By ASHLEY SCOBY
What was supposed to be a bounce-back game for the Kentucky Wildcats ended up being one of their poorest offensive performances of the season. After a 64-50 loss at Notre Dame Thursday, the Cats shot less than 30 percent on their way to snapping John Calipari’s home winning streak of 54 games and losing to Baylor, 64-55.
“I don’t know what you can say,” Calipari said. “1-for-11, 1-for-9, 3-for-14, 2-for-9… We are still trying to teach them how to finish games, and they don’t know.”
One of the most telling stats from Saturday was Kentucky’s inability to score second-chance points. After grabbing 21 offensive rebounds, the Cats only scored 8 second-chance points against an athletic Baylor team. Although Kentucky boasts three players listed as 6-10 or taller, Baylor’s size and length were credited for stopping UK from finishing around the basket.
“I think it (Kentucky’s shooting performance) was a lot of our length,” said center Isaiah Austin. “Putting me on the wing, I’m 7’1, so that’s a lot of length out there. Our guards were quick on the other side and we had Cory (Jefferson) in the middle. We just stretched the floor on them on the defensive end.”
Baylor’s defense certainly worked against the Cats’ bigs in particular. Nerlens Noel shot 3-14, Willie Cauley-Stein was 3-7 and Kyle Wiltjer went 1-11 (1-9 from behind the arc). How much of that offensive performance was because of Baylor’s play, and how much was simply because of Kentucky is the question. Cauley-Stein put part of the blame on his own team’s shoulders.
“You don’t realize it until you look on paper afterwards,” he said. “We just weren’t shooting well, and felt like nothing was going our way. Our focus isn’t there.”
Calipari also attributed the “lid-on-the-basket” phenomenon that afflicted his team partially to their shot selection, saying that it “stunk.” Baylor primarily ran a zone defense against the Cats Saturday, and Kentucky struggled with getting easy shots up. According to Drew, the Bears ran man defense against last year’s Kentucky team in their Elight Eight matchup, and he wanted to try something different this time.
Whether it was from the three-point line (4-22) or only scoring eight points off offensive rebounds, Kentucky struggled against the zone, as well as Baylor’s individual players. The Bears’ head coach, however, saw the Cats’ shooting performance as an abnormal one.
“Kentucky missed shots that they’re going to make later in the year,” said Coach Scott Drew. “Last game, we missed shots so I know what that’s like. I thought we did a good job of trying to contest shots but at the end of the day, I know there were some shots that they normally will make.”
In order to make those shots later in the year, Calipari said that his team has to put in the extra time and develop that “will to win” that he says has been lacking so far.
“What I need our players to understand is that we are not a very good team right now and we are not individually very good,” he said. “So, how much time have you been spending extra in the gym? Have you been spending any extra time? No? Why? … You’re not shooting the ball very well right now. Get in the gym.”
The Cats will have a couple of days to take on Calipari’s challenge before meeting Samford 7 p.m. Tuesday.
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