Late-game mental lapses cost Kentucky against Texas: 'Definitely let this one get away.'

Despite being down two starting guards and a backup point guard, Kentucky was in position to beat Texas on the road Saturday night. A layup by Amari Williams, who was excellent with 18 points and 12 rebounds for his eighth double-double this season, with 3:51 left in the game gave the Wildcats a 69-64 lead.

All UK had to do was play smart basketball in the final segment to steal a big, shorthanded win.

But less than 90 seconds later, Texas regained the lead. Tre Johnson and Tramon Mark, who combined to score 58 points, continued to cook. But Kentucky also continuously shot itself in the foot. After Williams’ layup, UK didn’t score again until hitting a couple of garbage time three-pointers in the closing 20 seconds.

Kentucky led for nearly 23 minutes of this game compared to just 13 for Texas. The opportunity to seal the deal was there. Having someone like Lamont Butler or Jaxson Robinson (or both!) on the floor down the stretch certainly would have helped. But even still, losing in that fashion stings. UK finished with 15 turnovers (and just 10 assists), tied for the second-most this season, while shooting just 6-24 from deep.

“Definitely let this one get away,” Senior Ansley Almonor told Jack Givens on postgame radio after the 82-78 loss. “Playing in the SEC is tough competition every single night so we got to make sure we’re locked in for all 40 minutes. It can’t just be 36, 38 minutes. You’ve got to be locked in all 40 because those two, four, five minutes that we’re not locked in, that’s when another team could come in and take the lead and it’s over from there.”

It wasn’t just a lack of scoring that hurt the ‘Cats though. Two terribly timed turnovers — one by Travis Perry, one by Otega Oweh — in the final three minutes proved costly. Texas scored four points immediately off those mistakes. Oweh’s turnover happened when Perry and Koby Brea were confused about who the inbounds pass was for as the ball went between them both and sailed out of bounds. Two Texas offensive rebounds in one possession with under two minutes to go resulted in a bucket for the Longhorns. That’s six free, late-game points wrapped up neatly with a bow on top.

Every minor mental mistake from UK was put under a microscope. This loss is far from the end of the world (and is still a respectable Quad 1 defeat), but Kentucky simply failed to handle the pressure in this situation.

“We weren’t focused on the next play,” Almonor added. “Coach always says we gotta make sure we move onto the next play. We carried baggage into that possession (when Texas grabbed the offensive rebounds) and we must have been thinking about something else except for getting that rebound because we knew we can get those rebounds. We always do. Little lapses cause mistakes like that to happen.”

Luckily, those same mistakes — most of them unforced errors — can be cleaned up moving forward. But it’s a tough lesson to learn at this stage in the season playing in an unforgiving conference with multiple starters sidelined.