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Road Worriers!?! Kentucky Wildcats blow chance to capitalize on comeback bid, fall to Alabama Crimson Tide 68-66

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To win a SEC Title, you have to win on the road.  In what is becoming a worrisome trend this season, John Calipari’s Kentucky Wildcats are off to a 0-2 road start in the SEC after falling to the Alabama Crimson Tide 68-66.  We knew that Alabama would be a tough game because of their stingy defense, but in all reality, this is a game that Kentucky should have won.  But this is why the games are played.

Kentucky got off to a great start, thanks to two early three pointers by Doron Lamb and they took a quick 10-4 lead just four minutes into the game. But it would not last.  The Tide then started to assert themselves inside and were getting easy buckets in the paint.  One of the problems was that Kentucky guards did not respect the Alabama guards and left them too wide open, which allowed them no pressure to pass the ball inside.  Alabama picked the UK defense apart and scored 20 points in the paint in the first half.  Taking advantage of the absence of interior defense, JaMychal Green had 9 points at the half and and had five offensive rebounds.  The Tide had their way in the paint with Kentucky in the first half, grabbing 10 offensive boards.

To say that no one showed up for Kentucky in the first half except for Doron Lamb would be an understatement.  Kentucky shot just 33.5% from the floor and turned the ball over seven times.  In addition, Kentucky let the only 3-point threat Alabama had, Charvez Davis, hurt him as he nailed two treys.  It came as no shock that Alabama had a 37-30 lead at the half as Kentucky played arguably its worst 20 minutes of the Calipari era.

It’s hard to imagine but thigs got even worse in the second half as Alabama scored the first 10 points of the second half, thanks to another Davis trey and three easy baskets inside and the Tide were making it look easy, up 47-30. A few minutes, Alabama did the unthinkable and pushed the lead to 20 at 52-32.  Kentucky started to rally as Brandon Knight scored his first basket of the game (!) and Darius Miller drilled a couple of 3-pointers to cut the score to 56-43, but then the Cats would do something inexcusable like let Andrew Steele hit his second trey of the season with no blue jersey within 8 feet of him.

Eventually Kentucky settled down, realized the officials were allowing a very physical game and fought back.  Kentucky started to pressure every pass the Tide made and double team the ball while the offense started to heat up.  Brandon Knight hit two 3-pointers in about a ninety second span and UK was down 59-53 with about 7:00 remaining.  Terrence Jones started to assert himself at both ends of the court and held his own with Green.  A pair of Jones FT’s cut the lead to 62-61 with just  3:28 remaining.  The next few minutes was an intense matchup at both ends of the court and Brandon Knight sank a 3-pointer that pulled Kentucky to within 67-66 with 1:38 left.

But it was not meant to be as it seemed that Knight was trying to force to much the rest of the way as he had a foul and two costly turnovers the rest of the way.  Kentucky had a last gasp chance to win the game with 2.5 seconds left, but clearly could not get the play they wanted and a Terrence Jones heave was not close as time ran out.

Simply put, this was a bad loss for Kentucky.  For much of the game they were pushed around and dominated b the Alabama front court.  The Cats played porous defense for about 30 minutes and allowed a woeful 3-point shooting team to go 7-14, with many of them uncontested.  Kentucky was dominated on the boards 37-29, including 16 offensive boards by the Tide.  Hats off to Anthony Grant and his team.  I have said for a while they are the best team in the West, but by no means are they a team that should be able to get a 20 point lead on Kentucky.

It was a dreadful shooting performance by UK, hitting just 37% from the field but they left several points behind on missed dunks and layups.  Ditto for the the 13-22 FT performance.  You can’t keep leaving points at the FT line in the SEC and hopefully Kentucky will finally learn their lesson.

That said, Kentucky did show a lot of heart in their comeback, but it’s tough to come back from 20 on the road.  It’s good to see that this team will go down swinging every time and they have that never give up mentality.  With two 2 point losses on the road already this season, you just hope this is a game the Cats can learn from and try to build on when they go to South Carolina on Sunday.

Terrence Jones had another big game off the bench with 17 points and 9 boards.  Doron Lamb had 16, Brandon Knight 14, and Darius Miller 12 to pace the Cats in double digits.  This was definitely a tough game for the Cats to lose, and they really can not stumble on the road many more times this season if they want to get a 1 or 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament.  For complete game stats, go here. 

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