Kentucky wanted to impose its will on Gonzaga. It didn’t happen. ‘We had no fight …’
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Game day: No. 2 Gonzaga 88, No. 4 Kentucky 72
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Sunday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Gonzaga in Spokane, Wash.
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Following about 90 minutes of spirited practice time Saturday afternoon on Gonzaga’s campus, John Calipari called his Kentucky basketball team to center court and delivered a message for the following day.
Michigan State, he said, had taken it to Gonzaga in the early going when those two teams played a little more than a week before. The unranked Spartans led by seven points at halftime against the No. 2 Bulldogs. They almost pulled off the upset, ultimately losing by one point.
Calipari wanted his Kentucky team to take it to the Zags right out of the gate, too.
“You force your will on them,” the UK coach told his team. “And you let them know: we’re here to play.”
Well, that didn’t happen.
Gonzaga made its first five shots Sunday evening. Kentucky missed its first five. The Zags were up eight points before the first TV timeout and led the Cats by 13 before the second one.
The final score: Gonzaga 88, Kentucky 72, but the tone was set and the game was all but lost in those opening minutes. It was the Bulldogs who took it to the fourth-ranked Wildcats early.
“They imposed their will on us instead of the other way around,” Calipari said afterward.
The Wildcats were playing in the most raucous of environments. A record crowd of 12,333 packed the Spokane Arena to see this showdown of top-five teams, and nearly 100 percent of the fans in attendance were wearing Gonzaga gear. The student section was packed as soon as the doors opened, and they were positioned right next to the Kentucky bench, staying on the Cats from pregame shootaround all the way to the final buzzer.
“Honestly, I don’t think the crowd had anything to do with it,” UK forward Jacob Toppin said afterward. “We had no fight in the first half, and we put ourselves in a hole that we couldn’t dig out of.”
The Cats arrived in Spokane on Friday — just three days removed from a disappointing upset loss to Michigan State in the Champions Classic — and knew what they would be walking into Sunday evening: an opportunity against the No. 2 team in the country, another chance to prove themselves against a top program. So, how is it possible to come out with no fight?
“If you want the honest answer …,” Toppin started, before pausing for a moment. “It’s a long season. We played one of the best teams in college basketball. I don’t want to speak for any guys, but — in some moments — guys can’t step up. Me included.
“I didn’t make shots in the first half at all. I didn’t rebound. I gotta be better. My teammates gotta be better. We all gotta be better. You can say whatever you want, but — at the end of the day — we’re gonna put this on ourselves, just to be better.”
Toppin missed eight of his first nine shots and had zero rebounds in 16 first-half minutes, but he helped keep the Cats within striking distance at the end, and there was ample blame to go around Sunday evening. UK missed 12 shots before its first offensive rebound. The Cats started the game 4-for-23 from the floor. They missed their first 11 three-point attempts.
Kentucky’s guards seemed primed for a big game against this Gonzaga backcourt. Sahvir Wheeler shot 2-for-6 from the field. CJ Fredrick went 1-for-9. Antonio Reeves was 4-for-13.
Oscar Tshiebwe led the way with 20 points and 15 rebounds, but he said one reason the team started so slow was because the Cats weren’t running the plays Calipari wanted them to run. Tshiebwe, who missed a month of practice with a knee injury before returning to the court six days earlier, accepted the blame there.
“I couldn’t get Oscar to run the plays right,” Calipari said. “You know why? He hasn’t been practicing with us.”
Kentucky did have an August trip to the Bahamas to work things out, however, along with all of the practices that preceded those exhibition games. And they had weeks of practice time before Tshiebwe was sidelined. For a team with three starters who returned from last season, a squad so laden with veterans, not running the plays correctly — even with the preseason injuries the Cats endured — seems disconcerting.
“It was so embarrassing that we couldn’t even run a play,” Calipari said. “Couldn’t run a play. Not one. And it wasn’t just Oscar. It was our guards, too.”
Calipari said he switched things up at halftime and went to his dribble-drive offense.
“And that’s what we did the whole second half,” he said. “I ran two plays.”
Kentucky did fight back after halftime. And that was perhaps one positive takeaway from an otherwise miserable night in Spokane. The Cats battled out of the break, narrowed Gonzaga’s lead to 49-45 with more than 13 minutes still left on the clock.
“And then we made stupid plays,” Toppin said. “Me included in that.”
Tshiebwe committed his fourth foul on the possession after Kentucky cut the deficit to four points, the Cats missed their next four shots, and some ugly turnovers quickly followed. By the time Tshiebwe was back in action, Kentucky was down double digits again.
With the hole that Kentucky had dug for itself early on, there was no room for error once the score got close again. That Zags’ hot start was the difference in the game.
“I feel like it kind of shook ’em at first,” Gonzaga’s Julian Strawther said of the opening flurry. “They came out kind of cool, and I feel like we came out with fire.”
This was just the fifth game of the season. Against a top-flight opponent in an incredibly tough place to play. But that wasn’t much consolation Sunday night. And this Kentucky team obviously has some work to do to get things right.
“I’ll just play different guys, whoever wants to fight,” Calipari said. “I’m going to play different guys. We got enough guys. I let those guys get in there and fight and understand: when you’re into your own head about how you’re playing instead of just, ‘Play for us.’ And we’re training every day about playing a certain way, play that way.
“I wouldn’t trade my team for any team in the country. I wouldn’t. I’m not happy right now. We lost a game that we start awful. Can’t make a shot, get back in the game, and then — when you do all that — you finish those off. It shows we’re not ready.”
This story was originally published November 20, 2022 at 11:44 PM.
