Kentucky players and coaches did not seem at a loss in the loss to the Clemson Tigers. They articulated what went wrong and how to remain focused on the next game and the final goal. In his post-game reflections, Jaxson Robinson looked ahead to the ultimate goal of the season: winning the National Championship. He called the Clemson loss simply one step on the road to that goal.
When asked what the post-game locker room environment was like after the Clemson loss, Jaxson clearly expressed the mood by saying:
"Everybody's still confident. One loss doesn't define our season. The ultimate goal is to win the National Championship and this is just one step in. We just need to make sure we go back home and get better. "Jaxson Robinson
Robinson is right. There have only been seven teams in the history of college basketball to go undefeated on the season and win the national championship. It hasn't happened since 1976, when the Indiana Hoosiers did it. Five teams have finished the regular season undefeated but lost in the NCAA tournament. This may ring a bell, as Kentucky did that in 2015, losing in the final four that season.
This means that almost all the national champions have lost games in the regular season, especially in the modern era. Teams will lose throughout the course of the season, and there are some coaches that, while they don't want to lose, will admit that they can learn more about their team in a loss and better prepare them for the pressures in the future.
This is where Kentucky is; if the ultimate goal is a national championship, they need learning opportunities, and they need them in hostile environments in big-time games. Clemson provided this, and Mark Pope didn't even need a full day to learn what this exposed in his team. He said in his own post-game press conference that when things got away from them, guys broke down a little bit, and instead of trusting the system and each other, they tried to "fix things" by themselves.
He continued with this thought, "There were so many places where we could have functioned more like us. We left so much on the table tonight due to our own decisions and how hard Clemson played us in a scratch-and-claw environment. We haven't quite figured out how to play through that yet, but we've got to do it fast."
Gonzaga is next, and the road towards the ultimate goal continues with the hardest strength of schedule in all of basketball. Kentucky will be battle-tested by the time the tournament comes.