Even after they produced the second-most losses in Kentucky’s storied men’s basketball history, I am always going to admire the 2020-21 Wildcats in one area.
In a season filled with adversity, the Cats never quit.
On Thursday, down 51-36 to Mississippi State in the SEC Tournament second round and their season on the line, UK refused to buckle.
With Dontaie Allen tormenting the Bulldogs yet again, the Cats unleashed a 35-15 rampage to seize a 71-66 lead with only 4:30 left in the game.
“This team fought every single game, that’s one thing you can’t say we didn’t do,” Allen said.
Alas, there was another constant throughout what became a lost Wildcats season.
The Cats couldn’t close out games.
So it was again Thursday. Outscored 8-2 down the stretch by MSU guard Iverson Molinar, Kentucky’s season ended with a 74-73 heartbreaker in Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.
Kentucky finished its season an unthinkable 9-16. In UK’s regal men’s hoops history, only Eddie Sutton’s 1988-89 Cats, who went 13-19, ever lost as many games in one season.
Still, Kentucky Coach John Calipari praised his players’ fight. “They never quit on anything,” Calipari said. “They didn’t quit one time this year.”
In UK’s 78-73 double-overtime win over State in Starkville on Jan. 2, Allen had torched the Bulldogs for 23 points by making eight of 13 shots and seven of 11 three-pointers.
He did it again Thursday in Music City, going for 23 points while shooting 8-of-15, 6-of-13.
However, Allen’s potential, game-winning three-pointer just ahead of the final buzzer clanged hard off the back of the rim.
Repeatedly done in at the end of games, Kentucky went 4-8 this season in contests decided by five points or less and lost four times by one point.
“Kind of like the year went,” Calipari said of the final loss.
Now, in what promises to be an unusually consequential offseason for the Kentucky program, it seems here that Calipari has to answer one big question:
How much should this season’s competitive collapse be considered a one-off?
Were the Wildcats’ struggles in 2020-21 primarily the function of UK being caught with an all but completely new roster in a season when the disruption caused by a pandemic made that fatal?
Or does what happened to Kentucky this season reflect deeper, concerning trends impacting the program?
There’s no question that Kentucky — which returned only one scholarship player who contributed in 2019-20 — was more profoundly impacted by the lack of normal summer training and the absence of the traditional slate of directional schools on the early schedule than almost any other program.
That the coronavirus so dramatically limited attendance deprived UK of its normal home-court advantage in Rupp Arena. On the road, UK was also without the “blue gets in” phenomenon that often sees the Big Blue Nation cancel out opponents’ home-crowd edge.
However, the unique factors that helped sabotage Kentucky in 2020-21 do not fully cancel out a larger story.
Calipari’s first six seasons as UK coach yielded an 83.3 winning percentage (190-38) and a 24-4 NCAA Tournament record.
Cal’s six most recent seasons have produced a 73.0 winning percentage (149-55) and a 9-4 NCAA tourney record (with the 2020 tournament canceled, don’t forget).
Obviously, the last six Calipari-led campaigns at UK have been nowhere near as successful as the first six. In fact, the last six have not been much different than the final six seasons Tubby Smith spent as UK coach — which yielded a 75.4 winning percentage (153-50) and an 11-6 NCAA Tournament mark from 2001-2007.
Moving forward, there are those in the UK fan base who lament that Kentucky has not fully embraced the Golden State Warriors-inspired revolution in offensive basketball with its emphasis on spreading the court with three-point shooters.
While that is true, it is not the area where UK most needs to change.
Once Duke and then the NBA G-League started competing at the top of the one-and-done market for talent, Kentucky has not been able to consistently concentrate on its roster the kind of elite talent necessary to overcome more mature foes.
The teams that have won the past four NCAA titles have combined to start four seniors, four redshirt juniors, eight juniors, one redshirt sophomore, one redshirt freshman — and two freshmen.
Other than power forward Isaiah Jackson, there’s no one on the current Kentucky roster who seems assured of going in the first round of the 2021 NBA Draft.
A big step in the recovery of UK basketball in 2021-22 will be how many of the players who so often fought valiantly but unsuccessfully for the Wildcats this season that Calipari can convince to stay in Lexington for another year.
That is the way Kentucky actually benefits from the lessons learned this winter in what has been a freakishly, un-UK-like year.
