It's one step forward, two steps back for this high-potential, low-floor Kentucky team

What do you even say after something like that? It started as a track meet before transitioning into a defensive rock fight — or at least teams launching bricks back and forth. And then Kentucky dug in for a 12-1 run to close out the first half, followed by a 6-0 run to open the second to go up 15 with 19:11 to go.

It was right there. Not just a win, but an ass-whooping in Baton Rouge. LSU was on the cusp of letting go of the rope, looking for a reason to give up.

And then the Tigers stole back the lead six minutes later, only to go up five with 10:21 to go. A 20-point swing in less than nine minutes.

A game Kentucky had no business losing

It’s easy to get mad at the buzzer-beater, certainly after Rob Dillingham’s go-ahead jumper in the final seconds to put you a single stop away from the road win. The ball-watching on the putback is what nightmares are made of. Wasting Dillingham’s human flamethrower effort of 10 points in the final two-plus minutes and 21 overall in the second half is a tough pill to swallow in general.

But it shouldn’t have even gotten to that point. Up 15 in the second half, you win that game. You rode the early back-and-forth scoring wave, then responded to a stretch of six points in ten minutes with an 18-1 run a minute into the second half. Taking on a team that just overcame a 16-point second-half deficit to upset a ranked South Carolina team on the road, you knew how crucial the next few possessions were on both ends. You knew a counterpunch was coming, and you take it?

That’s not just disappointing, it’s demoralizing if not embarrassing.

“50-50 balls cost us the game. That’s all we talk about, 50-50 balls,” John Calipari said after the loss. “Not only the last play, but the play before that. Up 15, they jerk it from us, kick it out, make a three and another three, now it’s anybody’s ballgame. You can’t win. Don’t tell me about your offense. If you’re not going to come up with 50-50 balls, you can’t win.”

A disappointing response

You had the blueprint in the upset win at Auburn. Kentucky went into the most hostile environment in the SEC and made a statement, putting together the team’s best all-around effort of the season. The Cats looked like legitimate contenders, finally cooking defensively after finding historic offensive success all year long.

The issue is they traveled to Baton Rouge thinking they had earned something already as if the seven losses up to that point hadn’t happened. Like the win on the Plains was some cure-all magical spell, the team asking for banner measurements to save a spot up in the Rupp Arena rafters with three weeks’ worth of regular season games left to go, let alone whatever happens in the postseason. There was a sense of complacency and a touch of arrogance that just left you with a bad taste in your mouth.

Right when you thought this team was past that nonsense, it threw it right back in your face. Rather than stacking wins and building real momentum ahead of March, you’re back to the same tired can beat anybody, can lose to anybody takes that have plagued this team all season. You go from allowing just 39% shooting overall and 36.4% from three in the first half to 48.5% and 55.6% in the second, solid defense right back down to bad. No fight or physicality, no tenacity. Just playing right into your reputation, handing ammunition over and telling doubters to fire away.

And that includes the head honcho himself. John Calipari was quick to pull the trigger at Auburn, taking out media members one by one like a rooftop sniper for even hinting this team could be dead in the water. The grandstanding turned into two questions and three total minutes of talking after losing to a ho-hum LSU team just four days later. He set himself up for the vultures patiently circling, waiting for his next misstep. Any trust or benefit of the doubt built up against the first set of Tigers was lost with the second inside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

Building back trust in the Cats

Now we’re back to square one, Kentucky sitting at 18-8 overall and 8-5 in conference play, tied for fifth in the SEC. Five regular season games remaining, three of them against Quad 1 opponents. Dreams of earning at least a share of the league title are all but over, a Thursday start in the SEC Tournament very much in play. What about March Madness seeding? That’s like throwing darts at a dartboard at this point.

The range is laughably wide for postseason play to be so close and it’s because the range of possibilities with this team is laughably wide. You just never know what you’re going to get when the ball is tipped on any given night.

That’s both beautiful and terrifying with so much riding on a run in March.

A scary range of possibilities

The conversation should have been about Antonio Reeves’ brilliant first half and Dillingham’s electric second. Justin Edwards made shots while Adou Thiero went for eight points, nine rebounds, four blocks and two steals — he’s emerging as a potential pro. Reed Sheppard became the first player in school history to have at least five steals in three straight games. He’s now up to fifth all-time in the single-season record books with 70 total.

Instead, we have to talk about the discipline and razor-thin margin for error. The bad habits that just keep creeping back in and whether the team can overcome them to realistically make a run. The otherwordly potential, but also the damning floor. This is a group talented enough to win a national championship, but flawed enough to lose in the opening round.

So close, yet so far.

You want to trust and believe, but these Wildcats just refuse to make it easy, especially for themselves. It forces us to go back to wait-and-see mode with not much time left to wait. Coach Cal says this team is built for March, but without a single three-game winning streak since the start of the new year, this group has to prove it can string together enough victories to get out of the opening weekend first.