Kentucky "let go of the rope" at the end of the game, Calipari says

With Kentucky holding a very comfortable lead in the second half, it looked like John Calipari would have little to complain about from the Wildcats’ trip to Vanderbilt. Kentucky was up 28 points on the Commodores in the second road game of conference play, still without starting point guard Sahvir Wheeler.

In for Wheeler, TyTy Washington ran the show with 15 points, four rebounds, and four assists. He and Kellan Grady remained in the game late to close it out with Bryce Hopkins, Jacob Toppin, and Daimion Collins, while starters Davion Mintz, Keion Brooks, and Oscar Tshiebwe checked out for the evening. Tshiebwe had 30.

But after resting the starters with six and change to go, Kentucky stopped scoring. Even worse, the Wildcats weren’t defending, either. Vanderbilt kicked its offense into a new gear when Calipari went to his bench, sparking a 16-0 run by Vandy to end the game. Kentucky’s 28-point lead fell to 12 with a minute still to go. At that point, Calipari had already subbed his starters back into the game. The starting five played the final three and a half minutes without scoring, so it wasn’t just the reserves who were responsible for the late collapse.

“I put the starters back in,” Calipari said of the six-minute scoring drought. “Come on, I’m not leaving guys in. Then the starters didn’t do much better. We let go of the rope. It’s something that we’ve got to get better at.”

Not the first time, Kentucky blew second-half road leads at Notre Dame and LSU, two of the three losses on the schedule. At Notre Dame, Kentucky went eight minutes without a made basket. Last week at LSU, Kentucky went a familiar six-plus minutes without scoring in the second half against the Tigers.

Keion Brooks said, “We’ve got to continue to stay disciplined no matter what our lead is. Sometimes it’s just the way the game goes. There were some times we got some good looks down at that little stretch and just didn’t make them.”

Brooks got pulled for Jacob Toppin with two minutes to go after allowing a wide-open 3-pointer to Scotty Pippen Jr., of all people. Otherwise, he played a good game with an energetic nine and five.

Afterward, he credited Vanderbilt’s fight, saying, “They didn’t stop playing and continued to play hard. But we’ve got to hash that out, watch some film and see what we can do better and go from there.”

Calipari is headed to the film room too. Asked if Sahvir Wheeler would have helped, he replied, “I don’t know. I’ll have to watch the tape.”

“We’re getting better,” Calipari added. “It’s got to be all of us, really great execution, and then defensively you’ve got to fight and have team rebounds. I mean, we’ve got hard games coming up. Hard games.”

Up next is one of those hard games: the Tennessee Vols in Rupp Arena.

Hold onto that rope.