Three takeaways from Kentucky basketball’s 62-59 loss to Louisville
In addition to my column, three takeaways from Kentucky basketball’s 62-59 loss to the Louisville Cardinals at the Yum Center on Saturday:
1. This is on John Calipari
He’s the head coach. He’s the one with the liftetime contract, making $9 million a year. He’s the one who gets the credit when the team wins, the blame when it loses. Those are the rules. And for the first time in the Calipari era, the Cats are mired in a long losing streak. Six games. After seven games, UK is 1-6. One win. Six straight losses.
Now, can Calipari get it turned around? He has turned UK’s ship before, but under different circumstances. It wasn’t a pandemic season. It wasn’t a season in which his chronically young team was subjected to an unusual preseason, no exhibition games, only one guarantee game, and COVID-19 restrictions along the way. The choppy waters were deeper into the voyage. And Cal was able to calm the ship. Can he do it again?
There are 19 games remaining in the regular season. COVID-19 willing. There are 18 SEC games to go, though the first one, scheduled for Tuesday night against visiting South Carolina, has been postponed. The SEC is the SEC. Some conference teams have looked better than expected in non-league play, some worse. Then there’s the SEC/Big 12 Challenge game against Texas. And Texas, as Calipari pointed out Saturday, “is a top-10 team.”
But back to the head coach. He’s responsible for recruiting the players. He’s responsible for coaching them. Despite his putting three players in leadership positions this week, it’s his team. And his team right now is 1-6. With 19 games to go.
2. UK continues to be a bad offensive team
Why are the Cats 1-6? It’s no mystery. This team is a bad team on the offensive end. Too often cluttered and confused, it has a difficult time producing good looks at the basket. When it does get a good look, it has a difficult time knocking down the shot.
The Cats entered Saturday shooting 42.6 percent from the floor. It ended up making just 20 of 58 shots Saturday, including nine of 28 in the second half. That’s 32.1 percent for the final 20 minutes for the game, 34.5 for the entire 40. UK was five of 17 from three-point range for 29.4 percent, a slight improvement over its 24.3 for the season.
Brandon Boston was 3-for-11 from the filed. Devin Askew was 3-for-9. Lance Ware was 1-for-5. Oliver Sarr was 0-for-4, including his jumper from the right baseline with eight seconds left and the Cats down 60-59. Terrence Clarke, playing on a bad ankle, missed all four of his shots.
That’s not going to win many games. I remember former Louisville coach Denny Crum recounting how the great John Wooden conducted a study to determine what was the single most important factor in a team winning a game. Answer: Shooting percentage. And after shooting 55.9 percent in the opener against Morehead State, the Cats have not shot better than 44.9 percent since. In four of the six losses, including Saturday, they have failed to shoot even 40 percent.
Result: They have failed to score 70 points for six straight games. All six have been losses.
3. Play the players that produce
Calipari said after the game that he doesn’t play favorites. He said he plays the players who give the team the best chance to win. But he admitted that does give more room to the ones he believes are the better players. More room to start making better plays. More room to start making shots. More room to produce.
Time for that, however, is growing short. Especially when the players who are producing right now are not the ones that we — myself included — expected to be their better players. The ones who received high ratings from the recruiting gurus. The transfers that got high marks from their previous schools.
Yes, Terrence Clarke was maybe 80 percent (Calipari’s calculation) Saturday because of bad ankle, but the freshman guard was struggling before the injury. Boston has yet to break through. Sarr is a total mystery. After scoring 22 points against Notre Dame, the 7-footer from Wake Forest, has not made a field goal in last two games. He has gone 0-for-4 in 40 minutes. Foul trouble hindered his output against North Carolina. He didn’t have that excuse Saturday.
Instead, Davion Mintz, Jacob Toppin and Lance Ware the ones producing. A grad transfer from Creighton, Mintz led UK with 19 points Saturday. He was responsible for four of those five made three-pointers. A transfer from Dayton who expected to be redshirted, Toppin scored 10 points and grabbed six rebounds. A sophomore, he plays with experience. Ware had four points and four rebounds in 13 minutes. He plays with the aggressiveness some of his teammates lack.
I’m not at practice. I don’t know what goes on there. I do know what’s going on in the games, and the ones who are producing in games right now aren’t always the ones getting the most minutes. We’ll see if that changes, if the room Calipari has been giving some players becomes a bit tighter.
This story was originally published December 26, 2020 at 6:22 PM.
