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Kentucky Wildcats 67, South Carolina Gamecocks 72: Post Game Cry Of Anguish

Kentucky waits until the last 12 minutes to play against South Carolina. Too late, as it turns out.

By Glenn Logan
Rob Kinnan-USA TODAY Sports

The Kentucky Wildcats fall for the second straight game, this time on the road against the bottom-dwelling South Carolina Gamecocks. Those are the facts, and they are undisputed. We don't have to like it, and none of us do.

More: Garnet and Black Attack UKAthletics.com

Congratulations to South Carolina. They really held on when Kentucky charged, they played smarter basketball, and they deserved this win. South Carolina came in undermanned and under-talented, but they utilized their talent much better than the Wildcats did. Talent is only meaningful in terms of the team concept, and when your talent plays outside of that concept, it doesn't help. There are a lot of tall, athletic guys in the SEC, and if the Wildcats think they can win every game by being a little taller and have the "McDonalds All-American" appellation after their name, South Carolina and the Arkansas Razorbacks, among several others, demonstrated otherwise. Well done, Gamecocks.

For Kentucky, this is the dreaded losing streak. For the last two games, they have played terrible basketball in the DDFH (Dribble Drive Fling and Hope) offense that John Calipari constructed this season to try to take advantage of the new foul rules and the size of Kentucky inside. Whether or not you want to embrace conspiracy theories, the officials in the SEC would rather throw coaches out of the game than call 50 fouls. Calipari, and the team, need to embrace that fact, and find another style to play.

Final stats

I'll look at this tomorrow.

Observations

  • Kentucky, in 29 games, has not learned to pass the basketball. This is the worst passing Kentucky team in history, and the reason is because of the DDFH.

  • John Calipari's ejection has been coming for weeks. He's fed up, but he needs to look in the mirror.

  • The Wildcats don't so much run an offense as a casino based on basketball. Somebody should alert the feds. Every shot is like betting on the big wheel, only with slightly worse odds.

  • I never expected to lose this game, but I have to be honest — South Carolina played much better.

  • What is the cure for Jump Shot Syphilis? I think you have to shoot them, occasionally, rather than trying to score through contact or a challenge every single time.

  • Kentucky defends the ball very poorly. This has been true all season. Not sure they can find it this late.

  • For the second straight year, Calipari has taken a pre-season lion and brought forth a mouse.  Just sayin'.  No, the season isn't over, and yes, a miracle could happen.  I guess that's better than just giving up, which I'm not, no matter how the team might beg me to.

  • I loved the fight in the second half. So why did we have to wait until the situation was desperate to see almost-good basketball?

Look, I have no answers, only questions. Kentucky is an awful basketball team right now. That's just the facts. We can't do a darn thing about it, which makes us all really unhappy and frustrated.

Until this team proves worthy, I have nothing to offer them in the way of advice except one thing; "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." By that definition, this team needs to be committed.

More tomorrow in the postmortem.

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