Three takeaways from Kentucky basketball’s loss at Georgia
Three takeaways from Kentucky basketball’s 63-62 loss to the Georgia Bulldogs in Athens on Wednesday:
1. At this point, what can you say?
The Cats are now 4-9. They are 3-3 in the SEC. Wednesday, they lost a game they had to win, a game they led 62-56 with 2:01 left only to not score again, a game they led 62-61 with 3.6 seconds left only to allow the Bulldogs to score under its own basket on an in-bounds play with just 1.9 seconds left.
“Someone needs to talk to me, because I’m discouraged,” UK head coach John Calipari said afterward.
Georgia entered the game 1-4 in the SEC. The Bulldogs lost by 30 points at Arkansas. They lost at home by 10 to Mississippi State and by 18 to Auburn. They finally picked up their first conference victory last Saturday at Ole Miss. But their last three opponents had shot 50 percent or better from the floor.
But Kentucky was the gift that kept on giving. The Cats committed 17 turnovers. Point guard Devin Askew led the way with five. Georgia scored 25 points off those turnovers. Kentucky scored just 11 points off Georgia’s 11 turnovers. There’s the difference in the game. Turnovers. Careless turnovers.
Said Calipari, “Our guard play was awful.”
So were UK’s final three possessions. Up 62-59 with under 1:45 to play, Askew lost the ball for a turnover. No harm, no foul when Georgia’s KD Johnson launched a deep three that missed. But then, after Calipari called time with 1:01 left, the Cats worked the ball around and around until, with the shot clock ticking down, Brandon Boston missed an off-balance shot. Meanwhile, Georgia’s Andrew Garcia, the toughest player on the floor, scored inside to cut Kentucky’s lead to one at 62-61.
Georgia head coach Tom Crean decided to foul early in the shot clock, sending Askew to the line with 23.5 seconds left. Askew is an 82-percent free-throw shooter. But he missed the front end. Georgia rebounded. And eventually the Dawgs’ P.J. Horne scored the game-winner. Right under his own basket.
2. When you can’t make threes, it’s tough to make twos
Wednesday marked the 10th time in 13 games this team has failed to score more than 65 points in regulation. One reason: The Cats were just 1-for-13 from beyond the three-point stripe, including 0-for-9 in the first half. Over its last three games, Kentucky is nine of 48 from three-point land.
As Calipari says, you don’t have to make every shot, but you can’t miss every shot. And these Cats are missing nearly every three-point shots. Davion Mintz went 0-for-4 against the Dawgs. Dontaie Allen, making his first college start, was 0-for-2. Boston scored 18 points, but was 0-for-3 beyond the arc. Keion Brooks was 1-for-2.
In today’s basketball, if you can’t make threes on a consistent basis, it’s tough to score. You don’t have to be Alabama, which made a record 23 three-pointers in the Tide’s rout of LSU on Tuesday, but you do have to make enough to keep the defense honest. And Kentucky just isn’t doing that. On the season, the Cats are making just 28.4 percent of their three-point shots.
Will it get better? Thirteen games is a significant sample size. The numbers don’t lie. The answer would be to get the ball inside to the post players, or drive the ball to the basket for a bucket or a foul, or both. Trouble is, the Cats turn the ball over far too often to create such opportunities. Pick your own poison.
3. You think it’s bad now …
LSU comes to Rupp Arena on Saturday stinging from the 30-point drubbing it took at the hands of Alabama. And, oh yeah, the Cats visit Tuscaloosa to take on the Crimson Tide next Tuesday. The same Tide that whipped Kentucky 85-65 in Lexington just last week.
After that, No. 5 Texas comes to Rupp Arena, followed by a road trip to Missouri (Feb. 2) and home game against Tennessee (Feb. 6). Both those teams are ranked. And if you’re brave enough to get to this point in these takeaways, more power to you.
“I know we’re not as bad as we played,” Calipari said Wednesday.
Maybe he’s right. But this year’s hole keeps growing deeper, one that might be darn near impossible for this team to escape.
“We needed to break through,” Calipari said, “and we didn’t.”
This story was originally published January 20, 2021 at 10:45 PM.
