In a UK basketball season that went badly awry, there were two turning points
On the night of Jan. 29, the 2021-22 Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball season reached its crescendo.
In a breathtaking display of up-tempo basketball, John Calipari’s Cats ran mighty Kansas out of Allen Fieldhouse for an 80-62 UK victory in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge.
In Lawrence, Kentucky looked every bit capable of being this season’s last team to cut down nets.
That night, it would have been unthinkable that UK’s destiny was instead to be the victim of a shocking upset loss to a No. 15 seed in the Wildcats’ 2022 NCAA Tournament opener.
In retrospect, the path between Kentucky’s scintillating performance at Kansas and its stunning, 85-79 overtime loss to the Saint Peter’s Peacocks in Thursday night’s East Region round of 64 had two clear turning points.
The first, unexpectedly, came in UK’s initial game following its tour de force at Kansas.
Having seen what Kentucky was capable of in a free-wheeling game played with ample open-court, Vanderbilt Coach Jerry Stackhouse came to Rupp Arena on Feb. 2 with a very different kind of contest in mind.
To flip an old C.M. Newton quote, the Commodores arrived in Lexington with a plan “to play football on the hardwood.”
Resulting was a contest with 44 fouls, three flagrant ones, two technicals — and 58 foul shots. Kentucky won, 77-70, but the Wildcats did not show much relish for Vandy’s roughhouse tactics.
“It was a really physical game. You were getting leveled,” UK’s Calipari observed afterward.
Presciently, Calipari said he told his players after the Vandy scrum, “Guys, if I watch that tape and I’m an opposing coach, I say, ‘Let’s just try to beat the crap out of a couple of those guys, they’ll go away.’’”
From that moment forth, the book on how to play Kentucky became to rough up the Wildcats — and UK never again approached the heights of its performance at Kansas.
The second pivotal point of the Kentucky season came after starting guards TyTy Washington (lower leg) and Sahvir Wheeler (hand) suffered injuries in February games against Florida and at Tennessee, respectively.
Reasoning, logically, that UK’s postseason hopes depended on having its two primary offensive creators healthy for March Madness, Calipari held the duo out of home games against Alabama and LSU.
Kentucky won both contests, but wings Kellan Grady and Davion Mintz were forced to play 79 and 77 high-stress minutes, respectively, as Kentucky’s primary ball handlers.
Once Wheeler and Washington returned, Kentucky’s guard play, for whatever the reasons, was never the same.
In Kentucky’s final six games of the season, Washington shot 35.2 percent (25-of-71). During UK’s three tournament contests (two SEC, one NCAA), Wheeler hit 34.4 percent (11-of-32).
Meanwhile, after the two games where they logged such heavy playing time as lead guards, Grady hit 32.6 percent (14-of-43) of his shots in Kentucky’s final six contests, while Mintz made 35.6 percent (12-of-34).
“We got injured and we never were entirely back,” Calipari lamented Thursday night after the Saint Peter’s loss. “So I may have been trying to coach a team I had a month ago. We had some guys who weren’t playing like they were a month ago.”
With UK’s guard play struggling so down the stretch, not even the unstinting efforts of the remarkable Oscar Tshiebwe could save the Kentucky season.
In the big picture, the debacle against Saint Peter’s coming after Kentucky’s 9-16 slog last season has many UK backers talking coaching change.
Pairings between coaches and programs can grow stale. Some of the complaints Wildcats backers have about the current state of the Kentucky program have merit.
But, as a countervailing point, let’s examine some college-hoops-coaching history:
Kansas did not fire Bill Self after the Jayhawks lost NCAA Tournament games to No. 14 seed Bucknell in 2005 and No. 13 seed Bradley in 2006.
KU won the NCAA championship in 2008.
Kansas did not fire Self when the Jayhawks lost NCAA tourney games to No. 9 seed Northern Iowa in 2010 and No. 11 seed VCU in 2011.
KU played in the NCAA finals in 2012.
Louisville did not fire Rick Pitino after the Cardinals lost to No. 13 seed Morehead State in the 2011 NCAA Tournament.
U of L played in the Final Four in 2012 and won the national title in 2013 (both results were subsequently vacated by the NCAA due to rules violations in the Cardinals’ program).
Duke did not fire Mike Krzyzewski after the Blue Devils lost in the NCAA Tournament to No. 15 seed Lehigh in 2012 nor after they fell to No. 14 seed Mercer in 2014.
Coach K led Duke to the NCAA title in 2015.
Emphatically, Virginia did not fire Tony Bennett after the Cavaliers became the first No. 1 seed ever to lose to a No. 16 seed vs. the University of Maryland-Baltimore County in the 2018 NCAA tourney.
Bennett led Virginia to the 2019 national championship.
As embarrassing as Kentucky’s loss to Saint Peter’s was, history shows it is possible for a coach at a blue-blood program to recover from such a defeat — and do so quickly.
So, one wonders: Does the Calipari-UK union have a big bounce-back left in it?
This story was originally published March 19, 2022 at 12:15 PM.
