Poor Offensive Performance vs. Tennessee Reminiscent of 2010 Elite Eight Loss to West Virginia

If it felt like you were having deja vu watching Kentucky lay brick after brick from the three-point line against Tennessee, you are not alone. In fact, the box score from Saturday’s SEC Tournament semifinal loss looks eerily similar to the stats from the most infamous postseason UK offensive performance of the 21st century — Kentucky’s 2010 Elite Eight loss to West Virginia.

John Calipari’s first team ran into an unlikely buzzsaw, West Virginia’s 1-3-1 zone. Kentucky had plenty of star power with John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins, but there was one glaring weakness, three-point shooting. It all came to light at the worst moment possible, shooting 4-for-32 from long range with a Final Four berth on the line.

Unlike the 2010 team, Calipari’s 2022 squad has plenty of capable shooters, including Kellan Grady, the top three-point shooter in the SEC entering today’s game. That’s what made Saturday’s shooting performance so baffling. Kentucky was the SEC’s top three-point shooting team and had the second-best adjusted offensive efficiency on KenPom. That same team sank just 10% of its 20 three-point attempts against Tennessee, a team they scored 107 points against at Rupp Arena back in January.

Tennessee, West Virginia Box Score Similarities

Allow me to share images of each offensive box score side-by-side before highlighting some of the similarities. We’ll keep it congruent and screen-grab the stats from ESPN.com.

• Both teams lost by seven points, scoring 66 in 2010 and 62 in 2022.
• UK shot 34.4% vs. WVU, 34.4% vs. Tennessee
• UK shot 12.2% from three vs. WVU (4/32), and 10% vs. Tennessee (2/10)
• National Players of the Year, John Wall and Oscar Tshiebwe, each fouled out.
• Kentucky out-rebounded its opponent in each game.
• Grady, Mintz and Wheeler combined to score 13 points on 4-of-25 from the floor. Bledsoe, Miller and Liggins scored 16 points on a combined 5-of-22 from the field.

Reliving the Elite Eight loss to West Virginia is horrific. It’s one of the most painful losses of the Calipari era, second only to the Wisconsin Final Four failure in 2015. Now is not the time to toil in negative memories, but it does put UK’s offensive performance against Tennessee into perspective.

It’s hard to play as bad as the Wildcats did today and they still came back and had a chance to win it in the final minute. A pessimist may believe this is the beginning of the end. An optimist is glad the Wildcats laid a dud before the real tournament begins next week. After all, they can’t play that poorly on offense again, right?