Amid tears, Kentucky laments an early end to a special season. ‘It just went by so fast.’
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Game day: Oakland 80, Kentucky 76
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Thursday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Oakland at the NCAA Tournament in Pittsburgh.
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Sitting in a corner of Kentucky’s locker room Thursday night, Reed Sheppard answered the questions he was asked, but his gaze rarely lifted from the ground.
The 19-year-old kid from Laurel County had spent this entire season as the face of one of the most exciting UK basketball teams in years. Even in the worst of times — and even after games where he had made crucial mistakes — he met those questions with eye contact and professional replies. There was nothing fun about what had just happened here. And on this night, those eyes were filled with tears.
Between his answers, Sheppard lifted a white towel to those eyes and wiped them dry. Black lettering on that towel said this: “The Road to the Final Four.”
For Sheppard and the Wildcats, that road ended Thursday night. A devastating finish to a fun-filled season that was cut short five games shy of its desired destination.
“It was an unbelievable season,” Sheppard said. “… And it sucks it’s over.”
Kentucky had just fallen in the first round of the NCAA Tournament — an 80-76 loss to 14-seeded Oakland. Yet another disheartening defeat for the Wildcats.
Two years after 15-seeded Saint Peter’s shocked the Cats in the first round of March Madness, this happened. A group of mostly teenagers that had captured the imagination of so many Kentucky fans — getting them to buy into hope again after years of flailing around in the postseason wilderness, dreams of a return to the Final Four seemingly realistic this time around — met a similar fate in the end.
“This group’s been unbelievable,” Sheppard said. “There’s no team that’s been like this, on and off the court. We’re all super close. We know it’s been a heck of a season — something that we’ll never forget. I know I won’t. Just being able to play at Kentucky and having the special group of guys around me, it’s been an unbelievable season. And, you know, it sucks that it ends like this.
“But you’ve gotta give credit to Oakland and how they played.”
The Golden Grizzlies — champions of the Horizon League and double-digit underdogs — simply outplayed the 3-seeded Wildcats in this one.
Oakland missed its first seven shots and 14 of its first 16, but the game was still tied at 5-all by the end of that opening skid, Kentucky unable to rebound the Grizzlies’ misses or get points of their own on the other end.
And when Oakland’s shots started to fall, they really started to fall. Leading the way was 24-year-old guard Jack Gohlke — the most prolific 3-point shooter in this NCAA Tournament field — who began bombing from long range early in the first half and never let up.
Gohlke finished the night with 32 points. He went 10-for-20 from 3-point range, four more 3s than any opposing player had ever hit against the Wildcats in an NCAA Tournament game. He finished one 3-pointer shy of the March Madness record. He never attempted a 2-pointer.
“You gotta give props to him,” UK sophomore Adou Thiero said. “He came into the game ready to play. You can’t really say anything about it.”
Gohlke made his shots. Oakland outrebounded Kentucky 40-39. The Cats struggled with the Golden Grizzlies’ matchup zone. What went wrong for UK on this night?
“A whole bunch of things,” Thiero said, summing it all up in five short words.
And now it’s all over.
NCAA Tournament losses are always brutal. It means the season is finished. Upsets of this magnitude are even worse. It means a major opportunity has been lost. This one clearly hit different.
“I’ve been in the ups and downs of this sport,” Coach John Calipari said. “But this one, I’m really hurting for them.”
There was plenty of hurt to go around in that postgame locker room. Kentucky’s players knew their season was over, and they knew what that ultimately meant. This collection of Cats will never play on the same team again. That was almost too much to bear.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever play on a team like this again,” Thiero said. “If I do, I’ll be happy to. But I don’t think there will ever be a team like this one.”
Thiero was at Kentucky last season, too. And the scene in that losing locker room was similar. But the dynamics of the roster were different. A mix of veteran players and newcomers.
The 12 scholarship players on this UK team? Eight freshmen, two 19-year-old sophomores and a pair of 23-year old college basketball veterans — Tre Mitchell and Antonio Reeves — who emerged as big brothers to the youngsters and found a little something different in themselves along the way. That’s what made this group special.
“I think it was because we were all around the same age,” Thiero said. “We brought the kids out of Tre and Tone. And we just had a lot of fun together. We loved each other a lot. We were always connected. It’s just disappointing.”
The old guys agreed.
“I loved every single second of it,” Mitchell said. “I love these dudes, and I loved seeing them grow through the time that we had together.”
“We had a really special bond,” Reeves said. “Everybody connected. Everybody stayed together. We went out together. We played the game together. We did everything together, and you know these bonds are going to last a lifetime.”
Reeves scored 27 points in his final game as a Kentucky basketball player. In doing so, he finished at 20.2 points per game for the season — the highest average of any player in Calipari’s star-studded 15 years in charge of the program. Mitchell had 14 points and 13 rebounds.
The year of the freshmen ended with none of them scoring more than 10 points.
Sheppard scored just three points. Rob Dillingham had 10. They combined to go 3-for-14 from the field, and neither even got a shot off until the final minutes of the first half.
“We got shots we wanted,” Sheppard said, choking back tears every time he spoke. “We just didn’t make ’em. And that happens sometimes. That’s basketball.”
Dillingham, projected as a top-10 pick in this year’s NBA draft and surely gone from Kentucky after just one season, lamented at how time flew by. The season over just as he thought the real fun was about to begin.
“It just went by so fast,” he said.
Fellow freshman D.J. Wagner echoed the feelings of his teen-aged teammates.
“It’s a very special group of guys,” he said. “Just to be able to play on a team like this? It’s not normal. They’re all great teammates. It’s like a family.”
And then there was Sheppard, sitting over in the corner. A kid who dreamed of playing basketball for the University of Kentucky since he was a little boy. He not only lived that dream but did so at a level that no one could have expected, emerging as one of the most coveted players in this year’s NBA draft, if he chooses to leave Lexington after just one season.
He also envisioned a long NCAA Tournament run. He’d always dreamed of that, too.
That it ended so cruelly, so quickly, was a reality too difficult to face.
“You guys could tell how special we were,” he said. “How close friends we were, on and off the court. You know, it sucks ending the season, no matter what. But especially with this group. We’re all really close. We’re all best friends. And knowing that you won’t play with the same group of guys next year is tough. But we have a lot of memories.
“This group — the memories we made off the court were more special than anything we’ve done on the court. And I think that’s what everyone in this locker room will miss the most is how close we all were. And just how much fun we had together.”
This story was originally published March 22, 2024 at 1:58 AM.
