By Keith Taylor
Special to NKyTribune
It didn’t take John Calipari long to get over his team’s first loss of the year and knows the season is far from over.
“It is a process,” the Kentucky coach said Tuesday. “For 24 hours I mourn and then I’m good, let’s go.”
The sixth-ranked Wildcats (7-1) will attempt to bounce back from a 97-92 setback to No. 2 UCLA Wednesday night against Horizon League favorite Valparaiso, which hasn’t played since a 65-62 win over Rhode Island on Nov. 29.
The Crusaders, who went 30-7 last year, are off to a 7-1 start and defeated Alabama earlier this season. The team’s lone setback of the year was a 76-54 loss at No. 24 Oregon.
“Why did we schedule this team? I have no idea,” Calipari said. “This is going to be an extremely hard game for us to win.”
Like his coach, Kentucky freshman Wenyen Gabriel said the Wildcats have moved on from the five-point setback to the Bruins, which ended Kentucky’s 42-game home winning streak.
“It (the loss) was a little bit of a surprise at first, but I think it’s been good for us,” Gabriel said. “Coach Cal said we needed to be in a close game. I think we would be better off if we had won the close game, but we’re learning from that and moving on. Valpo is a good team and we’re working toward that.”
Gabriel added that mood in practice has been “positive” from top to bottom.
“For a lot of the players we’re ready to move on,” he said. “We have a game coming up on Wednesday. We got UNC coming up soon. We got some big games. It’s a long season ahead of us. We’re still freshmen. We have a lot to look forward to.”
A big task for the Wildcats will be containing Valparaiso forward Alec Peters, one of the top seniors in the nation. Peters is averaging 24.4 points and 9.1 rebounds per game. Peters has scored at least 20 points in each of the team’s eight games. Calipari said the 6-foot-9 Peters “knows how to score baskets.”
“He steps back, he fades away and scores,” the Kentucky coach said. “So even if you guard him and do a good job, he can still score. Other than that, it’s just another guy. Twenty-five a game, man. There’s more pro scouts (22) coming to this game than even the last game.”
Another point of emphasis for the Wildcats will be team defense. The Bruins shot a blistering 53 percent from the field, made 10 3-pointers against Kentucky and scored 40 points in the paint. Calipari said the loss “was a defensive issue that we had more than anything else.”
“I told (the players) it’s not their fault,” Calipari said. “I got away from a lot of stuff because I got like, these guys are better than I thought. No, they’re not. Anytime I’ve ever thought that about a team, they know we took an L and we need to get back to where we were. Sometimes you take two L’s to get them back to where they need to be.”
In order to regain his team’s focus, Calipari went back to the basics in practice with a renewed emphasis on defense.
“(The defensive intensity has) definitely picked up in practice,” Gabriel said. “I know last game I had a few lapses that cost me some minutes and I couldn’t contribute as much in that game, which I’m working on for the next game, starting with Valpo.”
Although the Crusaders are a tougher opponent than Calipari preferred, Kentucky sophomore forward Isaac Humphries is confident the Wildcats will rebound in positive fashion.
“We’re going to bounce back,” he said. “We’ll be fine. We’re fine. We went through it. We know exactly what we did wrong. We know exactly how to fix it. We’ve been working really hard (Monday) and (Tuesday) we worked hard again. So I think we’ll be fine.”
Gametracker: Valparaiso at Kentucky, 8 p.m., Wednesday. TV/Radio: SEC Network, 98.1 WBUL.
Keith Taylor is a senior sports writer for KyForward, where he primarily covers University of Kentucky sports. Reach him at keith.taylor@kyforward.com or @keithtaylor21 on Twitter