Kentucky just wasn’t tough enough to stop Kansas.
The Wildcats proved they could compete with the Jayhawks and even held a 12-point lead in the first half in the much-anticipated showdown between the two traditional college basketball giants. Despite the double-digit lead and home court advantage, Kentucky couldn’t hold on as Kansas used an 11-0 run late in the second half to hand the Wildcats a 79-73 setback in the annual SEC-Big 12 Challenge.
Kentucky (17-3) committed 17 turnovers, including five by point-guard De’Aaron Fox, that led to 21 points for the Jayhawks. Kentucky coach John Calipari said the Wildcats made things harder than they really were at times, resulting in poor decision-making on offense, only magnifying the team’s overall inexperience.
BOXSCORE LINK: Kansas 79, Kentucky 73
“When we make easy plays, we don’t turn it over,” Calipari said. “When we’re trying to make a harder play, like if a guy’s open in the corner, just throw it to him. Why would you ball fake him and then run a guy over. Why would you, versus an extra pass to the wing, you’re going to try to force one inside, which gets tipped away. You’re driving and they’re in, there is no drive, it’s a swing and then a drive. I mean it’s all freshman kind of stuff.”
Kentucky guard Isaiah Briscoe agreed and said Kansas’ experience was the difference between the two Top 5 foes.
“We’re just not there yet,” Briscoe said. “We have a team full of freshman and sophomores. Today Kansas’ experience showed. They were down and kept fighting. I give them credit but a lot of that is on us.”
As bad as the unforced errors were, Calipari said the miscues were minor compared to other issues that plagued his team, especially down the stretch.
“As a coach, you look at this and say, OK, where do we go and what do we zero in on?” He said. “And I think it’s toughness and defense. We got to be a better defensive team than we are.”
Kentucky kept the experienced Jayhawks in check in the first half and didn’t allow a 3-pointer and limited Kansas to 40 percent shooting from the floor. That all changed as the Jayhawks opened the second half with back-to-back treys and missed just 14 shots on 34 attempts.
“We struggled with what we were doing,” Calipari said. “They shot 60 percent. You cannot win with a team shooting 60 percent. You can’t score enough.”
Now even the hot hand of senior Derek Willis could help the Wildcats keep pace of the Jayhawks in the second half.
“I just think we didn’t play winning basketball down the stretch,” said Willis, who made five 3-pointers and finished with a season-high 18 points. “Up to a point, I think we had them down 10 points maybe? It was looking real good, and you could feel the energy. It just felt like we wanted to break away. Then we just let them back in the game, and they started getting their confidence back thinking they could play with us. That’s just how it goes and they ended up coming up with the right plays. That’s why they won the game.”
Now with the non-conference schedule behind them, the Wildcats will focus on defense and overall toughness. As with each season, Calipari said the team’s emphasis will narrow and Kentucky will spend more time on toughness and defense to help prepare for the the final two months of the season.
“Every day you start zeroing in on the areas that we need work,” Calipari said. “The crazy thing, you may not believe this, but we’re in this mode every year. There’s something that the team needs to work on that we’ll zero in on.”
As Calipari knows, the team’s weakness isn’t scoring but in order to become more effective in transition, the Wildcats have to rely on defense to reach their full potential on the offensive end of the court.
“If you really want to do this, you got to be a defensive team first,” Calipari said. “Now, if you defend and rebound, what does that give us an opportunity to do? Fly. If you can’t stop a team from scoring, how are you going to play fast? You can’t play fast. So if you want to run, you got to defend first.”
And that’s what the Wildcats failed to do against the Jayhawks.
Gametracker: Georgia at Kentucky, 9 p.m., Tuesday. TV/Radio: ESPN, 98.1 FM.
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