Kentucky basketball struggled again Tuesday night in Athens. Mark Pope’s Kentucky squad trailed by 13 points at halftime and subsequently lost by the same score, 82-69, to Georgia in the Wildcats’ first SEC away game of the season. UK, at 12-3 overall and 1-1 in league play, shot just 24% on 3-pointers and 19 fewer free throws than Georgia. Lamont Butler, a fifth-year guard, led the Wildcats with 20 points.
Georgia, at 13-2 overall and 1-1 in SEC play, received 17 points from five-star freshman forward Asa Newell, with the majority coming in the second half. Somto Cyril, a former UK men’s basketball commit who is also a freshman, delivered big for the Bulldogs. Cyril fouled out of Tuesday’s game, although he finished with six points and a team-high eight rebounds. He had a plus-13 in 18 minutes on the court.
Just days after opening SEC play with a high-energy, high-scoring home win over a top-10 Florida team — which looks even better now that the Gators crushed previously unbeaten Tennessee by 30 points — the Wildcats appeared out of sync against Georgia. Pope’s squad will face No. 14 Mississippi State (14-1 overall, 2-0 in the SEC) on Saturday night in Starkville.
For the time being, however, Kentucky supporters will have to cope with the team’s second true road loss of the season. After the game, Pope spoke with reporters at Stegeman Coliseum in Athens to discuss Kentucky’s third consecutive loss at UGA. Here’s what the Pope said: Opening statement… I know it’s a huge victory for (Georgia). Congratulations to the guys. We are disappointed with our performance tonight. We have a lot of stuff to work on. Question regarding Kentucky basketball trailed by double digits in the first half versus high-major opponents.
The second 10-minute stretch (of first halves) has been particularly difficult for us. The first 10 minutes are fine; we’re in there, and the lads are off to a good start. Then there’s the second ten minutes, which may include some rotating exercises. Perhaps we’re becoming overly sensitive to filthy language. Perhaps this is where the game’s problems are beginning to manifest themselves. But it’s something we’re quite aware of. We had much more luck in that part last game, but we just couldn’t match that tonight.
Question about Kentucky’s continued high rate of offensive rebounds. They had fifteen today. And we’ve given up 15 offensive rebounds in two consecutive games, which is… That’s a bell we need to ring. That’s simply unacceptable for us and an indication of distraction… There were so many atypical plays on the floor tonight, and those are indications of distraction for us as a deciding team.
And we’re figuring it out and improving our ability to focus on the present moment — and exactly what’s going on — is the place where you’re forming habits. So we’re working very hard on that. When you start a project, you may take ten steps backwards before making progress, and it appears that we have done just that.
It’s almost as if the more we talk about it and practice it, the more difficult it becomes. And that’s a complex discourse among the personnel that we have to sort out. But plainly, this glass is a significant concern for us, especially in a slow-paced game like this, because holding the ball… Our ball-screen defense at the point of attack was far better. It effectively kept us out of rotation. And then, you know, we had so many situations where we had guys hitting extremely tough shots, and we either fouled them excessively or failed to recover. And it was not a rotation issue.
So that’s going to be, you know, one of the things where we’ll have to find out how to be absolutely hyper-focused at that time. I have a question about Jaxson Robinson’s recent offensive difficulties.
It’s merely the ebb and flow of the game. That is all it is. Jaxson’s been doing this for a while. He is a shot maker. The most essential thing for Jaxson, and all of our boys, is that we don’t carry that baggage about. We are a free-shooting team, which means that we do not carry the consequences of our makes and misses. We’re remaining so focused on the areas of the game that are more controllable, and that’s a concern for all of our guys right now, including ourselves.
… We’ve played two true road games, and both have been in areas where we’re easily distracted. So we’ve got a mountain to climb. There is no reason to hide from that. We got another chance on Saturday in a tremendous, extremely difficult game. This game and league will keep presenting obstacles. We had to go answer them.
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