Three takeaways from Kentucky basketball’s loss to Texas A&M in the SEC Tournament
READ MORE
Game day: Texas A&M 97, No. 9 Kentucky 87
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Friday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Texas A&M at the SEC Tournament in Nashville, Tenn.
Expand All
Three takeaways from Kentucky basketball’s 97-87 loss to the Texas A&M Aggies in the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament on Friday night.
1. Why Kentucky lost is no big mystery
It doesn’t really matter how exciting you are offensively, how lightning fast you can get the ball up the floor, how crisply you can pass the ball, or how deftly you can find the bottom of the net from unlikely distances, sooner or later you have to get some stops.
When Kentucky played Texas A&M in College Station back on Jan. 13, the Cats couldn’t get stops. It helplessly watched as time after time, A&M’s dynamic guard duo of Wade Taylor and Tyrece Radford drove the ball directly to the rim for baskets. Taylor scored 31 points. Radford scored 28. And A&M won 97-92 in overtime.
Two months later at Bridgestone Arena, playing the same opponent, the Cats failed to get stops once again. In fact, the only difference this time was it only took A&M 40 minutes to score 97 points, not 45. Taylor finished with 32 points. Radford scored 23. As a result, it is Buzz Williams’ team, not John Calipari’s, that will be playing in Saturday’s semifinals.
A&M shot 50% in the second half (16-for-32) and 46.4% for the game (32-69). The Aggies were 11-for-26 from 3-point land. And when they did miss, the nation’s No. 1 offensive rebounding team converted those misses into 26 second-chance points to Kentucky’s nine.
Unless you were hibernating during the winter months, you know that defense has been a chronic problem for Calipari’s club since it began bouncing balls in October. Kentucky entered this conference tournament ranked sixth by KenPom in adjusted offensive efficiency but 96th in adjusted defensive efficiency. Considering that Texas A&M averaged 1.272 points per possession, that defensive ranking is likely to take another drop.
2. Kentucky needs Antonio Reeves on the floor
Make no mistake, Kentucky’s defensive mistakes are the reason the Cats are headed back to Lexington after just one SEC Tournament game for the third time in last four years. Still, UK’s offense wasn’t in synch either.
Rob Dillingham led the Cats with 27 points. The freshman was 9-for-19 from the floor, including 5-for-10 from 3-point range. At one point as UK was trying to rally, Dillingham scored 10 straight points.
Reed Sheppard scored 14 points, but all of them came in the first half. The SEC Freshman of the Year took just eight shots, making five. He was 3-for-6 from 3-point range. A decent night, but not the 27 points in last Saturday’s 95-81 win at Tennessee.
Antonio Reeves also scored 27 in that win over the Vols. But the Cats’ leading scorer on the season, and an All-American selection, played just 18 minutes because of foul trouble. Reeves finished with 13 points before fouling out. That’s seven points below his average.
To a man, the Cats said afterward they believed they played selfishly. There wasn’t enough ball movement. Too much one-and-one on play. Kentucky also committed 14 turnovers, several of which led to easy Texas A&M baskets.
“Sometimes,” Calipari said of the bad offense, “that bleeds over to your defense.”
3. How quickly can this young team shake off the loss?
As he does most every year, Calipari downplayed the SEC Tournament even before it started. After the win in Knoxville, the coach said it was the NCAA Tournament that truly matters. In Friday night’s postgame press conference, Calipari said his team wanted to win for NCAA Tournament seeding and for the Big Blue fans that made the trip to Nashville.
Still, you wonder this loss will do to the confidence of a young team. Kentucky had won five straight games to close out the regular season. It had beaten Auburn at Auburn. It had beaten Tennessee at Tennessee. It had beaten then SEC leader Alabama at Rupp Arena.
To have a season-long weakness jump up and bite you in the first game of the post-season has to be concerning.
“We have to go back to the drawing board,” Reeves said, “and find out how we can get better defensively.”
“We have to lock in,” Dillingham said. “We have to turn up the intensity, but when we do we foul.”
“I’m excited about going into this tournament. I am. When you can score the ball, you got a chance,” Calipari said. “Now, c’mon, let’s just guard a little bit. And we did it at Tennessee. Tennessee is one of the best teams in the country. We did it at Auburn. Alabama in the end. So we can do it.”
They didn’t do it Friday.
This story was originally published March 15, 2024 at 10:59 PM.
