Kentucky must now balance injury disaster and maintaining the resume

Up five with 3:51 to go, Texas went on a 14-1 run to go up 78-70 with 34 seconds left on the clock. It was an absolute collapse, a stretch that saw Kentucky miss all four of its shot attempts, give up four offensive rebounds and turn the ball over twice as the Longhorns finished 5-6 with eight made free throws. With Mark Pope seen as the media darling of this cycle and Rodney Terry coaching for his job seemingly by the game at this point, it was the latter earning the tip of the cap for his team’s late-game execution on both ends as he lives to see another day leading the program.

How much credit does Texas get compared to the blame Kentucky deserves for crumbling in that final segment? Is it as simple as the Wildcats missing Lamont Butler, Jaxson Robinson and Kerr Kriisa, just not having the juice to get over the finish line? Pope will tell you that’s not the case. 

“I have a good team,” he said. “The guys on the court are good players, and we’re good enough to win. These guys have proven that. We just didn’t do it in the last three minutes and 45 seconds tonight. That’s just it. It’s super painful. It’s not acceptable.”

But is it truly unacceptable for Kentucky to find itself down three lead guards — two being the team’s second- and third-leading scorers — and lose in a true road game to a desperate Texas team that had lost four of five in the SEC whose coach had just been booed on his home floor days before? You respect Pope being his own harshest critic in that moment, but it’s a nuanced conversation with some grace deserved given the circumstances while also not giving the Wildcats a total pass.

On one hand, you can say with confidence Kentucky was missing what Butler provides defensively and as a playmaker to go with Robinson’s shot-making. Tre Johnson went nuclear for a career-high 32 points while Tramon Mark added a season-high 26 points — Butler undoubtedly slowing down some of that production while helping assist on more than 10 of the team’s 26 made baskets. Then with the shooting, the Wildcats went just 6-24 from three on the day, good for 25.0 percent. Take away two garbage-time threes from Travis Perry and Otega Oweh in the final 18 seconds and the team hit just four shots from deep with the game still within reach, three coming in the first half. Don’t discount Robinson’s length at 6-7 limiting Johnson (6-6) and Mark (6-5) some, too.

On the other, Koby Brea is way too good to score four points on zero made field goals, snapping his streak of a made 3-pointer in every game as a Wildcat. He finished 0-6 overall and 0-4 from three in a team-high 35 minutes. Oweh’s double-digit scoring streak was extended with a 20-point night, but his three turnovers — two in the second half — were as costly as any of the team’s 13 while the defensive lapses came at excruciating times. Perry also had two second-half turnovers to give him three overall, plus seven combined from the bigs in Amari Williams (3), Andrew Carr (2) and Brandon Garrison (2). Texas turned those cough-ups into 21 points off turnovers compared to 12 for the Cats. Self-inflicted mistakes that wouldn’t have been totally erased at full strength. As Pope made clear after the loss, focus wasn’t where it needed to be, which is inexcusable for this group considering the let-down performances in similar matchups against Clemson, Ohio State, Georgia, Vanderbilt, Arkansas and Ole Miss.

This isn’t new for the Wildcats, unfortunately.

“We’re at that point in the season where these late-game situations, they’re going to become increasingly heated,” Pope said. “We have incredibly painful moments from this game where we weren’t present. We will learn from that.”

Thing is, there are only six regular season games remaining, then only two guaranteed matchups from there, one in Nashville and one in the NCAA Tournament — barring a catastrophic meltdown on the season, obviously. They’re learning on the fly shorthanded, but the opportunities are extremely limited this point forward and you simply have to take the the winnable games as they come. Kentucky did not do that on Saturday in Austin.

Whether Butler, Robinson and/or Kriisa are out days or weeks or permanently, we can’t just punt on the season with losses dismissed and wins celebrated with confetti pouring down from the rafters. We’re not going to throw a temper tantrum about this loss because, again, Quad 1 road games are hard and they’re infinitely harder without three key contributors. And as the Selection Committee made clear earlier in the day, Kentucky’s injury situation will be taken into consideration with the Wildcats currently slotted at No. 10 overall as a No. 3 seed — “We think we’ve got them in the right spot,” Selection Chair member Bubba Cunningham said, adding “Kentucky had great wins.”

But when you’re up five with 3:51 to go, you find a way to win. You find a way to make shots and come up with stops, no matter who is on the floor. The Wildcats did neither and left Austin with a sixth loss in the SEC and eighth overall.

As we look ahead to a home rematch vs. Vanderbilt on Wednesday, a team ranked worse than Texas at No. 42 in the NET and coming to play on your home floor, let’s remind ourselves of Pope’s accountability after the loss and not lose sight of that standard. The Selection Committee loves the resume now with eight Quad 1 wins while also keeping an open mind with the team’s injury situation, but that tune can shift in a hurry if the Wildcats aren’t careful. With four Quad 1 matchups ahead to wrap up the regular season, Kentucky can’t have the same lack of focus in the last segment of the season it did in the last segment of the game against Texas.

Things can still get away from this group, just as we saw inside the Moody Center. It’s their job now to not blow this resume up right before they earn the reward four weeks away on Selection Sunday — no matter the disaster injury situation today.