This is truly not what I hoped to see tonight. But, they say that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and if that's right and the saying is proportional, Kentucky should emerge from this game as strong as the Hulk.
Congratulations to Vanderbilt on one of the great overall efforts I have seen this year. Vandy did whatever they wanted as though they were playing a high school team, and not a very good one at that. All the things that have kept us from recent success at Memorial Gym rose up and smote us tonight with the force of a hydrogen bomb, and after it was all said and done, scorched wreckage was all that was left of Kentucky's hopes for creating a buzz for this season. No matter how many games we win from here on out, this game will be right there along with Gardner-Webb to either be the greatest mountain climbed in history, or the epitaph of UK's 2007-08 season.
There are so many things to criticize in this game, it is simply meaningless to do so. This reminds me very much of the clunker that Florida threw in at Arkansas the other day, only on steroids. Never have I seen Patrick Patterson less interested in a game, and by the time he got interested, the outcome was no longer in doubt. Sometimes, success can be a burden, and our recent success seems to have weighed a bit too heavily on our shoulders tonight.
In the end, I think this is just one of those games you walk away from and say, "Oh, well." This did not resemble the tough-minded Wildcats that beat the Commodores a month ago, nor even the ones who lost in overtime to Florida. This was either a huge regression to San Diego form, or more likely, an aberration. For the sake of sanity, I will declare it the latter and starting right now, file it away under "Sh*t happens."
Well done, Commodores. Moving right along ...
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Kentucky at Vanderbilt -- Ok, so spotting them 30 at half wasn't such a hot idea.
By
Glenn Logan