LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Basketball seasons are funny. Kentucky left Knoxville, Tennessee, just a week ago, and I, like most, was tempted to think the Wildcats might be able to weather their injury stretch and emerge in decent shape.
Why not? They'd just beaten a desperate top-10 team on the road without Lamont Butler and Andrew Carr, so surely they could beat the lower-division SEC teams left on the schedule and hold their own with the rest, until the injuries healed.
Has anyone seen a medic?
Kentucky played at an emotional deficit to John Calipari, DJ Wagner, Adou Thiero and Zvonimir Ivisic in a home loss to Arkansas. Then it was decked at Ole Miss, 98-84 in Oxford on Tuesday night, a game in which the average game deficit was 14.3 points, according to analytics at Barttorvik.com. Kentucky's previous low average deficit in a loss was 6.3 points in a loss to Ohio State.
The Wildcats trailed in this game by 27 points. That just doesn't happen to Kentucky basketball teams, at least not without trying to make a point against Kansas or without a Mardi Gras Miracle answer. They've now lost four of their past five, and find themselves at 4-5 in the conference.
What happened? The simple answer — with the level of coaching, talent and athleticism in the SEC, opponents will catch up to your offensive attack and take it away. That's what Ole Miss did in building a 54-31 halftime lead. Kentucky would come back and pull within 11, but both coaches acknowledged, the game had long been virtually over.
"I've always thought different," Ole Miss coach Chris Beard said. "At halftime. I thought, 'Let's go win the game 108-62.' But I guess human nature doesn't work that way. ... You know, I'm working on this deal where you smell the roses along the way and try to stay positive. But our first-half defense was really, really good. Second half — just a lot we can get better at."
Kentucky's Kobe Brea fights for possession in the lane during a loss at Vanderbilt.
Said Pope: "Come on. This is Kentucky. We don't do moral victories at all. ... You know, it's hard to take too much (from the comeback) because (Ole Miss) is nursing a lead, and so you play different. But, you know, at least we got some reps doing different things, and we'll get better at those."
Defensively, Ole Miss is athletic at every spot, and was switching everything at Kentucky out on top. Kentucky took some time to adjust. You wound up seeing some contested shots in the lane that didn't fall. You saw an offense that looked a bit tentative.
(It all looked familiar to me, because I watched the same thing happen to Louisville on Saturday. Similar offensive philosophy. More athletic opponent (though not on a par with Ole Miss). And it knocked Louisville out of its rhythm just long enough to manage an upset.)
Defensive Dropoff
The much bigger problem, and Pope acknowledged this, is on defense. In conference play, Kentucky's defensive rating is 119.9. Basically, that means that Kentucky is giving up nearly 120 points per 100 possessions played – or just a tick under 1.20 points per possession. You can't win doing that.
"We're hemorrhaging a little bit in like 10 different categories, a lot on the defensive end," Pope told Tom Leach on his postgame radio show on the Kentucky Network. "And part of that stems from the offense and defense are really connected together. But we probably didn't really actually perform anything well -- like any of our fundamental defensive concepts. Sometimes it's hard to know why that is, but this is something that we're going to fix. It's really painful right now, for sure."
An added problem for Kentucky is when opponents have bigs who can shoot the three – which Arkansas and Ole Miss both had. Then again, Tennessee has one too, but Kentucky was able to weather that.
Pope seems genuinely perplexed at how to fix this problem – and there may be no good fix without the team's defensive tone-setter, point guard Lamont Butler, or a healthy Andrew Carr, who is an experienced hand down low.
Without Butler, Kentucky's steals leader, the Wildcats are causing no disruption to opposing offenses. Ole Miss was never pushed out of its comfort zone and made 13 three-pointers. It had only one turnover. It's one thing if opponents are able to take more three-pointers than Kentucky, which they have done on the whole this season. It's another if they are able to make more.
Pope has shouldered the responsibility. Repeatedly.
Mark Pope shouts instructions during a loss at Vanderbilt.
"We're really struggling guarding the three-point line and, and you know, all that boils down to me, in the sense of, like, I've got to figure out schematically how our players are capable of doing this," Pope said.
It was a common theme after Tuesday's game. More from his post-game news conference: "The biggest frustration we're feeling right now is on the defensive end, and I'm doing a poor job of finding answers for that."
Later, he reiterated, "My guys are playing hard. I'm doing a poor job with our team defensively right now and, and that's a credit to Ole Miss, and it's a real issue for me and I've got to figure out how to help our team have more of a presence."
And again, "The solutions are complicated sometimes, and I'm doing a poor job of finding the right ones."
Second-Quarter Struggles
Another major problem area for Kentucky remains the second 10 minutes of games. On Tuesday night, Ole Miss outscored Kentucky 30-14 in the second quarter of the game, to take a 23-point lead to halftime.
Kentucky, in its current position, can't afford to dig that big a hole. In addition to trying to shore up defense, Pope will have to find a way to mitigate the damage opponents are doing in Act 2 of the first half.
South Carolina at noon on Saturday is, it goes without saying, a must-win. Then the terrain gets steep again. Three of the following five are on the road, at Texas, Alabama and Oklahoma. The home games are no picnics, Tennessee and Vanderbilt, before a friendly visit from No. 1 Auburn.
Every win will be cause for hope. Every loss, especially at a program like Kentucky, compounds misery. Seldom have the Wildcats fast a situation like this in the Southeastern Conference, where every game is life-or-death. And seldom have they found themselves in such a spot, where they are not the apex predator.
"We're clearly chasing our tails a little bit right now," Pope said. "But we'll find answers. We have the right group, but it's certainly a tough stretch for us right now."
Eric Crawford has four key takeaways from Kentucky's 98-84 loss at Ole Miss.
Kentucky Basketball Coverage:
- No defense | Ole Miss storms to 27-point lead, obliterates Kentucky 98-84
- All heart | Undermanned Kentucky outshoots No. 8 Tennessee, pulls 78-73 upset
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