Another slow start plagues Kentucky down the stretch

For the fourth game in a row, Kentucky trailed by double-digits in the first half.

While two of those recent contests resulted in feel-good wins, the other two led to stinging losses. For some reason — which we’ll try to identify below — despite the many veterans and intelligent ball handlers, the Wildcats are falling into tough to overcome deficits early in games. Even with TyTy Washington and Sahvir Wheeler back in the lineup, the trend continued on Saturday against Arkansas.

Kentucky’s 75-73 loss to the Razorbacks was just the latest in a string of rusty starts. UK scored the very first bucket of the game, but sat back and watched as the Razorbacks unloaded a 15-0 run to immediately push the lead to double-digits. The same thing also happened to Kentucky against Alabama and LSU earlier this month. The biggest difference in those two outings, though, was having the homecourt advantage, which ultimately helped lead to Wildcat victories. However, on the road against Arkansas, escaping a sizable hole was always going to be a much tougher challenge — and it quickly proved to be.

Let’s look over the last four games and compare how Kentucky started those contests against how it finished.

Last 4 games: largest first-half deficit

@ No. 16 Tennessee: down 15 – lost by 13
vs. No. 25 Alabama: down 13 – won by 9
vs. LSU: down 11 – won by 5
@ No. 18 Arkansas: down 13 – lost by 2

Aside from the Tennessee game, Kentucky came back to make the other three eventful, even winning two of them. But it’s no coincidence that the two times UK has gotten into deficits and lost, both have come on the road against top 20 opponents. Kentucky obviously has the talent to overcome big gaps, but that can only get the team so far against some of the best units in the country. Something might need to change in order to kick the early offense into gear.

“I may switch around who I’m starting just to change it. We’ll see,” Kentucky head coach John Calipari said after the game. “I got to watch the tape and see why it was what it was, what did they do, what did we do. But in the end, we could have won the game.”

In reality, the starting lineup has already been changed around a bit in recent games due to the injuries of Washington and Wheeler. Davion Mintz and Kellan Grady replaced those two in the starting backcourt over the last three outings. Perhaps the lack of continuity is leading to the slow-starting efforts. It’s admittedly tough to jump-start a team without its two primary point guards. 100 percent health from top-to-bottom might fix some of these issues before they can begin.

That might be the simplest answer, too. If Kentucky can just establish some momentum across the board, these early droughts might be fewer and farther in between. But it’s now becoming a bit of a trend that has directly led to two road losses; there isn’t much time left to build that lost rhythm.

“We just did not start like how we always start,” Kentucky center Oscar Tshiebwe, who posted 30 points and 18 rebounds, said after the game. “I think we could start like how we finish, it could be easy for us today.”

While it’s been encouraging to see Kentucky scratch and fight its way back into games, particularly through Calipari’s impressive halftime adjustments, the slow starts continue to plague this group down the stretch. UK has been borderline unstoppable in the “Middle 8” minutes, or the final four minutes of the first half and first four minutes of the second half. The ‘Cats always finds a way to make a run during that stretch.

“I’m not sure,” Wheeler said postgame of what has led to the team’s slow starts. “Some of it is just, there’s days you’re gonna have a great start and there’s days where you’re not. The biggest thing is just playing the full 40 minutes. A team like that, when you’re on the road, and you’re playing Kentucky, everything is gonna go right for them that first 5-10 minutes. It’s about staying the course, keep guarding, staying even-keeled, and everything is gonna level out at some point. Those shots can’t go in all the time.”

In most cases, the opponent’s shots haven’t been going in all the time. The law of averages eventually works in UK’s favor. But the first 16 minutes of the game are just as important as the next four, and that’ll be even more true once March rolls around. Kentucky has two more regular-season games to try and massage out this new issue.