(Photo by Brett Carlsen / Getty Images)
The greatest tradition of college basketball ™ was eliminated from its own event, the SEC Tournament, before sunset at Thursday’s games in Nashville. Gold Standard ™ will return home to Lexington before the tournament’s top four finishers – Alabama, Arkansas, LSU and Tennessee – play their first games in the tournament.
An unfathomable situation before the start of the “only coronavirus can stop us” season, is reality after his University of Kentucky Wildcats lost to the State of Mississippi, the ninth seed of the tournament, in Thursday’s midday game. fair of the first session of the first full day of SEC fun. I can’t even believe I’m typing these words for the Big Blue Nation to read: His University of Kentucky Wildcats lost to Mississippi State, the tournament’s ninth position, on Thursday’s midday game.
“We were punished,” said John Calipari later in his post-game press conference after the 73-74 defeat. His most true statement throughout the year, Kentucky has been punished and, unfortunately, will be the lasting memory of one of the worst seasons in the program’s history. 2020-21 ends with just nine wins, no hope for an NCAA tournament at all, and a loss for a 14-13 team from Starkville, Mississippi.
Sucks. There is no way to sweeten it. There is also no way to stop writing the edition of this game of the 10 Takeaways, so let’s just recap so we can move on with what may be an anomaly for a basketball season.
1. The state of Mississippi completely manipulated the interior of Kentucky.
One team showed up to fight, the other team showed up to be pushed, and it was very clear from the beginning that Kentucky was in trouble. Things were so bad at the start of the game that Mississippi State, the team that showed up for the fight, had an advantage of 14 rebounds at halftime. Half an hour!
John Calipari said: “They were over-15 rebounds. Are you kidding me? I never saw that. Division I versus Division III maybe, but I never saw 15. Are you going to get 30 rebounds? Will they beat you by 15 to 20? I’ve never heard of such a thing. “
It was better in the second half, when Kentucky was trying to mount its unlikely recovery, but the Bulldogs still won the cup in the end by an impressive 46-30 margin.
“When you talk about how they scored, they probably scored seven, eight baskets just on the offensive rebound, where we just couldn’t make the balls.”
Lance Ware was a big part of the problem. The reserve freshman was forced to increase significantly in minutes due to two first-half fouls by Olivier Sarr and Isaiah Jackson, and he was abused in apparently all possession. To be fair, Sarr and Jackson were not much better when they entered, but the Ware experiment was not working.
2. The UK’s top scorer scored zero points.
Kentucky didn’t have a top scorer all season, but the team’s top scorer, BJ Boston, consistently managed his 12 points per game to at least give a little boost to the scoring column with each game.
Boston scored zero in the SEC tournament defeat. In the eyes of recruiting analysts, Boston was chosen in the high school lottery and played only 23 minutes in the game, perhaps the last as Wildcat.
Or maybe it’s not the last? Your one-game NBA post-season test will only further damage your inventory. We will discuss this on another occasion. At the moment, all that matters is your goose egg in an unmissable game.
3. Devin Askew did not offer anything again.
Askew’s line of statistics includes zero points, a shot attempt, no free-throw attempt, no assistance, no foul, no turn and no block, just a steal thrown directly into his hands and a rebound. These are numbers you see in a player who plays two minutes at the end of a game, not the team’s ONE-POINT GUARD in 21 minutes of basketball tournament. Still, he found his way into the game after Kentucky returned to play in the second half. More on that in a moment.
4. This team cannot score a meter away.
A problem throughout the season, Kentucky again struggled to complete the simple task of putting the ball through the hoop when shooting directly from under or around the basket. In this one, the Cats finished 6 out of 15 in layups and missed one of two attempts to bury, and everyone on the team is to blame.
5. That person, whoever he was, deserved better.
6. This game further proved that John Calipari was unaware of that list, the list he built.
Jacob Toppin started and played seven minutes without problems. Devin Askew, known for being impossible to play at the end of games, checked in at the end of the game; coincidentally, the UK struggled to score at the end of the game. Terrence Clarke hasn’t played since December, so, of course, let’s get him into the game as soon as possible because, again, the substitution patterns seem to be pulled out of a hat and it’s been like that all year.
We cannot expect Calipari to have all the answers when his players are clearly not of the caliber he is used to, but some obvious adjustments have not been made today and in many games throughout the season.
7. The Final Four Minutes sounded again.
Davion Mintz hit a 3-point basket to put Kentucky in five to four and a half minutes to go, completing a miraculous and exciting turnaround in the second half, when it looked like the season was over. But then there was that four-minute mark on the clock, the Grim Reaper for this Kentucky team all year, and they scored just one more time before losing by one at the end. Iverson Molinar, from the state of Mississippi, scored eight points in that period.
How many times have we written the same story this year? Don’t answer that. We know it was too much.
The last move was a good one, however. That’s all you can ask for, especially after seeing some of the ways they spoiled their delayed possessions in the regular season.
8. The United Kingdom threw 58% of the free-throw line as a team.
Do you want to lose? Fight to hit half of the free kicks. Kentucky won 17 free looks in the line and missed seven of them.
9. Davion Mintz did everything possible to load Kentucky again.
While Kentucky’s three five-star freshmen scored two points, the Kentucky transfer from Creighton attempted to put the team on their backs as he had done many times before. Mintz hit four points out of 3 and had eight assists with zero turnovers and some big rebounds when his teammates were not recovering, but the help was simply not there from anyone else.
Anyone else except …
10. Dontaie Allen.
Everyone gets up and applauds Dontaie Allen for facing the state of Mississippi again. If it weren’t for Allen’s six strokes of 3, Kentucky doesn’t even have a stroke in the final stretch. He and Mintz kept Kentucky alive with outside footage, and fans can’t help but wonder what could have happened if Allen had had more opportunities earlier in the year.
Does he have many weaknesses? yea. Did he play poorly in his limited action in several games? Certainly. But Dontaie Allen played 30 minutes just twice throughout the year and scored 23 points on both occasions. BJ Boston (who I think could have played well with Allen) averaged 30 minutes per game and never managed to score 23 points in one game throughout the season. Devin Askew averaged 30 minutes per game and never scored 15. You will never convince me that giving Allen some of his minutes (just some minutes) was not the best for everyone. But every time Allen gave up on two points or dropped an open eye, we heard about a press conference as if he were the only one to make mistakes. The whole team made mistakes. Everyone has had failures all year.
Other players on the team had opportunity after opportunity, when they were also giving up baskets or missing shots or playing losing basketball. If Allen had had a little more chance of getting into the rhythm and overcoming some of his shortcomings, of which he has many, I believe the season would have been a little better (nothing great, but better than it was) and the fan base I wouldn’t be so upset by the obvious favoritism against one of ours.
Maybe I’m an idiot and he wouldn’t have improved anything, but is that worse than what we saw game after game after game for a team of nine wins? He had the two highest-scoring games in the defense zone throughout the year, and played the least amount of minutes in the group.
It is appropriate for the season to end with him leaving to prove that he deserves more. I don’t think we’ll ever know what he could have become if he hadn’t been put on the bench for the potential of other players that never materialized.
I didn’t want to end this with a rant by Dontaie Allen, but there it is.
Now let’s enjoy life away from the stress of this season and Kentucky’s defeat to Mississippi State, the ninth seed of the tournament, in Thursday’s SEC Tournament midday game.