Kentucky's D is one of the biggest letdowns this season, and John Calipari knows it
Calipari says he wishes he could practice his players until they puke; he's not happy whatosever
So, Kentucky is still not fixed.
That reboot still hasn't booted.
The Wildcats won at home 92-85 over LSU on Tuesday night. Beating a bad LSU team on your home floor by seven points isn't inspiring. Kentucky should win these games by 15-20 points at least. Kentucky fans know it and it's something they're undoubtedly firing up on message boards and social media deep into Tuesday night.
It's something John Calipari absolutely knows. Check his tone in this quick on-court interview. He looks happily fed up. This reminds me of how my mother talked about me in public, with other people around, when I'd really done wrong.
"You won't want to be at that practice tomorrow." pic.twitter.com/wK15TuXx6C
— ESPN College BBall (@ESPNCBB) February 8, 2017
Practice will be hell for Kentucky's players on Wednesday. I'm wondering if it will be the worst workout they've gone through this season, and if so, will that ultimately even matter.
Twice during Tuesday's game UK was up by 25. That was a good sign. But then the second part of the second half was really bizarre. Kentucky just stopped caring and stopped hustling. The team looked like it was fine with hitting second gear en route to a guaranteed victory. It's LSU; we can just walk to the finish line. But there's no reason for a team this long and athletic, with a coach as tactically capable as Calipari, to be this irregular on defense.
So LSU gets hot near the end and scores 85 on the road. From the eight-minute mark on, Kentucky looked lazy and content. If the game had been 45 minutes instead of 40, LSU might have stolen it. So if you're a Kentucky fan, you've got real reason for some concern here. Yes, the freshmen might eventually figure this out, but there shouldn't be apprehension about defensive want-to this late into the year. Few Calipari teams have been this tentative.
Then there's this: Malik Monk, for the second straight game, didn't have a rebound. Dude is a lock of a lottery pick, really athletic, and he can't get one board? On the season, he's barely above two grabs a game. In his postgame press conference, Calipari finished by saying this when asked about Monk's disappearance around the rim: "You should ask him that question. Probably a good one to ask."
Here's what Calipari had to say about Kentucky's pivotal big man, Bam Adebayo: "He just stopped playing down that end. He just, like, ran from layups. Look, he fouled, not us. You're the one that fouled 94 feet from the basket. You got to go play now or you can't play. Just stay out."
The ultimatum talk continued.
"Eight minutes to go, what we did, we reverted," Calipari said. "I don't know if we were tired or reverted back. Might have been a combination of both. If I could practice tonight, we would have gone three hours. I would have had them meet me at the gym at 10 o'clock, and I would have gone three hours until 1 in the morning until people were puking. That's what I would have done. That's the old days. I can't do that. But we will practice three hours tomorrow. I told them, 'If anybody says they can't go, you won't make the trip to Alabama. So don't go, or you'll go.'"
Kentucky is now 19-5, and thanks to South Carolina losing in four overtimes on its home floor to Alabama, is tied atop the SEC standings once again.
The offense looked nice, mostly. Monk easily got 23 points, and Wenyen Gabriel probably played the best game of his season, but even still, Cailpari found time to criticize his defensive lapses too. LSU's Antonio Blakeney had 31 points. That's more than he scored in any other game this season. LSU, offensively, had one of its best outings of the year. Damning for Kentucky.
The Tigers had 58 points in the second half, and now Kentucky has allowed 54 points in the final 20 minutes, on average, in its last four games. And opponents have scored at least 79 points in five straight games against the Wildcats. Gross.
"There's a lot of stuff going on on," Calipari said, then later added, "Don't want to shorten the rotation to five or six guys, but I will if I have to. I'd like to play eight or nine guys so they all get a chance to play, have fun, morale, all that. But you better deserve to be on that court, or ... "
Or it's a once-promising season derailed by this inexplicable lack of commitment to individual and team defense. The scoring was once thought to be a problem, but UK's got a lot of that figured out. Now is the time to correct the other end of the floor, because those issues can't magically get repaired when the calendar flips to March.
















