Cold shooting comes at bad time as Kentucky loses to Tennessee again

Kentucky has played on Saturday at the SEC Tournament twice since 2019. In each of those instances, the Wildcats went home with a loss, and Tennessee moved on to the championship game. That is a tough pill for the Big Blue Nation to swallow.

Rick Barnes now owns 10 wins in 17 tries against Kentucky since arriving on Rocky Top, and the Volunteers will have a shot at the program’s first conference tournament title since 1979 on Sunday. Elsewhere, Kentucky will not get a No. 1 seed on Selection Sunday and will be firmly on the two-line when the bracket is released tomorrow.

For now, it’s time to look back at what went wrong for the Wildcats in the 69-62 loss to Tennessee. Despite a solid defensive performance, Kentucky was unable to win due to a putrid offensive showing. KSR is diving into the box score to pull out the numbers that told the story in Tampa.

Mid-range inefficiency on high volume

At the end of the day, you’ll pull up the box score and see Kentucky was 2 of 20 (10%) from three and just assume that is why the Wildcats lost the game. Simply, UK did not make enough perimeter shots. However, you would really just be ignoring the first 35 minutes of the contest.

After the final media timeout in the second half, Kentucky got in desperation mode and launched five three-point shots. In the 35 minutes before, the team did not lean into the outside shot. Instead, the Wildcats settled for mid-range looks. Against Vanderbilt, the Wildcats were 17 of 34 (50%) from mid-range, and that efficiency allowed Kentucky to avoid an upset.

The efficiency went away against Tennessee, and that doomed the Wildcats.

Kentucky finished the game just 8 of 26 (30.8%) for 16 points on 26 field goal attempts. At halftime, Kentucky was 4 of 16 from mid-range. That slow start doomed the Wildcats and made scoring very difficult as most of the attempts came from the in-between area.

For the game, Kentucky was just 10 of 46 (21.7%) on shots away from the rim for 22 total points. Beating good teams will be very hard when posting shooting numbers like that.

Defense allows Kentucky to hang around

As the season ended, Kentucky put together some subpar defensive performances. In the two games in Tampa, the Wildcats made some strides on that end of the floor.

After putting the clamps on Scotty Pippen Jr., Kentucky came out and had another good effort against Tennessee. The Vols put up 1.03 points per possession after a hot start built an early 18-8 lead thanks to four three-point makes. From that point forward, Kentucky took away the threes and had some effective two-point defense (45.9%). Meanwhile, UK forced 13 turnovers which led to 14 points on the other end.

Kennedy Chandler was able to get loose, and his two-point shooting (7 of 13) got Tennessee a ton of big scores at critical points, but overall the defense was good enough to win. That will make this loss that much harder to swallow for John Calipari.

Guards determine games in March

In some ways, this game will be a throwaway. National Player of the Year candidate Oscar Tshiebwe played just 25 minutes due to foul trouble when fouls have not been an issue for him all year. Kentucky had to play huge stretches of this game with a significant dependence on their perimeter players.

There was more bad than good.

Kentucky’s guards combined to score 30 points on 41 field goal attempts. The four players were just 1 of 17 from deep and produced 11 free throw attempts. Kentucky needs them to be better than that.

Neither Kellan Grady nor Davion Mintz hit a shot away from the rim for the entire game, and both Sahvir Wheeler and TyTy Washington needed a lot of volume to put points on the scoreboard. Meanwhile, Tennessee got 39 points from their backcourt on 29 shots with a 4 of 11 mark from deep.

Sometimes the game is pretty simple. Kentucky’s guards were not good enough to beat Tennessee. The same thing happened the last time these two teams faced each other.

Stats that stood out

• Keion Brooks Jr. finished the game with 19 points on 11 shots and poured in just his seventh three-point make at a critical part of the game. The junior four-man had a lot to do with Kentucky hanging around in the second half.
• In two games at the SEC Tournament, Sahvir Wheeler scored 18 total points but needed 24 field goal attempts to get there. The junior point guard is a key part of Kentucky’s winning blueprint, but the shot attempt volume is a bit too high.
• Kentucky was minus-17 with Kellan Grady on the floor against Tennessee. A shocking number for a player that led the Wildcats in minutes during the season. The super senior had his worst performance of the year at an unfortunate time.
• For the first time since November, TyTy Washington has scored 17-plus points in consecutive outings. After getting an efficient 25 points against Vanderbilt, the freshman needed 16 shots to get 17 points against Tennessee but stayed aggressive and made some big plays for Kentucky late.