Five things you need to know from Kentucky’s 75-63 loss to No. 22 North Carolina
Five things you need to know from Kentucky’s 75-63 loss to the No. 22 North Carolina Tar Heels in the CBS Sports Classic at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland:
1. John Calipari is going to earn his ample salary in 2020-21. After UK’s one-point loss to Notre Dame last week, the Kentucky coach proclaimed that the Wildcats, moving forward, were going to “play through” senior big man Olivier Sarr and freshman guard Terrence Clarke.
In Cleveland on Saturday, Sarr fouled out with four rebounds, three turnovers and two points. The Wake Forest transfer never attempted a field goal.
Meanwhile, Clarke shot 3-of-11 and had three turnovers without an assist.
Good teams develop facets of their game — and players — they can rely upon from game-to-game.
Through six games, Calipari and Kentucky have no idea what they are going to get from any player from contest to contest. Simply put, until that changes UK is going to struggle.
2. You can’t blame the start-of-the-season point guards. Creighton graduate transfer Davion Mintz led Kentucky in scoring (17) and rebounding (eight) and had as many assists as turnovers (two each).
Freshman Devin Askew had 12 points, four rebounds and a team-high three assists vs. only two turnovers.
As much criticism as UK’s point-guard play has taken in 2020-21, UK may still be better off going with a traditional lead guard as opposed to trying to make Clarke bear the primary playmaking responsibility.
3. North Carolina now leads the all-time series with Kentucky 25-16. Roy Williams is 9-7 vs. the Cats as UNC head man and 10-10 overall (he was 1-3 against UK as Kansas coach).
John Calipari is now 6-4 vs. UNC as Kentucky coach.
4. Tar Heels dominating CBS Sports Classic. North Carolina’s victory and No. 20 Ohio State’s 77-70 win over UCLA in the second game leave the the CBS Sports Classic all-time records as follows:, North Carolina 5-2, Ohio State 4-3, Kentucky 3-4 and UCLA 2-5.
5. Kentucky making the wrong kind of history. UK has started a season 1-5 for the first time since Coach Basil Hayden’s 1926-27 Cats started 1-8 en route to a 3-13 year.
Believe it or not, I interviewed Hayden — UK’s first All-American as a player in 1920-21 — two days before his 103rd birthday in 2002.
I asked him what went wrong in 1926-27?
“I couldn’t get the work out of the boys like I needed to,” Hayden said. “They thought they knew more about the game than me.”
One suspects Calipari can relate to that frustration.
This story was originally published December 19, 2020 at 4:35 PM.
