Kentucky has Hope after Second Half Awakening against Notre Dame

The Kentucky basketball program isn’t one that’s built for moral victories. That can’t be the case when you have more victories than any other college basketball program. Calipari actually described losing streaks in Lexington as “natural disasters,” yet another word comes to mind after today’s loss to Notre Dame, hope.

Kentucky fell down by as much as 33-9 in the first half before taking a 22-point halftime deficit into the locker room. Fans everywhere were ready to throw in the towel and call it a day. Apathy was the overwhelming emotion across the Big Blue Nation, expect where it actually mattered, on the court.

The Wildcats fought and clawed back, forcing the on-fire Fighting Irish into a nine-minute scoring drought. Even though there were still plenty of mistakes along the way, Kentucky was finally fighting and you could feel it.

“The way we fought, the way we competed, the way we shared the ball, the energy that we had, that’s something we gotta keep and bring on every game for two halves now,” Oliver Sarr said after the game.

“It’ll be a turning point I think for the entire team. Even though we lost that game I think that second half was an awakening and we definitely needed that.”

Somehow they were able to cut the deficit to one before Sarr’s potential game-winning shot at the buzzer rang around the rim. Even so, Calipari believes his team will only get better moving forward because of this experience.

“I told them, adversity is going to make you tougher, it’s what it is, and this comes at you, especially at Kentucky,” he said. “Losing games in a row here is like a natural disaster. And you know what? I’m not buying it, I don’t listen to it, I never have. Whether we’re winning games or losing games, my focus is on how do I help these guys get better.”

The only problem was it took a jarring 20 minutes of basketball to wake up the team. Their first half problems were insurmountable.

“There was a sense of urgency. We can’t let that happen though, because we see how good of a team we are when we fight and it didn’t happen in the first half,” Sarr said. “You can’t — it’s tough against these teams to fight back after being more than 20 points down. That second half is a great lesson and we gotta keep going like that every game.”

The second half was not good enough to prevent Kentucky from losing its fourth straight game, a phenomenon that’s only happened one other time in the Calipari era. The second half was good enough to give the BBN a reason to be optimistic that this team can in fact turn around the worst start to a UK basketball season since 1984.

“Look, there’s hope now. If that’s who we are those last 20 minutes, there’s hope,” Calipari said. “Alright, now we gotta play 40 [minutes]. If some guys shouldn’t be starting, they won’t start. You can’t start, man, you fumble balls, you don’t come up with it, no. If somebody’s gotta play less minutes, they’re playing less. It is what it is. I liked the fact that we came back and we toughed, and we did some good stuff.”