Vicky Graff Photo
Reed Sheppard certainly understood what Kentucky’s win over Mississippi Tuesday could mean to Kentucky’s season.
“The win was big. It was big that we were all having fun out there, all getting physical, and all playing as a team,” said Sheppard. “We never lost confidence in each other or in the team when we lost. We knew we had to keep getting better and keep fighting.”
“We had a great couple days of practices and everyone’s mindset was also great coming into this game.”
Kentucky had lost three straight home games — something that had not happened in Rupp Arena since it opened almost 50 years ago — before beating Ole Miss.
“This team does a really good job of picking each other up in time when people are down, missing a shot, or just not playing well,” Sheppard said. “Someone is always tapping them on the back, building up their confidence in some way, and not letting them get down on themselves. Next play mentality.”
Guard Antonio Reeves, UK’s leading scorer, liked that Kentucky played much better defensively against Ole Miss.
“We were ridiculous in the first half. We definitely locked in, made sure we stayed to the game plan, made sure we got everything right. We did that all game and shut them down,” Reeves said.
The UK guard loved the way Ugonna Onyenso helped shut down the paint with 10 blocked shots.
“Send anyone down through the hole and he’s right there. Run him off the line, make him take on, let him try and shoot a layup, he’s right there to block shots,” Reeves said.
The bad news for Kentucky now is that it must go to Auburn. The Tigers beat visiting SEC co-leader South Carolina by FORTY POINTS Wednesday night. The Tigers also beat SEC leader Alabama 99-81 on Feb. 7. However, Auburn lost by 16 points at Florida February 10.
Alabama now leads the SEC with a 9-2 mark while South Carolina and Auburn are both 9-3. Tennessee won at Arkansas Wednesday and is 8-3 while Florida and Kentucky are both 7-4. The top four teams in the regular season standings will get byes into the SEC Tournament quarterfinals.
“Kentucky has a lot of opportunities to help itself. It’s one thing wishing for other teams to step in and help you out but you got big games coming up against teams you are fighting against,” former UK All-American Jack Givens said. “Kentucky can take care of business starting Saturday (at Auburn).”
26 Responses
Game of the season at Auburn. We have to play our A game of having any chance to win this game.
The home game against Tennessee was the "must win" game. We lost.
Knoxville will be a guaranteed L as well.
Every remaining game is a must win if we expect to be relevant in the SEC and NCAA tourneys. The next 4 will pretty much tell if we are contenders or pretenders. Auburn put a 50 point beatdown on South Carolina last night. You know that Pearl is going to have them ready for us…will we be ready for them?
LOL
Contenders? For what? this team will finish 3-4 to the bitter end, finish 20-11, 10-8, and will not have a double bye into Friday at the SECT. This team is a 2nd round NCAA casualty.
All the "What Iffing" in the world will not change what this team is.
John Calipari’s middling Kentucky team may be college basketball’s most interesting story
Opinion by Dan Wolken, USA TODAY
The Kentucky men’s basketball team handily defeated Mississippi on Tuesday night, 75-63, providing a rare feel-good moment in a season largely defined by poor defense, inexplicable losses at Rupp Arena and John Calipari’s typical mix of petulance and indignance in response to the pushback he’s getting from Big Blue Nation.
Calipari has been at Kentucky for 15 seasons now − far longer than even he would have expected. But he’s now locked into the job by the largesse of his contract and the lack of better options for a 65-year-old whose best coaching days are likely behind him. And the plain reality that Calipari likely isn’t going anywhere anytime soon − he won’t be fired, and he isn’t the type to leave millions of dollars on the table − makes what happens over the next six weeks the most interesting story in college basketball.
Either Kentucky will conjure up a March run that heals some deepening wounds, or one of the sport’s preeminent programs will be stuck with a coach it no longer wants and a decline it does not deserve. Make no mistake: At a time when parity rules the sport, the old guard of coaching stars has largely left the scene and the future NBA stars are not as relevant to college success as they once were, college basketball is pining for a Kentucky comeback. But to this point, watching Calipari flail around on the sidelines without the answers to make it happen has been nothing short of sad. Since losing to Wisconsin in the 2015 Final Four, ending the Wildcats’ chance of becoming an unbeaten national champion, Kentucky hasn’t been the same program and Calipari hasn’t been the same coach.
The erosion has happened for a lot of reasons. The biggest is probably that older, more physically rugged players have become more important than the one-and-done freshmen that were Calipari’s specialty. There have been staff changes and some key, longtime Calipari assistants that were shoved to the side in an attempt to become more recruiting-focused. There has also been a staggering stubbornness to adapt to modern basketball until this year, as Calipari has finally embraced the 3-pointer and better offensive spacing. But the change has come at a cost: Kentucky is now ranked just outside the top 100 in the defensive efficiency metrics, which is stunning in the context of Calipari’s long career. At UMass, Memphis and then Kentucky, defense was non-negotiable. It was the thing that saved his teams time and again when the shots weren’t falling. The effort his teams consistently gave on that end of the floor was probably Calipari’s best attribute as a coach. And this year, unless something changes late in the season, Kentucky’s poor defense is probably going to be what extends its Final Four drought to nine seasons.
Previously in times of trouble, Calipari always had the next gimmick he could sell and the next recruiting class that could make people believe a championship was just around the corner. Those days are long gone. Prior to the Ole Miss win, Kentucky had lost three in a row at Rupp for the first time ever, had lost to hated rival Tennessee for the seventh time in the last 12 meetings and was trending toward a poor seed in the NCAA tournament. Meanwhile, Calipari has drawn criticism locally for skipping out on his postgame radio interview after a few tough losses, and the atmosphere at home games has been downbeat. Even though Calipari almost certainly isn’t going anywhere, it feels like every game at this point is a referendum on whether he’s still the man for college basketball’s most rewarding, but also toughest, blueblood job.
All this is happening while Kentucky has a roster stacked with future NBA players, including two potential lottery picks in Reed Sheppard and Rob Dillingham and top recruit D.J. Wagner, who has had an uneven and injury-plagued season. With Kentucky’s mix of freshmen and veterans, this team should be better than 17-7. "It’s just going to be a process," Calipari said Tuesday. "And I keep saying to everybody, we’ll break through. We will. My teams break through." But nobody really believes that anymore.
At one point in Calipari’s Kentucky tenure, the entire country would have feared this team regardless of the struggles it’s had in February. Just wait, just wait. The light’s going to come on because it’s Kentucky and Calipari. That was the aura around the program he created and his players lived up to time and time again. The recent reality, though, has told a different story. Kentucky missed the NCAA tournament in 2021, got bounced by No. 15 seed St. Peter’s in 2022 and was outclassed by Kansas State’s veteran guards in the second round last year. Maybe this team can reverse the trend, but they’re going to have to show us.
College basketball was more fun when Kentucky terrified everyone. Yes, Calipari had a few inexcusable March flops and should have more than one national title. But those things can happen in a one-and-done tournament. Calipari once famously said, “We do more than move the needle. We are the needle.” He wasn’t wrong. For his first six years in Lexington, this program was feared every time it took the court, every year rolling out a new group of future NBA All-Stars who looked the part almost from Day 1. And the truth is, Calipari’s the only coach in the country who could make that happen. He’s one of one, as perfectly suited to that job and the demands of that fan base as anyone who’s ever lived. When he inevitably moves on at some point, it’s hard to imagine anyone else reaching those highs year after year.
It means there’s one realistic solution to Kentucky’s season of discontent. Calipari desperately needs to do something that now seems long in the past. He has to get this team playing to its potential. He has to reset the clock and put this past month into a memory hole. He has to produce the kind of big run in March that used to seem automatic. He has to make Kentucky feel like Kentucky again.
Mr. Wolken has described what’s happened here at Kentucky better than anything else I have read. The Calipari lovers won’t like it, but they are a big part of the reason we are in this mess. Calipari needs to win the SEC tourney and make a Final 4 appearance to make Kentucky feel like Kentucky again. Anything less, he needs to do the honorable thing and retire.
It’s sad when some people get so excited about beating Vanderbilt and Ole Miss.
And transylvania
Calipari is the cancer that has no cure other than his dismissal/exodus from the program.
Other than stop attending the games out of protest I don’t know of anything we can do.
Anybody have any other suggestions?
AMEN—CANCER. and doing what any CANCER does: gradually and slowly killing what it feasts on. Until……..??? By the time the CANCER is gone, the death will have already taken place. Like any CANCER, it won’t move on until it has done it’s job FULLY. and spot-on article from Dan Wolken. CAL has never recovered from WIS in 2015, and really neither has the program or the fans. That loss is really the origin of the death of this program. Nothing about CAL’s coaching or the quality of the bball, or the quality of recruits, have been the same since. CAL has always wanted to do things the easy way–it worked for a time at UMASS–but look at the destruction he left that program in. It worked for a time at Memphis–look at the destruction he left their program in. And it worked for a time at KY—-now look at our program today compared to where it was 10 yrs ago. What kind of shape do u think we are gonna be left in? And each additional year that he is here means another year longer of trying to rebuild from ashes. That’s why with each loss today, it’s the best thing for the program in the long-term. Each loss is anothr step closer of getting rid of the CANCER, and having a chance at starting new life. Because that’s what it’s going to entail in the end—when the time comes, it will require a complete, total rebuild, a re-start, similar to what Pitino had. The sooner we get it over with, the better. And again, I say, if your stuck being an NIT program and an SEC also-ran, wouldn’t u rather be that with somebody at least at the job trying to coach for the success of KY rather than coaching his players to get to the NBA draft, and somebody who hasn’t made himself bigger than the program itself, and made himself UNTOUCHABLE with a lifetime contract? CAL has the entire athletic program by the ba**s—he is KING—the A.D. crowned him—now he has to deal with the ramifications of that. Anybody who thinks this era with him is going to end well is behind delusional. I will say this: that based on the talent assembled this year, this is his one last chance of having the pieces to make a big run—but it’s now or never. If it doesnt end well this year, even the last of the holdouts will begin to move on him.
Maybe 64 other teams will
opt out of the NCAAT so we make another FF.
Barry, don’t know how many recruits access LV’s site. Do know your contest negatively would not be productive. Are the rank and file unhappy – sure.
If you have the $50M for the buy out carry on.
Paul, it’s rah rahs like you who have allowed Calipari to stay here as long as he has. He will be shamed into retirement at the end of the season and you are more than welcomed to go find another team after he does. It will take years for our program to recover from the damage that all you Calipari lovers have allowed to happen.
If it’s the same type of recruits we have and have been getting then we don’t need them. We’re losing with them.
And I can think of a few high dollar donors that could buy him out tomorrow.
Mark my word cats will be Auburn Saturday. Take that the negative Sayers.
Beat that is
Paul, it’s rah rahs like you who have allowed Calipari to stay here as long as he has. He will be shamed into retirement at the end of the season and you are more than welcomed to go find another team after he does. It will take years for our program to recover from the damage that all you Calipari lovers have allowed to happen.
Bruce Pearl and his team smell blood in the water.
They looked great against South Carolina
I’ve cancelled my Sling Sports and resorted to watching UK highlight replays on YouTube. This team is just not worth the price of admission, IMO.
I can always renew my sub if they start playing D.
I’m a “rah rah” for UK my beloved Alma mater – not Cal.
I just think it hurts the entire athletic department when the written word can be destructive in today’s connected world.
And in todays world a top ten team can be assembled via the portal in a year !!!!
Then why can’t Calipari do it if it is so easy.
It has been a long time since Auburn has lost a home game! I realize that, and I’ve watched them play, they create a lot of matchup problems. I’m 100% UK, the layers, coaches and university. On Saturday, I’m going to watch the game, and enjoy the opportunity to do so. At the end, I’ll be thrilled if they win, but if they don’t, I know it is just a game, sunrise will rise on Sunday, and there are more games to be played.
Great attitude BlueBoyBlue