With UK now on pause due to COVID protocols, any chance for NCAA tourney at-large bid is gone. (SEC Photo)
If there was even a slight path for Kentucky somehow earning a NCAA Tournament at-large bid despite its 5-10 record it had to include a win over No. 5 Texas Saturday. The Longhorns were coming off a loss, have a lack of depth and the coach is out with COVID-19. If there was a time for UK to get a resume-boosting win, this seemed like it.
Instead, COVID-19 protocol issues within the UK basketball program cancelled the game and put the Cats on at least a 48-hour pause before they are scheduled to play again Tuesday night at Missouri. The release said due to a “combination of positive testing, contact tracing and subsequent quarantining of individuals” that the game could not be played.
Earlier this week ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi said he was not “willing to write Kentucky’s obituary unless the Wildcats lose on Saturday to Texas” on an ESPN roundtable.
Lunardi said if UK won, at least a “narrow” path remained for the Cats to make the NCAA.
“It’s a high-level, non-conference win (over Texas) the Cats simply must have,” Lunardi said.
Then he dropped in this zinger and bit of reality that no one can dispute.
“In the meantime, Big Blue Nation has to endure — perhaps for the first time under Calipari — an overrated recruiting class and an underperforming set of veterans,” Lunardi said.
ESPN’s John Gasaway noted Kentucky barely has a NCAA pulse but wrote it might depend on injured Terrence Clarke to “key an 11th-hour resurgence” — and that is something I don’t see happening.
It has been a weird year. The season started with Keion Brooks out forever with a preseason calf injury and coach John Calipari unwilling to play Dontaie Allen. Then Calipari sent freshman Cam’Ron Fletcher home before taking him back — but not playing him. Clarke hurt his ankle in mid-December, played 14 ineffective minutes against Louisville and has not played in a SEC game.
Bottom line, Kentucky can’t score. The Cats have not gone over 65 points in any loss and managed only 59 points at Alabama. Kentucky is one of only three SEC teams — Texas A&M and Vanderbilt are the other two — to have given up more points than it has scored this year.
“They don’t shoot the ball very well and they turn it over like crazy,” ESPN analyst Jay Bilas told USA Today. “They don’t play through things. It’s not schematic. It’s more in the close games and key possessions, they turn it over, they don’t get a stop, they don’t grab a rebound, they pass up an open shot. … Mistakes on top of mistakes in games that are the difference between winning and losing.”
And this year Kentucky has made mistake after mistake to turn possible wins into close and frustrating losses.
