South Carolina unveils blueprint for beating Kentucky in nightmare road loss

You could say it’s hard to fathom what just unfolded in Columbia, but when you put it all together, it kind of makes sense. In a vacuum, this is how you beat this Kentucky team. Slow things down, take them out of their offense and force them to guard you straight up. Hit a couple of tough shots, get physical with the Cats and muck things up, you’ve got a shot.

That’s just how you win, though. You earn the largest margin of victory vs. a top-10 team in school history by watching Kentucky revert back to its bad, selfish offensive habits while sticking with the same undisciplined, inattentive defensive tendencies that have burned the Cats all season — they’ve now given up 40 points in 11 of their last 17 halves. That’s how you get a 79-62 final score. That’s how you get the first legitimately deflating loss of the season for this group.

Few positives leaving Columbia

See, Kansas was there for the taking, but that was the first time you felt this team was a real contender. UNC Wilmington sucked, but you were missing DJ Wagner while incorporating Aaron Bradshaw into the lineup for the first time, overlooking the competition. That was our first glimpse of selfish play, bad shots and worse ball movement. But it felt like a one-off — the Cats had been historically selfless up to that point. Then Texas A&M was our first real win-or-learn moment, an opportunity to feel what it’s like to fly too close to the sun defensively. Kentucky relied too heavily on offensive dominance and finally got burned.

This one? Well, there’s really not a whole lot of positive to take from it, if any. Rob Dillingham was an offensive spark, but went rogue just as often on the other end. Antonio Reeves hit shots, but only a third of them, tied for his third-worst shooting night of the season. Tre Mitchell was efficient, but took the fourth-most shots on the team (6-8 FG) after coaches begged him to be more aggressive offensively this week. No one else scored more than four points. No one else responded well to adversity. Defense was an issue across the board. They hit singles to get it back down to two with 15 minutes to go, blinked, then found themselves down 13 at the 11:32 mark. Ballgame, the lead extending to as many as 20 and never back below 14 the rest of the way.

For the first time this season, Kentucky got punched in the mouth and never got back up.

“South Carolina really played a physical, physical game,” John Calipari said after the loss. “They were a little bit too much for us. … I saw men and I saw boys.”

Good defense, bad offense or both?

The Gamecocks didn’t commit a foul for the first 11:27 of the game — or they weren’t called for one, rather. That’s how you get some of that physicality the Wildcats struggled with. “They got manhandled,” Calipari added. It doesn’t help Jacobi Wright, a 22.7% 3-point shooter on the season, knocked down his first four attempts while USC hit 11 of 24 from deep overall (45.8%) after entering the matchup ranked No. 198 nationally in 3-point efficiency (33.6%).

“South Carolina shot the ball well,” he said. “I mean, I don’t think they’re a 50% 3-point shooting team now. Against us, everybody makes shots. I was surprised that I didn’t see a bank shot today.”

Kentucky had been averaging 19 assists to 10 turnovers per game up to this point, then went for seven assists with eight turnovers in Columbia. It was like watching UNCW all over again, one-on-ones with the ball sticking and movement away from the action limited. Calipari counted 40 possessions of one or zero passes in that loss. The tape won’t be kind for this one, either.

Does that say more about the UK offense or USC defense, which entered the matchup ranked top-40 in the country?

“Part of it is us just taking a bad shot or no ball movement. Some of it was them creating it,” Calipari said. “… You could say it’s all about defense, ‘they made us play’ — we had 27 assists last game. The game got physical and they reverted to their old habits. That means the habits we’re trying to teach are not dominant yet. It takes time.”

Gamecocks show basketball world how to slow down Cats

Kentucky dropped to No. 98 overall in defensive efficiency after giving up 79 points. It’s the first time the Wildcats have ever allowed at least 77 points in each of their first six SEC games of a season. You can now comfortably say defense is a serious issue — it’s going to take more than lane slides and wall sits to right that ship. Again, they don’t have to be elite on that end of the floor, things just can’t be an absolute nightmare. You’ve got to give yourself a chance, at least try to put your offense in position to carry you across the finish line.

This one was a new eye-opener, though. For the first time, it was the offense playing to the opponent’s pace and falling into a hole, relying on the defense to come up with stops to dig them out. Those stops would never come and the double-digit deficit remained through the final buzzer.

Now there’s a blueprint for taking down this offensive juggernaut and the Cats overall. You’re not beating this team in a true track meet — it took an otherworldly effort from Texas A&M to lose that one in College Station. But if you can force them into the half-court and bum-rush ball-handlers into making bad decisions while knocking them around a little bit? That’s the path.

“I guess people will watch that tape and say, ‘That’s how you’ve got to play them,'” Calipari said. “We’ve got to protect ourselves somehow. … It’s a great lesson. We just got pounded. You go home and get ready for the next one.”