COLUMN: Kentucky Basketball Feels Broken Beyond Repair
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Where does Kentucky basketball go from here?
The answer appears to be only up from a 26-point thrashing at the hands of the seventh-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide, but the Wildcats have been chock-full of lamenting surprises this season, so who knows how deep the bottom really goes?
"It's a long season, it's a long season, it's a long season," point guard Sahvir Wheeler repeated when asked if things felt urgent after the loss.
While that may be true, the time for Kentucky to start building an NCAA Tournament résumé is nowhere near as lengthy. In four opportunities against Quadrant 1 opponents, the Cats are winless and frankly aren't that close to being 1-3.
This latest blunder in T-Town moved the SEC record to 1-2, with the only win being a 4-point floundering victory over LSU, who dropped to a Quadrant 3 team following a loss to Texas A&M. If there is a leg for Kentucky to stand on, it must be a phantom limb of some sort.
Wheeler opted for the optimism route postgame, a path that the Cats' feet have become far too intimate with since the regular season began in November, though the trek really began after the stunning loss to Saint Peter's last March.
"Let's say we win out," he proposed. "Only lost two league games...are you still asking me that question at the end of the year? Probably not."
Let's enter the wacky world of hypotheticals for a quick second to entertain the possibility of UK winning out in conference play. That would require four wins over top-20 teams in KenPom, two of which would come on the road — in Knoxville and Fayetteville. That would also require a clean sweep of five other road matchups — which is wishful thinking in and of itself, as the Cats have looked far from a capable basketball team when playing outside of Rupp Arena.
Label me a pessimist, but i'm not buying into that even being a legitimate outcome for this team. Is that a script that Calipari could even buy into at this point?
"We are better than we played, and I told them after, most times you’re not as good as you think and you’re not as bad as you think," Calipari said postgame. "Let’s just hope we’re not as bad as we look today.”
Hope! What a powerful word. That's where the Wildcats currently are right now. No guarantees that things will be turned around, no confidence, just hope. It doesn't feel like real hope, either.
To be fair, how could you even blame Calipari for doing anything other than just hoping at this very moment? He's seen the product that his players are putting out on the court, after all. Watching Kentucky basketball is domestic drudgery.
It all begs the question: What happened to the swagger that gushed out of the program for years on end? Swaggy Cal? Hello? Is anyone there?
Things have gone wrong for a Calipari group on the road many times before, but nothing that ever felt as soul-crushing as Saturday afternoon. The reigning National Player of the Year Oscar Tshiebwe was left useless, Cason Wallace and Jacob Toppin couldn't even think about hitting the broad side of a barn and the defense proceeded to fall apart in the second half.
All of this occurred while Bama coach Nate Oats is running mental laps around Calipari, star freshman forward Brandon Miller's All-American campaign is kickstarting and the Crimson Tide faithful is chanting "NIT! NIT! NIT!" and "Cal to Texas!"
Oh, so THAT's where the swagger went. Rammer Jammer has never felt more fitting after a win. Kentucky got the hell, will, fight — whatever you want to call it — beat out of it on Saturday.
The worst loss to Alabama in program history. The third fewest points in a game under Calipari. All of Big Blue Nation's worst nightmares have come to life, and they don't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.
Oats was nice enough to denounce his student section's not-so-bold claim of UK not making the NCAA Tournament, saying the Cats will be fine. Whether he actually believes that or not is up for debate.
"Kentucky’s gonna be alright. They had a bad shooting night. They didn’t shoot it well," he told reporters. "Our guys did a good job defensively on them. But now, I’m pulling for Kentucky to go get a bunch of wins at this point."
Add Oats to the list of people yearning for some sort of turnaround, that now seems less and less likely.
The Gonzaga beating was rough, but everyone is allowed a pass. The UCLA slog was a wakeup call that things might not be what they seem. The Missouri smushing deflated aspirations, but the Alabama loss solidified one of the few certainties surrounding basketball in Lexington: UK's second-rate brand of basketball is spiraling downward in a hurry.
The levy is broken, and it doesn't feel repairable.
More on Kentucky's loss to the Crimson Tide here.
More on Oscar Tshiebwe's lackluster performance here.
WATCH: Calipari, Wheeler postgame
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