The sequence in Athens that defined Kentucky's season

The sequence at the 3:36 mark in Kentucky‘s loss at Georgia was the story of the Wildcats’ season. Down three points coming out of a TV timeout, Chris Livingston inbounds the ball to Oscar Tshiebwe, who immediately passes it back to Antonio Reeves, then to Cason Wallace. Wallace holds to the 11-second mark of the shot clock, then kicks right to Jacob Toppin, who hands it off to Reeves with seven seconds to go.

Reeves tosses it back to Toppin with five, dribble hand-off to Livingston at the top of the key with three, step back 3-pointer at the buzzer: airball.

The shot lands on the ‘L’ of Bulldogs on the baseline for a shot-clock violation. Out of a timeout. Down three points in a must-win game for the Wildcats, three minutes to go.

“The guy that was supposed to catch it and dribble to the top didn’t. Still, there are some execution problems,” John Calipari said after the game. “We looked, we knew they were going to go with Oscar, so we threw it to who we wanted to, and then he passed it. And then we’re like, ‘what?’ All of a sudden, we’re like, ‘what?'”

Then on the other end, Georgia gets it to Braelen Bridges in the high post, who swings it to the left corner for the open three for Jabri Abdur-Rahim with 13 seconds on the shot clock. Bang, six-point lead with 2:55 to go. Crowd goes wild, momentum gone.

Ball game.

“The defensive ones, too,” Calipari added. “We were trapping the post and the guy didn’t trap. We were trapping the post from the baseline, the big guy let him go middle and throw it to that corner. No. We’re doing this stuff every day.”

At the end of the day, Kentucky couldn’t execute down the stretch while the opposition could. In crunch-time scenarios, once again, the Wildcats came up short. They couldn’t come up with the shots or the stops, the story of this team’s season up to this point.

KSR’s Jack Pilgrim and Steven Peake were in Stegeman Coliseum down in Athens watching the loss unfold. On the drive home, they turned on the camera and microphones and broke it all down on a new edition of the Sources Say Podcast. More specifically, that sequence and why this team continues to fall short when it comes time to execute in big games.

Take a look: