'We got punked' Kentucky's ugly first-half cost them a comeback win vs. Vanderbilt

Kentucky played its worst half of the entire season in Saturday’s 74-69 loss to Vanderbilt. 27 first-half points were the fewest of any half this season while 10 turnovers and a sub-40 percent shooting mark from the field compounded the issues. UK looked overwhelmed and even a bit scared by how the Commodores took control in the opening 20 minutes.

“We got punked,” Jaxson Robinson said of Kentucky’s first-half on postgame radio with Jack Givens.

It was a downright miserable start to this game for the ‘Cats. But the halftime conversation from Mark Pope nearly allowed Kentucky to overcome a 14-point halftime hole and leave Nashville with a huge win. UK outscored Vanderbilt 31-13 to open the second half and went ahead by as many as seven points. But another rough patch cost the ‘Cats to the point of no return.

Kentucky failed to score in the final three minutes of the game while turning the ball over three times. Bad decision-making was the real killer. That was all Vanderbilt needed to pull out the win.

“That last three, four minutes. That last media timeout, man,” Robinson added. “We can’t have that.”

Had the game been close at the intermission, Kentucky likely wins this one running away. But once again, the ‘Cats came out of the gate slow. The offense was unstoppable for about 12 minutes in the second half. However, they reverted to playing a non-physical brand of basketball that the ‘Dores took advantage of. Per UK statistician Corey Price, Kentucky was +21 in the first 12 minutes of the second half and -12 in the final eight.

“The last couple of games, we’ve been preaching in our locker room just guarding without fouling,” Robinson said. “We’ve been called for a lot of fouls. The last entire week while we had off, this bye week, we’ve been making sure that we can test everything without fouling. I think it made us a little timid. This is the SEC. Timid is not a word you can use in the SEC. The refs didn’t really call anything. We just gotta be tougher. That’s it.”

Kentucky didn’t look timid for most of the second half though. But a terrible first half was too much of a deficit. An even uglier finish in the final few minutes of regulation capped off a deflating loss. Four of UK’s losses this season have come when they score fewer than 70 points. The offense needs to cook for a full game for Kentucky to be at its best.

That just wasn’t the case against Vanderbilt.

“In the locker room at halftime we knew we had to come out with a different mentality, playing even harder,” Robinson said. “It started with our cutting offensively, us going and crashing the glass. I think we did a great job of defensive rebounding in that 15 minutes. We got great stops, great ball screen defense. But it’s just a matter of doing it for an entire game. We didn’t do it for the entire game and when you can’t do it for a whole 40 minutes, you’re not going to consistently win.”