4-Point Play: No more pulling teeth

We’ve learned a lot about this team and its public perception since Kentucky‘s loss to UNCW. The analytics don’t love the Cats — they’re No. 45 in the NET and a No. 6 seed in Joe Lunardi’s latest Bracketology — but the likes of ESPN, CBS Sports and The Athletic all still have them inside the top 15 of their respective power rankings. It happens when destroy a top-10 team, then immediately follow it up with a mid-major loss at home.

Now is the time to regroup, figuring out what happened against the Seahawks before looking ahead to the team’s trip to Philadelphia to take on Penn. We’ll start with the former in today’s 4-Point Play.

Kentucky’s offense went to the dentist

The film looked as bad as it did in real-time, but probably not how you’d expect. John Calipari said it was like taking a trip to the dentist, the players refusing to make life easier for one another offensively. A team known for unselfishness and ball security simply refused to pass the rock.

Coach Cal counted them up and the number will blow your mind.

“Why didn’t we pass the ball? We had 45 possessions of no passes or one pass,” he said. “You’ve watched us play all year, what in the world? Why?”

The coaches split film of the team’s passing against Miami, then again against UNCW. It was night and day for no reason. One game the offense was poetry in motion, the next was a root canal.

“We showed them Miami (tape). ‘Well, you just passed the ball and created shots for each other,'” he added. “We did not create one good shot for each other in this game — everything was like pulling teeth.”

There’s a reason you only go to the dentist once a year, twice at most. That visit has been checked off. No more, please.

Reed Sheppard “did everything” vs. UNCW

Laurel County’s finest earned SEC Freshman of the Week honors after a stellar two-game stretch of 23.0 points, 7.0 rebounds, 5.0 assists and 2.0 steals per game. It was also a controversial two-game stretch, fans feeling Calipari took a personal shot at Sheppard and his supporters after the UNCW loss.

He didn’t mention him by name, but you can put two and two together that ‘your favorite player in history’ is Sheppard. And Cal talked about that guy getting cooked defensively, though the full quote acknowledges that everybody got cooked and defense as a whole needed to improve.

“Staying in front of the ball — now, you may have had a player on my team that was your favorite player in history,” he said. “If he got beat 17 times on straight-line drives — I can go down the line. It just wasn’t just one guy now. And we’ve just got to get better at it.”

Calipari dove deeper into Sheppard’s award-winning play last week, adding that the standout freshman admitted he played too many minutes vs. UNCW — but it was out of necessity with DJ Wagner out. “And we just had some guys not guarding,” he added. Film revealed the in-state standout dealt with his own defensive struggles, as well, “getting beat on the bounce, even got beat on a couple of screens that went for threes.”

But through it all, Sheppard did everything in his power to avoid the upset down the stretch.

“At the end of that game, he was playing to win the game. It wasn’t like he was playing not to lose. He did everything,” Calipari said. “The one kid made the one jumper on him, but I thought he did some good stuff. … He’s playing good.”

Louisville St. Xavier hopes to avoid Kentucky wall

Calipari couldn’t help but laugh watching St. X play at a recruiting event in Louisville on Sunday. The Tigers played an entertaining and selfless brand of basketball that put them in a position to compete against arguably the best prep school in the country, one featuring the No. 1 prospects in both ’25 and ’26 — two of Kentucky’s top targets. He pulled St. X coach Kevin Klein aside after the game and complimented his team’s effort in the tight loss to Prolific Prep.

Coach Cal giving high praise to this St. X team @KySportsRadio @DanielHagerKSR @DrewFranklinKSR @KyleTucker_ATH pic.twitter.com/8zyLgeKusA

— William Lewis (@cptrdbysquilly) December 5, 2023

“They looked just like us. They threw it ahead, drove for threes, threw it around. And they were outmanned, right?” Calipari said. “I saw the coach after the game and I said, ‘That looked like us until last night.’ I said, ‘I’m trying to figure out what in the world just happened.’ He said, ‘If you figure it out, call me and let me know because if it happens to me, I need some answers.'”

The reality is all teams hit walls at various points — Kentucky’s record-setting offense was not sustainable from start to finish. Certainly not while trying to incorporate brand-new bigs and dealing with new injuries.

“Because you don’t know with kids,” he said. “They’re not machines, they’re not robots.”

Opposing coaches were calling Calipari a week ago telling him they were using Kentucky film to teach offense to their teams. Now we’re all supposed to pretend these Wildcats magically suck?

“It was uncharacteristic. Tell me why, what were we thinking so we don’t have to think that way again? What was it that changed us, where every player was thought of at a high level? Because we did it together,” he said. “You revert back to this and now it’s like, ‘Well, he’s not that good, he’s not that good, he’s not that good,’ all within five days. We have five days of every coach hitting me and saying, ‘I love to watch your team.’ You’ve got coaches using us as a training tape. And then it’s like, wait a minute, what?”

Penn lost its last game on a half-court heave

Kentucky won’t be facing a pushover in Philadelphia this weekend. On the surface, the Quakers are 5-4 with losses to Saint Joseph’s, Maryland Eastern Shore, Belmont and La Salle.

But dig below the surface and you’ll find that three of those losses came in overtime, the latest vs. La Salle being a half-court buzzer-beater. And they have a top-25 win under their belt vs. No. 21 Villanova back in November.

“Hopefully we’re gonna go to Philly and play that way. Penn, they’ve lost how many overtime games? Three. They lost three overtime games,” Calipari said. “They just lost an overtime game where a guy threw the ball in from three-quarter court. They lost on a play like that. They had St Joe’s, they beat Villanova, they’re good. We’re gonna have to play.”

WHAT A SEQUENCE! LA SALLE WINS AT THE BUZZER! pic.twitter.com/e35WgDmFK7

— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) December 3, 2023

Fortunately for the Cats, they can. And we know that because we’ve seen it with our own eyeballs. That’s something people have seemingly forgotten in less than a week.

“I’ve just got to get this team back to desperate. We played Miami and Kansas we were desperate,” Calipari said. “We were not desperate against St. Joe’s. ‘Now Miami is, they’re not…’ They beat Notre Dame by 40! So stop!

“You can have your opinion, but your hope, we don’t need to hear it. They are good and we did what we did to him, but that’s because we were in a mindset, we shared, all of that stuff.”