Strangely, I feel less "bad" than you about tonights game. Clyde agrees with you on this point. He said he thought they took a step back for the first time in a few games.

I feel UK lost this game because of their lack of defensive rebounding, and TO's, which resulted from "too many leaderless possessions". (BCG)

UK shoots 50%, UH shoots 36%, but UK had only 6 offensive reb.'s to Houston's 16. UK committed 18 turnovers to Houston's 9. That's minus 19 in the possesion department. Not good.

As Tru noted, Carter had a nice game. 16 minutes, 6 pts, 4 reb, and 2 blocks. He was out of position on several offensive rebound opportunities, but some game time will help him trememdously, I feel. Hell, he's at your disposal, develop him. If Rob Locke can become an effective big man, then by gawd Carter is certainly capable. (For those in the younger set, Locke stunk, stunk, stunk, his first two years at UK, but had pretty solid jr, and sr years) Plus, what do they have to lose? They're 4-5. Carter could potentially make Patterson a nice playmate.

Stevenson only played 6 minutes. Crawford fed him a gorgeous pass from the baseline, which would have led to a layup, but Stevenson didn't make the catch. I don't think he played after that.

For the first time I heard Clyde be really hard on himself in the postgame tonight. He took responsibility for all of the on court problems
the team is enduring. I've heard hundreds of postgame shows, but it's always nice to hear a coach take full responsiblity for the shortcomings of his team. Some coaches wouldn't dream of admitting fault. Wink, wink look west.

Even if he didn't mean it, I liked him saying it. Everybody needs to work harder, and smarter. It is time sacrifice. Time, girlfriend, friends, socializing, whatever. The Craft Center is open to the players 24 hours a day.

If any players have given up, then I urge them to register their feelings with Clyde so he can move on to other options.

I don't think that is the problem though. I can't articulate why I feel that way, but I think the players are playing as hard as they can. Tonight though, I think I saw a little bit of a  defeatist "look" on the faces of some of the players. It's like, "what do we need to do to win?"

Confidence I feel is becoming a problem. I was afraid the waning confidence factor might rear its ugly head.

We all see why they lose. The reasons are fairly obvious I think. They may change slightly from game to game, but generally the same bugaboo is biting UK in the keister.

TO's and rebounding I feel are the main culprits. UK has too many turnovers, because they don't run their offense properly half the time, and they make too many boneheaded passes. This is where I think Jaspers return will have the most positive effect; simply running the damn offense. He sees the floor so well, and generally takes care of the ball. He's not thinking about shooting, he's thinking about distributing, which is what this team needs.

At one time tonight, UK was down 34-18 in rebounding. They only ended up losing the battle of the boards by 5, so they fought back, plus  Houston lost some of their intensity because Penders slowed them down at about the 7 minute mark.

I don't care how tall, fat, long, short, or skinny a player is, the very least he can do is be in good rebounding position. Charles Barkley, who is 6'4, led the NBA in rebounding multiple time. Desire and positioning. Now in UK's defense, there were an inordinate amount of long rebounds because of all the three's, but UK was beat down in the paint as it pertains to rebounding. As I noted, it got better in the second half, but by that time it was too late.

I know one thing. A person sure uses less words when discussing a victory.

If you're going through hell
Keep on going, don't slow down
If you're scared, don't show it
You might get out
Before the devil even knows you're there

Right on, Tru.

I liked the end of the game, actually.

The cats finally started to show a little bit of fire, especially Joe C.  If we could just translate "I don't want to get beat by 25 points" into "I don't want to get beat by 1 point" we'd be a good team.  We were actually getting defensive rebounds, of all things!  Not that I think Joe tunnel vision is a good offense to run, but if we could temper some of that with a bit of wisdom as to when to invoke it, Crawford would fulfill his potential.

Let's hope we can translate some of that fire into some execution, and the wins will follow.

These turnovers have got to go, and rebounds must come.  Those are killing us more than anything, IMHO.

My other thought:
What is up with the conditioning of this team?  What we need is a strength and conditioning coach that puts our players on a regimen that keeps them from injury.  There has to be someone who specializes in that???  Or maybe we're just having bad luck.  At least no one has blown an ACL since Derek Anderson that I can remember.  knock on wood

When the gun is fully loaded, I feel they can be good.

The teams you mention are all much better than UK right now, I think.

It certainly does get frustrating.

These teams are simply better.  All three of them will win a lot of games this year.  Most SEC teams, with the exception of maybe Arkansas and Tennessee (and I'm not even sure about them) would have lost at least two and probably three games to this group.

I can't excuse UAB (14-point lead with 10:00 to go) blown or a home blowout loss to GW.  Both are still inconceivable.

Kentucky should be sitting at 6-3, and to be fair, man, the Wildcats routinely schedule some tough-as-hell opponents in the pre-season.  I surely wish my Gators could get some draws like that.  Our athletic department has tried, but it's damn hard to get other teams to agree to new home-and-aways.

Now, out of the three excusable losses, this one t Houston is questionable simply because of the defensive lapses which allowed the Cougars to go on extended runs.  It seems a breakdown would occur on offense, resulting in a turnover, then a fast break and quick points would get posted for the Cougs.  The Cats seemed a step slow to react and get back on defense, almost as if they hung their heads a bit in that situation for a few moments.  I know P-Pat was sitting out, and that surely hurt the Cats, but Jodie Meeks' return added a lot of power to the Cats' offense, at least early, and I think that offset most of what Patterson would have been able to do had he been in the game instead of Meeks.  And frankly, even with Patterson in the game, I still see a loss being very probable based on the above-described mistakes.

I gave Joe Crawford praise for his output but in retrospect, he did most of his damage when the team found themselves down big.  I don't know why it takes that every time for Joe to start performing well, but what difference does it make if you put yourself in such a big hole that it's almost impossible to climb out of it?

So I'll call that "half" a loss.  2.5 games that Gillispie simply SHOULD NOT have lost regardless of the circumstances.

I'm telling you, BCG really needs to start showing something here because it's not just Kentucky fans noticing something ain't right with the way this team is operating.

Did Meeks steal his points? Just curious what others saw since I couldn't.

• First off, congrats to the Coogs for pulling off the pretty thorough and dominating victory. My friend said it was the fullest and loudest he'd ever seen the arena, and I'm sure that helped fuel the Houston victory.
• Both he and I were very disappointed that we didn't get to watch Patrick Patterson play.
• I can say with strong certainty that Jodie Meeks was the best player on the court last night. During the first 15 minutes of the game, he was pretty phenomenal. But when you've got 4 other players on the court who can't do anything, the defense can pretty much key on Meeks, which is what they did. Without shooting space and a collapsing defense on drives, Meeks was pretty much taken out of the game.
• While Meeks was the best player on the court, the next five were probably UH players. That's a problem.
• Kentucky's third best player was, sadly, Jared Carter. Seriously. He was solid in the post, although he still doesn't seem to know how to fight for rebounds.
• While we're on the subject of Carter, I'd like to bring up Gillispie's curious defensive formations. I thought I saw Kentucky go into a soft zone with Carter in the middle in the first half a couple times, but that could've been my eyes playing tricks on me. What was more interesting was the second half defense when Carter would be put AT THE TOP OF THE KEY guarding a primary ballhandler, like Lanny Smith. This also happened with AJ Stewart and Mark Coury. Now I know UH plays small too, but I'm not sure about the logic in that at all.
• In person, Crawford's foul looked hard, and intentional (By the way, I didn't see any complaints about officiating. There were a few missed calls, but for both sides. I thought it looked pretty fair to me.). While on the subject of Crawford, his  play was a tale of two halves. His offense looked pretty good in the first half. He rotated the ball, got himself in the lane, and only took one bad three. The second half, however, was atrocious. His putting up a ton a points was a matter of his quantity of shooting, not quality. Sigh, vintage Joe.
• Ramel was simply terrible tonight. Gillispie pulled him right after he shot a horrendous 3 (pretty much the theme of the first 10 minutes of the second half), and I knew right away that he wasn't getting back in the game. Bradley has no idea how to be the point guard of this team, which is disappointing, because his game is a lot like Acie Law's. Similarly, if Gillispie could pull Joe Crawford, he would.
• Along those lines Gillispie looks like he absolutely hates this team. He's definitely not a fan of Crawford and Bradley, which is fine, because they'll be graduating shortly. But he's also disgruntled with players like A.J. Stewart (who had a good hustle game...at one point, a Kentucky fan next to me was screaming at Billy for taking him out), Perry Stevenson (who is still terrible) and Jared Carter. These are players who are still going to be here for 2-3 more years, and if Billy can't get them to contribute, he's in trouble.
• It's really disappointing when Patrick Mills is a better point guard than Michael Porter. Porter has absolutely no idea how to bring the ball up the court. Derrick Jasper is sorely needed. Razor was probably the worst player on the court. Lastly, Coury was just...there.
• I've got some thoughts on UH as well, but in the interest of this fan base, I'll just say that they looked MUCH better as a TEAM than Kentucky did. Two things in particular, ball movement and collapsing the lane, were done SO much better by the Cougars than the Cats. The talent gap also was in Houston's favor. Crawford and Bradley, despite their pedigree, are simply not as good as Dion Dowell and Lanny Smith. And that's a big problem for Kentucky.
• Finally, I think the chants were for both Gillispie Sucks AND Kentucky Sucks. They kind of blended together. It's nice to see that Kentucky still has that kind of draw to its brand name, though. Hope that you made it this far and enjoyed my ramblings. I look forward to better days.