Ole Miss 38, Kentucky 36: Second Half Live Thread

While Coach Cal is asking the team "nicely" to get their energy back after a remarkable first half (for Ole Miss), let’s just puzzle out what happened here. Okay, it’s not too hard — Kentucky fell in love with the three, decided this was going to be a romp, and disrespected their opponent. Their opponent rose up and demonstrated in no uncertain terms why that’s a bad idea.

First half stats

Here's the box score from a back-and-forth first half. pic.twitter.com/0h6xc0gMv3

— Kentucky Athletics (@UKAthletics) January 7, 2015

Kentucky shot 34% and is down by 2 with the opponent shooting 50%. What’s wrong with this picture? Everything. UK only managed 7 points off 7 Ole Miss turnovers. That’s not great, folks. But what really baffles me is Karl Anthony Towns going 2-5 from the line.

Look this was bound to happen to Kentucky, and this is exactly where you might expect it to happen — right after a long layoff in which they had nothing to do but learn each other’s tendencies. Kentucky is probably great at defending each other, but tonight, they are really sucking at defending their opponents.

Very impressive first half by Ole Miss. All they have to do is do it again against a team that is likely to be slightly motivated by Kentucky’s kind request of them. This next half is going to be can’t miss TV.

Go, ‘Cats!