Did The Wheels Just Come Off As Cats Fall to USC 72-67?

With a must win game and possibly the season ridding on the line, Kentucky turned in their worst performance of the year for 33:00 minutes of the game. Coach Cal gets ejected with around 10:00 to go in the game and the Cats showed signs of life, fight and hustle, something that was missing for pretty much the entire game. But, it would prove to be too little, too late as South Carolina, a team that had managed only THREE conference wins so far this season until tonight beating the Cats 72-67 and to be honest, it should not have been nowhere near that close.

There was too much of one on one being played and absolutely no structure to the offense whatsoever. Every-time Kentucky had the ball on offense, a player put his head down drove into multiple defenders and either shot an air ball, turned it over, lost it out of bounds or hoped that a ref would bail them out with a foul call when instead it would result in a turnover. If you didn't know any better, you would've thought you were watching a bad high school team play. I'm not being negative or trying to blast any specific player, but you have to call it like you see it. When Julius Randle hits his first shot in the final seconds of the game, there's a problem. The problems this team has would take all night to list, so I'm not even going to attempt to do it. However I will say this...

I love John Calipari as a coach. For Kentucky, there is NO ONE I would rather have on the sideline than him and his entire staff. I love his recruiting method (yes even the one-and-done recruiting), but this game falls on his shoulders. The reason I say that is these players have not shown any progression from the beginning of the season to now. The bad part of that is I really believe you will lose multiple players form this team when in all reality you should only lose one in Julius Ranlde and with this loss, his draft stock is quickly dwindling.

I really hope I'm wrong and a lot of these guys come back for another year, because with the class Cal has coming in next year, they could be pretty good. 

This was one game Kentucky COULD NOT afford to lose considering the fact they were coming off a loss to unranked Arkansas at Rupp Thursday night. At certain points during the game you wondered if the wheels had just come off Kentucky's season. Either way, winning their next game (Alabama) is not an option. IT HAS TO HAPPEN!!!