Kentucky reverts to bad habits vs. Texas A&M: "We just weren't ourselves"
Kentucky came into the SEC Tournament riding its biggest wave of momentum all season. Five straight wins capped off with an 85-81 upset of No. 4 Tennessee in Knoxville. It felt like the Cats were hitting their stride at just the right time. Tonight’s 97-87 loss to Texas A&M in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals proved Kentucky’s bad habits are still there, and still costly.
John Calipari said passing was the most egregious of Kentucky’s errors in Nashville. Gone was the Kentucky team that moved the ball fluidly around the court, dashing teams with open looks and burning them in transition. Instead, the Cats were stuck, the normally explosive offense gone stagnant.
“I told ’em after, we didn’t pass the ball to each other like we’ve been doing,” Calipari said. “When the ball stops, we’re not the same team. Go one on five, you can’t make a play that way. We haven’t for weeks. Today we kind of did.”
“We didn’t play like we’ve normally been playing,” Reed Sheppard said. “We didn’t share the ball. We got selfish and tried to make home run plays, just try and take over the game by ourselves.”
“I think it kind of comes back to things we dealt with earlier in the season,” Tre Mitchell added. “We’re a completely different team when we don’t move the basketball. I think this is just kind of emphasizing that for us.”
Not only were the Cats not moving the ball enough, they turned it over way too often. Kentucky had 14 turnovers to Texas A&M’s six, leading to 18 Aggie points.
“We had some really bad turnovers today that led to baskets,” Cal said. “When you’re talking a four- to six-point game, eight-point game, but you gave them three breakaways, think about that. I’m chalking it up to, you know what, they played really good, we didn’t play as well as we’ve been playing, and you lose.”
Regression on defense
Calipari believed Kentucky’s poor ball movement even impacted the defense. The Aggies have only scored 90+ points twice this season — both times against the Cats. Wade Taylor IV and Tyrece Radford, who combined for 59 points in the win in College Station, had 55 total tonight, getting to the rim with ease.
“When you’re not passing the ball to each other, and everybody’s not touching the ball, it bleeds into your defense, too. But they did this to us down there, too. We knew. They only out-rebounded us by a couple, but their turnovers, points off of turnovers, 18, ours was 4. But we shoot 50% from the two, 40% from the three-point line. Nine blocks. Pretty even. 21 assists. Just got to guard better. 87 points is enough to win most basketball games, unless they score 97.”
Calipari made sure to give plenty of credit to Texas A&M, which came into the game on the NCAA Tournament bubble and likely locked down a bid with the win over Kentucky. The Aggies were the aggressor from the start, playing loose and confidently, while the Cats looked tight, reverting to bad habits. Texas A&M averaged 6.7 made threes per game coming into tonight; the Aggies had 8 in the first half and 11 overall.
“We just weren’t ourselves today,” Calipari said. “I want to give credit to A&M because they played well. They did good stuff today. They made more threes probably than they have in a while.”
After another short stint in Nashville, Kentucky will head back to Lexington to prepare for the NCAA Touranment. Calipari is confident they’ll be able to fix tonight’s issues before the “real stuff” begins next week.
“All I told ’em is they got to stick together now. We’ve been on a run, it’s all been fun, you win. All of a sudden you get dinged and now the real stuff starts next week. We got to be in the right frame of mind.”
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