Kentucky woken up by three false fire alarms night before road game at Alabama

Kentucky basketball has had a rough few weeks. The Wildcats have lost three of their last five, and even after giving up 58 second-half points in a seven-point win over LSU this week, John Calipari had a message for his team in his postgame interview with ESPN: “You won’t want to be at that practice tomorrow,” he warned.

The last thing the Wildcats needed as they look to snap out of their funk is an actual, physical reason to drift back into a funk. But that’s what they received the night before their road game Saturday at Alabama.

In the wee hours of the morning before a noon local time tip, the fire alarm at Kentucky’s hotel went off not once, not twice, but three times.

And to make matters worse, the alarms were at intervals that prevented players from getting any more than two hours of sleep at a time after the initial alarm.

The 7 a.m. alarm wasn’t too much of an annoyance, because the Wildcats were getting ready to head to their morning shootaround around that time anyway. But having their sleep interrupted at 3:30 a.m. for an extended period of time is less than ideal.

Perhaps it’s no wonder, then, that Kentucky got off to a somewhat slow start Saturday. The teams were tied 7-7 six minutes into the game.

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