"We needed this." Kentucky will use Tennessee loss as wake-up call

There is no spinning Kentucky’s 76-63 loss to Tennessee. The Cats turned in a clunker, and even if TyTy Washington had been 100%, it might not have been enough to take down a Volunteer team desperate for revenge in a rowdy Thompson-Boling Arena. Neither John Calipari nor Jacob Toppin minced words when speaking about Kentucky’s performance afterward.

“They needed it more, wanted it more, [were] more physical, took us out of stuff physically, and then physically banged us around offensively too, so, they deserve to win,” Calipari said.

Kentucky didn’t make a field goal for almost 11 minutes in the first half, allowing Tennessee to build a 15-point lead. The Cats were able to cut it to eight with 11:24 left but stalled again. Tennessee went on a 12-0 run over the next five minutes, dashing any hopes for a comeback.

“We came into this game, we wanted to dominate,” Toppin said. “Clearly, we did not do that. We didn’t start off the game well and it trickled into the rest of the game. We couldn’t make shots, we couldn’t execute and defensively, we weren’t disruptive at all so we’ve just got to learn from it.”

Kentucky rode a six-game winning streak into Knoxville with a shiny new No. 4 AP ranking and a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament within grasp. When asked, Toppin said a piece of humble pie could be exactly what they need to refocus heading into the final stretch.

“100%. We said that in the locker room as soon as we came in after the game: we needed this. It’s a wake-up call and now we’re going to dial back in. We’re going to lock in and we’re going to go back to dominating the game how we can.”

That starts with being physical. Too often tonight, the Cats allowed the Vols to be the aggressor, getting beat to balls and committing sloppy turnovers. Kentucky turned the ball over 14 times, leading to 20 Tennessee points.

“We got manhandled,” Calipari said. “It was a revenge game for them.”

“We’ve got to fight,” Toppin said. “They definitely outfought us. We’re not going to make every shot so we’ve just got to get in the gym and start making shots. Defensively, Coach always emphasizes how defensively it’s just fighting and effort and we didn’t bring that today so we’ve just got to watch film, see what we did wrong and take this one on the chin and move forward.”

We’ve seen Kentucky at their best and at their worst vs. Tennessee. The Cats shot a season-high 67.9% from the floor in the 107-79 win in Rupp a month ago and a season-low 34.3% in tonight’s loss in Knoxville. Hopefully, if there’s a Round Three in the SEC Tournament, we’ll get more of the former, not the latter.

“I told them, let’s go,” Calipari said of his postgame message. “We haven’t had one of these games in a while but we had one and I’ve got to give Tennessee credit. They punched us in the mouth and we didn’t do the same to them.”