With its basketball season on the line, Kentucky answers Calipari’s latest challenge
READ MORE
Game day: Kentucky 71, Mississippi State 68
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Wednesday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Mississippi State at Starkville, Miss.
Expand All
In the wake of Kentucky’s demoralizing defeat in Georgia over the weekend, John Calipari decided to trot out an old favorite.
“Refuse to lose” was the motto of Calipari’s scrappy UMass teams of the 1990s, those squads that turned college basketball upside down, made the Minutemen a perennial winner of NCAA Tournament games, got them to their first (and only) Final Four, and ultimately landed the head coach a gig in the NBA.
This Kentucky season teetering on the brink, Calipari knew his Cats could ill afford many more losses. With six games left in the regular season and possibly sitting on the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament bubble, their chances were running out.
So after that loss to Georgia, he hit this team with his old slogan.
Calipari is one of the master motivators in college basketball and has been for decades. He’s also known to recycle the same buzzwords for new players who haven’t heard them before.
His “refuse to lose” mantra was so prevalent early in his college career that he made a move to trademark the phrase and even used it as the title of his book, published shortly after he left UMass for the New Jersey Nets.
How many times has he brought it up in his 14 seasons at Kentucky?
“I haven’t at all,” he claimed.
Things rarely seemed so desperate in the 13 seasons that came before this one.
The Wildcats played like it Wednesday night, hobbling into Humphrey Coliseum as three-point underdogs and walking out as three-point winners.
The final: Kentucky 71, Mississippi State 68.
“The biggest thing I’ve been talking to them about is, ‘Refuse to lose.’ Just refuse to lose,” Calipari declared. “And you may run out of time. But refuse to lose. You just keep fighting.”
The UK coach has been imploring his Cats to “fight” all season long. They sure did on this night.
“Down the stretch, seven minutes left, that’s all we were talking about,” freshman forward Chris Livingston said. “Saying that to each other. Refusing to lose. When it hit four minutes, we said to each other: ‘It’s winning time.’ It’s that time of the season.”
Their play wasn’t always pretty, and they were far from perfect, but the Wildcats displayed a grit against the Bulldogs that was indicative of the circumstances. A third straight loss — after back-to-back defeats to Arkansas and Georgia last week — could have eliminated what was already a razor-thin margin for error down the stretch for a team with NCAA Tournament dreams. It would have been UK’s 10th defeat of the season. It would have dropped them to 1-8 in those all-important Quad 1 games. It didn’t happen.
“We just refused to lose today,” senior forward Jacob Toppin said. “We fought.”
All eight players who logged minutes made a difference.
With CJ Fredrick and Sahvir Wheeler sidelined with injuries, the Cats turned in a total team effort.
Cason Wallace missed 12 of the 13 shots he took. But he also tallied 11 assists to just one turnover while playing more than 38 minutes. At one point early in the second half, he subbed himself out and immediately got treatment on his legs on the bench. He was back in the game 64 seconds later and never checked out again.
Toppin hit big shot after big shot, scoring 16 and going 7-for-9 from the floor. Antonio Reeves made four more three-pointers, finishing with 14 points. Daimion Collins, Adou Thiero and Lance Ware all provided sparks in different ways off the bench.
Livingston’s turn was as impressive as anyone’s. Calipari was visibly frustrated with him in the first half. After one defensive lapse, he yanked him from the game. A short time later, Livingston committed a turnover and Calipari took him out again, clearly agitated with the freshman. He went into the halftime locker room with zero points on zero shots in 12 minutes of play.
Calipari challenged him to be better in the second half. To play team basketball and lose himself in that approach.
“That’s just how Cal is — holding me to a high standard, being hard on me, expecting much more out of myself than I’m doing in the game,” Livingston said. “That’s his job. In the second half, I just knew I had to play harder and make some plays to make up for how I played in that first half.”
His stat line in the second half: 13 points, three rebounds, two steals, one blocked shot and 6-for-6 from the free-throw line. He played the entire 20 minutes. And with Kentucky leading by two points and less than 10 seconds remaining, Reeves missed a three and Livingston came up with the rebound. He got fouled and made the two free throws.
“Chris was an all-star today,” Calipari said. “I was really proud of him.”
Oh, and Oscar Tshiebwe led Kentucky with 18 points and 11 rebounds, making three of four free throws in the final seconds and setting the tone for UK’s utter domination of Mississippi State on the boards. The Cats had 38 rebounds to the Bulldogs’ 22. UK got 18 second-chance points off 18 offensive rebounds, while MSU came up with just 15 defensive boards.
The fact that Tshiebwe — the national player of the year — was just another cog in the Cats’ machine Wednesday night was telling of the collective effort.
“It just shows that we’re a deep team,” Toppin said. “When we lock in and dial into the game plan — to what we have to do in order to win — we can beat anybody in the country. So we gotta just stay true to that and stay true to ourselves and understand what we have to do individually to help this team win.”
Kentucky has five more games in this regular season. Five more chances to make an impression on the NCAA selection committee and college basketball at large. It starts with Tennessee in Rupp Arena on Saturday afternoon. Quad 1 matchups with Florida, Auburn and Arkansas are also on that slate, along with a home game against Vanderbilt.
“Five games. That’s what we got,” Calipari said. “We’ve got five to go. Who’s ready to play? Who’s ready to fight? Refuse to lose. Do what you gotta do for the team.”
On Wednesday night, with some Wildcats out, others hobbled and every one of them exhausted, Kentucky found a way to win. At this point in the season, that’s all that matters.
“That’s one thing about this team: we’re never gonna back down,” Toppin said. “We’re in a hole right now, and we’re gonna dig out of it. Best believe we’re gonna dig out of it. We’re a great group of guys who’s gonna stick together, and we’re gonna continue to fight ’til the end. No matter the outcome.
“We’re gonna figure this out. We’re gonna turn this around. And it started today.”
Next game
No. 10 Tennessee at Kentucky
When: 1 p.m. Saturday
TV: CBS-27
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Tennessee 20-6 (9-4 SEC), Kentucky 17-9 (8-5)
Series: Kentucky leads 159-77
Last meeting: Kentucky won 63-56 on Jan. 14, 2023, in Knoxville, Tenn.
This story was originally published February 16, 2023 at 12:54 AM.
