largely uninitiated in the win-or-go-home dynamic of March Madness.
“My whole thing this week — because I knew they had never played in this stuff — was to get them free and loose,” John Calipari said after a season that thrilled UK fans ended abruptly. “And we never got to that. Never.”
Kentucky lost to Saint Peter’s 85-79 in overtime. UK became only the 10th second-seeded team to lose to a 15th-seeded team.
As Calipari described it, the game could have defined the survive-and-advance ethos of the NCAA Tournament. Except Kentucky’s season ended with a 26-8 record.
“It was one of those games I was hoping I’d get them by it and get on to the next game,” Calipari said. The hope was the game would help UK players “get their feet underneath them.”
Said Calipari: “I didn’t do a very good job of it.”
As he had suggested in recent weeks, Calipari said the injuries that plagued this Kentucky season did more than sideline guards Sahvir Wheeler, TyTy Washington, Jacob Toppin, Davion Mintz and others. They subtly changed the UK team.
“I may have been trying to coach a team that I coached a month ago,” Calipari said. “And we had a some guys not playing like they were a month ago.”
Surely, Kellan Grady came to mind as Calipari spoke.
“Steady Eddie,” as he had been nicknamed, struggled again to make shots. Against Saint Peter’s, he made one of nine (one of seven from three-point range). That made him six of 29 from three-point range in Kentucky’s final seven games.
Even still, Grady came into the game against Saint Peter’s ranked 12th among Division I players in three-point shooting accuracy (42.6 percent).
Without naming names, Calipari lamented that players were reluctant to shoot.
“Understand Oscar is under the basket,” the UK coach said of Oscar Tshiebwe, the nation’s leader in overall rebounding and offensive rebounding. “And if you miss it, he’ll get it.”
As always, Grady was a standup man when asked about his shooting struggles.
“If I had made a couple and just been myself the last couple games, we probably would have won them,” he said. “I’m not trying not to escape that responsibility. I shot like crap again.”
When asked why his shooting accuracy declined, Grady said, “if I could pinpoint it exactly, I wouldn’t have shot like crap. I feel bad I couldn’t help — in a better fashion — us win.
“But it is what it is.”
Keion Brooks., who sat next to Grady at the postgame news conference podium, immediately defended his teammate. Other players did not shoot well, Brooks said.
That support seemed a fitting punctuation for a team that was repeatedly offered an example of cohesion and camaraderie.
One thread that ran through several defeats late in the season was a tendency to stumble in the decisive final minutes of a possession-by-possession game.
Against Saint Peter’s, Kentucky led 68-62 with less than three minutes left in the second half.
Normally in this situation, “you win the game,” Calipari said.
UK scored only once and had two turnovers in the final three-plus minutes.
“It is sad,” Tshiebwe said. “I’ve been waiting for this moment a long time.”
The loss ended his first NCAA Tournament game in three college seasons.
The sadness was widespread.
“I feel bad for guys,” Calipari said. “They’re taking it hard. … I’m sick for them.”
The UK coach also offered condolences to the Big Blue Nation.
“I’m disappointed for our fans because they’re here en masse,” Calipari said. “And they were shell shocked like we all were. …
“We hate letting them down. I do as a coach, and I know these players do.”
Calipari expressed hope that a disappointing finish would not overshadow a season full of fun and memorable achievement.
“Don’t take away from what these kids did,” he said. “This was real disappointing (and) devastating.’
“But this team brought a lot of joy to a lot of us. I just hate that it ended this way.”
This story was originally published March 18, 2022 at 12:32 AM.
