by Paul Jordan
President Barack Obama warned John Calipari and his Wildcats about life on top earlier today in a conference call: “There is that tendency once you get to number one to let down a little bit”. That my friends, is an understatement.
Playing their worst game of the season, the Cats let one player beat them and as a result, fell from the unbeaten ranks with a 68-62 loss to the 11-8 South Carolina Gamecocks. Yea, let that sink in for a minute. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, kids. The Cats sucked tonight. They were tentative, unsure, out of control, and horrible defensively. The stats tell the story: Kentucky was 38.6% from the floor, 25% from 3 pointers, and were outrebounded by a much smaller South Carolina team 40-38, among those 16 offensive rebounds, most of them inexcusable. Consider the fact that UK had 18 missed layups, and a good portion of those were blocked.
Hats do go off to Devan Downey, who backed up his words that he was the best guard on the court. Downey scored 30 points, and the last big ones were from circus shots that sealed the deal. You can be a hater and point out that those 30 points came off of 9-28 shooting and several circus shots, but if you watched the game, you can see that John Wall and Eric Bledsoe were schooled in a way that they have probably not seen in years.
The game was a sloppy game all around. The Gamecocks were not shooting the lights out at 34.4%, but in the end this came down to heart and desire. And simply put, Downey and the Gamecocks wanted the game more while Kentucky was confused on defense and allowed Downey to run through them with immunity.
DeMarcus Cousins was really the only bright spot for UK as he played his ass off with 27 points and 12 rebounds. The most impressive stat was that Cousins was 9-10 from the FT line. John Wall played well and finished with 19 points, but even he could not cover Downey and in the end he was unable to bring the John Wall magic. as for the rest of the Wildcats? Eric Bledsoe had just 4 points and 5 turnovers. Darius Miller had 0 points, 1 rebound, and 1 assist for his nights work. And the most inexcusable stat of all? Patrick Patterson took just four shots for the game and finished with just 5 points. Patterson has just 8 FG’s in his last three games. Calipari needs to find a way to get Patterson involved in the games immediately.
OK. I am through venting. Big picture here, we are 19-1 on the season and still on pace to get a top 4 seed for the NCAA Tournament. Was tonight disappointing? Yes. But it was just one game. We knew we would eventually lose a game, and I expect Kentucky to learn from tonight. In a way, the pressure is off. No more talk of a undefeated season. No more phone calls from the President. And for a while, the intense media scrutiny will fall back on Kansas for a while. Folks, this is not the BCS and in the big picture, tonight’s game will be a footnote to the season. The real thing is not to focus on how poorly UK played tonight, but how they respond in the future.
For complete game stats, go here.
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