How did Kentucky lose to Georgia? There was plenty of blame to go around
A quick scan of the box score might lead one to believe that Kentucky had its way with the Georgia Bulldogs on Tuesday night.
Otega Oweh tied his career high with 28 points. Collin Chandler accomplished the same thing, scoring 18 and setting a new career mark with six made 3-pointers. The Cats outrebounded the Dawgs. They tied their SEC high with 12 made 3-pointers. They outscored Georgia — a team that loves to run — 16-11 in fast-break points.
All of that taking place in Rupp Arena should add up to a Kentucky win over a team the Wildcats were supposed to beat, right?
Wrong.
The Bulldogs defeated the Cats 86-78, handing Mark Pope’s team another disheartening loss on its home court as a season full of head-scratching results nears its end with few games remaining in which Kentucky will be considered the favorite.
How did Georgia do it? After it was all over, Pope and his players took turns listing all the reasons.
Everyone agreed that turnovers were a major part of the misfortune.
Kentucky committed 13 of those. Georgia only had seven. What was much worse was what happened as a result of those miscues, the Bulldogs outscoring the Cats 22-9 in points off turnovers.
“We did a really poor job managing the press,” Pope said.
The UK coach elaborated on that thought. His coaching staff knew exactly what the Bulldogs were going to do. His players knew exactly what was coming. They didn’t handle it well.
“Sometimes when you throw out a press, you just give it too much respect,” Pope said. “And we just needed a couple ball handlers to have enough motor to be on attack, and we just couldn’t do it. We just didn’t do it. So it was very effective for them. And that’s what they do, and they did it well tonight.”
What did the players see as the biggest difference in the game?
“It was our turnovers,” UK forward Mouhamed Dioubate said. “I think our turnovers killed us a lot tonight.”
Chandler said the Dawgs played with a physicality that let them dictate the game.
“I think if we would’ve just taken care of the ball, we would have been fine,” said Denzel Aberdeen, who lamented “sloppy turnovers” on the Kentucky side.
Everyone was in agreement that Georgia sped up the Cats, and that led to miscues.
Aberdeen added that even when UK broke Georgia’s press, it often took too long to do it. That left the Wildcats with less time on the clock to get something going in their halfcourt offense. And that led to rushed shots, bad looks and one ugly shot-clock violation in crunch time.
“We got to do a better job of just pushing the pace, and try to play with each other,” Aberdeen said.
What else went wrong?
“We were not good defensively tonight,” Pope said.
That’s probably being kind.
The Cats were downright bad on the defensive end. Their final defensive efficiency number ended up being the worst in 13 SEC games so far. And this was a team that allowed Florida to put up 92 points just three days earlier.
The final metrics approached those of the debacle against Gonzaga back in December, a 94-59 loss and perhaps the low point of this UK basketball season.
Kentucky’s defensive shortcomings were most visible in Georgia’s 3-point numbers. The Bulldogs went 14 for 31 from 3-point range. It should have been known that they would take a lot of perimeter shots — they were third in the SEC with 28.8 long-range attempts per game — but they hadn’t managed to make many so far this season.
Georgia came into the night shooting just 31.7% from deep, ranking 13th in the SEC.
Pope said his players “abandoned” their defensive assignments, particularly early in the second half, when Georgia nailed four 3-pointers in a span of less than five minutes, seemingly hitting another one each time Kentucky made a basket on the other end.
The Cats were down at halftime, again, this time by five points. But they couldn’t get the stops necessary to work themselves back even on the scoreboard.
“It’s gonna be hard to win when you let people shoot that well,” Pope said.
His players agreed with this point, too.
Dioubate said the Cats could have done a better job being there on the catch, which would have made it more difficult for the Dogs to get good looks. They weren’t, and Georgia got into a rhythm instead.
Aberdeen said UK’s guards didn’t do enough to fight through screens — putting ample blame on himself in this area — and that led to Georgia’s wide-open shots from the perimeter.
Chandler said the Bulldogs hit some tough ones from deep.
“But also I think there’s a few possessions we’d like to have back — where we’d like to do things differently and guard them a different way,” he said.
The ball just seemed to move freely when it was in the Bulldogs’ hands. Pope regurgitated plenty of advanced metrics after the loss. One of those said Georgia was the worst team in the SEC in assists-to-field goals. The Dawgs had 20 assists — with just seven turnovers — on 29 made baskets Tuesday night.
“That’s just a poor commentary on our defensive effort,” the UK coach concluded.
Georgia came into Rupp as one of the highest-scoring and fastest-tempo teams in college basketball. Again, the Cats knew exactly what the Bulldogs wanted to do. Yet they couldn’t figure out what to do about it. And as Georgia got comfortable running and gunning — getting the Cats out of sorts to start possessions and finding good looks a little deeper in the shot clock — Kentucky ended up discombobulated offensively, defensively and the spaces in between.
“Georgia is the fastest attacking team in our league. And then we fell apart,” Pope said. “We had some poor offensive possessions where we bailed on our transition defensive assignments. And it’s just as simple as that. You cannot take plays off in this league. You can’t get distracted, especially when it’s the number one thing on the board that we have to accomplish, which is consistently — every single possession — being in transition defense. And we just allowed ourselves to get distracted.”
To be clear, this wasn’t a bad team that beat Kentucky.
The Bulldogs were already on the safe side of the NCAA Tournament bubble. They’d lost five of their past six, but the previous two came with their top scorer, Jeremiah Wilkinson, sidelined due to injury. He returned Tuesday night and scored 19 points. Earlier in the day, ESPN analyst Jay Bilas released his ranking of the top 68 teams in the country and put Georgia at No. 33 on that list.
But Kentucky needed this one. The Cats fell to 17-9 overall and 8-5 in the league. They have five games remaining, but they’re likely to be favored in only one of those — next week’s matchup at South Carolina — and will need to win two more to finish better than .500 in conference play.
Despite the poor play on both ends, UK still had a chance to win at the end. It fought back from down double digits with seven minutes left and narrowed that margin to three points with 2:13 on the clock. Plenty of time for a group of Cats who have managed more than their fair share of comebacks this season.
But after Aberdeen hit a 3-pointer with 3:03 remaining, Kentucky missed its final five shots from the field. And Georgia came up with the plays necessary to clinch the upset.
To the casual observer, it might have looked like one of Oweh’s best games in a UK uniform, which is saying something. The senior guard has been as consistent as they come in his two seasons in Lexington, and before Tuesday’s game he was awarded a ball commemorating his 1,000th career point as a Wildcat, a mark he hit in last weekend’s loss at Florida.
Asked about Oweh’s continued excellence, Pope told a different story.
“I think O was probably disappointed with his game tonight,” he said. “The breakdowns that mattered in the game were tough. And he’s carrying a lot of burden on our team. But I know he wants to put a better performance out there on the floor.”
Oweh had three turnovers in the final 11 minutes of the game, crucial miscues as Kentucky was trying to fight back. Another UK turnover came when Oweh tried to beat the buzzer with a 3-point attempt that clanged off the side of the backboard and resulted in a shot-clock violation with 4:18 left. He was also called for a flagrant-1 foul with 4:03 remaining, hitting Georgia guard Blue Cain with an elbow that led to two more points for the Bulldogs.
When it was time for Kentucky’s players to speak, the team’s star wasn’t there. A UK spokesperson said he wasn’t available for interviews. Aberdeen spoke to his mood in the back.
It sounded like he wasn’t too happy. There was a lot of that to go around.
“He’s just a competitor,” Aberdeen said of his fellow senior. “Regardless of how many points he puts up, he just wants to win. So I think that’s his mentality, and that’s our mentality. He just wants to go out there and do what he does for his team. I mean, he’s just an all-around competitor. I don’t think he should dwell on it too much. We’ve gotta do our part, as well.”
