LEXINGTON, Ky. – Tennessee sophomore forward Admiral Schofield stood outside the visitors’ locker room at Rupp Arena late Tuesday evening, attempting to explain the Volunteers’ 83-58 loss to No. 13 Kentucky.
“We’ve got talent,” Schofield said. “Kentucky’s got NBA talent.”
That’s a common explanation for UK victories since John Calipari left the University of Memphis in the spring of 2009 to run the Wildcats program. And in most seasons since, that explanation is as good as any to explain how Coach Cal’s yearly crops of one-and-dones have reached four Final Fours during his UK tenure and won the 2012 national championship.
But over the past three to four weeks, this Wildcats team hasn’t looked much like its earlier models. It got out-coached, outplayed and out-hustled in an 82-80 loss to the Vols in Knoxville on Jan. 24. It blew a double-digit lead at home in a six-point loss to Kansas a few nights later. It got blown out at Florida and nearly blew a 30-point cushion in the final minutes of an eventual seven-point win over visiting LSU. Only a 30-point second half from Malik Monk saved Big Blue in an overtime win over visiting Georgia.
And perhaps because of that, strange as it seems, given UK’s ranking and history and 20-5 record (10-2 in the SEC) entering this game, Schofield also said this: “I don’t feel we respected our opponent tonight.”
The Big Orange fan, be he or she either ardent or casual, might erupt in anger, frustration or both at a comment such as this. If you can’t respect Kentucky, if you can’t be at your emotional, focused best to take on the winningest program in the history of college basketball, whom will you be able to get up to play?
Yet this is the dilemma of every coach as the season winds down and the nicks and bruises – if not much worse – mount, the losses leave deeper marks and some teams rise while others fall.
As Cal said of his former No. 1 team’s recent mild swoon, “It took us three weeks to get here. We’re not going to get out of it overnight.”
Kentucky’s Isaiah Briscoe (13) looks for an opening on Tennessee’s Jordan Bone (0) during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2017, in Lexington, Ky. Kentucky won 83-58. (AP Photo/James Crisp)Now the question is whether the Vols are headed for a swoon at the worst time of the season, when resumes must be built for an NCAA or NIT invitation. Viewed by its lonesome, this loss to Kentucky, however overwhelming, is just one defeat. Even when paired with last Saturday’s one-point home setback to Georgia, the losing streak is only two, even if it’s also Tennessee’s third loss in its last four starts as the Vols fall to 14-12 overall and 6-7 in SEC play.
Let the Vols rally to win at home in their next two starts against Missouri and Vanderbilt, let them stun South Carolina away from home the game after that and hope still springs eternal.
“We know we’ve got to win four of the next five,” Schofield said. “We’ve got to get back to playing like that team that’s on fire. We can’t have egos.”
No team would have more reason to be undone by egos than Kentucky. When you’re loaded up with McDonald’s All-Americans (there are five on this UK roster) and potential first-round draft picks (three at the moment), there are bound to be some tender psyches.
Yet when someone asked the game’s leading scorer – UK freshman Malik Monk, who finished with 20 points and eight rebounds – why the Wildcats didn’t let UT back in the game as it has other opponents of late, he gave an answer that sounded as if he was on a team happy to be in its coach’s doghouse together.
“We’ve been running a lot, too,” he said with a grin. “I think that’s the main reason (we played better). We’ve been running a lot if we didn’t do everything right. We just ran. We ran for the little mistakes, but we didn’t want to run no more, so that’s why we (played better).”
And Monk was smiling as he spoke, happy to win and almost as happy to share the hard work that went into such a victory.
This doesn’t mean Calipari necessarily has righted his Cats for good. After all, they did start four freshmen and a sophomore on Tuesday night. They must play at Georgia on Saturday, and good as Monk was against the Vols in Rupp, four times he has scored below 20 points on the road in the SEC. Only once has he scored fewer than 23 at home.
In fact, so hot were all the Cats in the first half – when they knocked down 10 of 18 3-pointers before finishing 11-of-25 from treysville – that even the ultimate Kentucky Killer among Big Orange coaches, UT football boss Butch Jones, couldn’t turn momentum in favor of the Vols, despite sitting right behind the Tennessee bench.
Coach Crewcut may have beaten Big Blue four times by an average of 23 points, but he couldn’t find a way for his hoops counterpart, Rick Barnes, to do the same.
“We were really just gosh awful,” Barnes said as he began his postgame presser. “I think from Kentucky’s vantage point they probably got everything they wanted to get done.”
Including earning a little belated respect from the Vols.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.