John Calipari on what went wrong for Reid Travis

The second half of today’s game against the Alabama Crimson Tide saw a lot of struggles for the Kentucky Wildcats, most notably with Reid Travis.

Thus far in the season, Travis had been a beacon of consistency for the young Wildcats. Night in and night out, you knew what you would be getting from him under the basket.

But in the second half against the Tide, something was different. Travis only made one field goal on five attempts to go along with just two rebounds and three turnovers in the second half.

While his 13 point, 6 rebound performance is right in line with what Calipari would like to see from his grad transfer, the fact that he disappeared in the second half when the Wildcats needed to make a comeback is a little troublesome.

“He reverted,” John Calipari said after the game. “He tried to gather himself on every catch. One, he walked. I mean, just catch it and dunk it. Why even try to gather. I told him, ‘All the work we put in, you got into this game and you didn’t trust it and you reverted.’ But he’ll be fine. He’s the least of our worries, believe me.”

Tonight just wasn’t his night and you could tell it hurt the team without his reliability under the basket. Travis may not be the most important player on this team, but without his production the team definitely suffers.

But PJ Washington wasn’t going to let his frontcourt teammate get down on himself.

“We just tell him to keep his head up, keep fighting. We need him down the stretch. We need him for this team to win,” Washington said. “He’s doing a great job for us. He just had one bad half. He’ll shake it off and be ready for the next game.”

Kentucky will be back in action Tuesday night against Texas A&M.