Kentucky takes two losses on the first day of March -- a month that has not been kind to the Wildcats

Kentucky trailed by 15 points at halftime, then followed it up by turning it over six times in the first seven possessions of the second half with zero field goal attempts. Three minutes of some of the worst basketball this team has played all season, coming after finishing the first half with zero made field goals in the final 7:21, missing ten straight going into the break. 11 straight minutes without scoring a basket.

The game was so bad they literally just turned off the ABC feed and started showing Texas Tech vs. Kansas with the occasional NHL look-in.

(They actually blamed it on technical difficulties at Rupp Arena — apparently the ABC truck equipment caught on fire — but the timing was pretty suspicious.)

We should’ve known it just wasn’t meant to be when a guy averaging 2.1 threes per game hit not one, but two banked-in shots from deep on back-to-back possessions just over five minutes in. Actually, it was that 12-0 stretch pushing a one-point Auburn lead to 13 points with 14:20 to go in the half. It wouldn’t get closer than six points the rest of the way, no closer than 13 points in the second half while ballooning to as many as 22 points with 14:31 left on the clock.

Nothing went right for the Wildcats inside Rupp Arena, ending with the Tigers taking an actual belt and using it to recreate the ass-whooping that took place early Saturday afternoon.

No. 1 Auburn celebrates after beating Kentucky in Rupp Arena for the first time since 1988. pic.twitter.com/fMiQeCXgLK

— Vince Wolfram (@vincewolfram15) March 1, 2025

Thought things were bad then? Mark Pope made sure to really pee on your Cheerios a few short minutes later by announcing Jaxson Robinson would be undergoing season-ending wrist surgery this week, officially wrapping up his time at Kentucky and playing college basketball overall.

I’ll take your 16-point home loss and raise you a second-leading scorer out for the year, right before the team starts its postseason run. Sound good?

You wonder how much that news impacted this team mentally going into a game like this — Koby Brea said the Wildcats learned “yesterday or the day before” that Robinson would have the surgery, a massive dark cloud hanging over their heads before hosting the No. 1 team in the country. Sure, you can have a next-man-up mindset and strive to play for your brother, maybe even make up the counting stats lost on any given night, but that doesn’t replace the threat that is Robinson as a gravity shooter and scorer. It’s the idea that he’s one touch away from going off, someone you always have to account for every second he’s on the floor.

Others have stepped up in his absence OK, I suppose, but it’s been a by-committee scramble hoping and praying you have enough in the tank elsewhere or one bench piece unexpectedly going nuclear to make up the difference. Tonight? A combined five bench points with one total bucket in 50 combined minutes between five players.

Pope was asked about the team’s energy and if it was where it needed to be taking on the best team in college basketball. Like he always does, the Kentucky head coach shouldered the blame and said more could have been done to get the Wildcats in the right headspace before this one.

“I would love to make excuses on that. That ultimately falls on my shoulders,” Pope said. “… I failed to lead our team today to have the energy that is required for us to come out and be great. It’s not a lack of desire. There’s a — it was a whole cocktail of energy miscues, some being sped up miscues, some terrific shot-making from Auburn. All put together resulted in a really, really terrible day for us.”

In reality, Kentucky looked like a team that just found out its star scorer and veteran leader, the player once described as Pope’s ‘interpreter’ going into the year after joining forces three seasons ago at BYU, will never play another game at this level. That’s a devastating blow for any program and must be accounted for when talking about what went wrong and why the game was never really competitive, especially after some early bad luck — again, Auburn’s Miles Kelly banked in two threes in the first six minutes en route to a career-high nine 3-pointers and a season-high 30 points.

Let me put it this way, actually: Koby Brea (21), Andrew Carr (20), Lamont Butler (15) and Amari Williams (13) combined for 69 points while National Player of the Year favorite Johni Broome was held to just nine points on 3-9 shooting and 3-7 at the line in 33 minutes. UK also took 38 free throws, good for second on the year and first among high-major competition. If you would have told me those would be the numbers before the game, I’d ask you where we’re celebrating after the win.

Instead, the Wildcats trailed for 39:21 of 40 total minutes in a double-digit home loss.

There were obvious reasons that happened and the result was what it was. We already talked about the bench production, but those 18 turnovers were killers — Auburn scored 21 points off turnovers compared to just nine for Kentucky on eight Tiger giveaways — as were just four total made 3-pointers on a season-low 17 attempts from deep. You just won’t win many games with any of those numbers, even if you’ve got a four-man group producing the way Brea, Carr, Butler and Williams did.

At the end of the day, Auburn is a juggernaut and anything short of a Final Four would be a disappointment for Bruce Pearl’s group — the Tigers now have a higher KenPom team rating (+37.53) than Kentucky’s 38-1 team in 2014-15 (+36.91), for those curious. They’ve been racking up double-digit wins all season en route to 16 Quad 1 victories and an all-time resume. Losing by 16 to this team isn’t something to lose your mind over, no matter how slow and painful the death in a game that inexcusably lasted two hours and 38 minutes thanks to 44 total fouls called, 69 free throws and seven trillion monitor reviews.

You live with that. Can Kentucky live with the news Mark Pope delivered on Jaxson Robinson’s season-ending surgery at the podium just minutes later? That feels like another story with just two regular season games to go and the SEC Tournament just 11 days away, Selection Sunday four days after that.

Very rarely do you lose twice on the same day, but Big Blue Nation felt that on the first day of a month that has not been kind to this fanbase in recent years. Hopefully the rest of March finishes better than it started — they sure could use it.