UK basketball wasted a big opportunity in Nashville. ‘We were just careless with the ball’

Kentucky was on the road again in the SEC, but it sure didn’t look like it Saturday afternoon.

Blue was the color of choice outside Memorial Gym leading up to the latest game in the UK-Vanderbilt basketball rivalry. Once the doors opened, it was mostly blue inside, too.

When the Wildcats streamed out of the locker room and ran onto the court for their final pregame layup line, the place erupted in cheers. A “Go Big Blue!” chant broke out while UK’s players were putting up their final shots. A “C-A-T-S!” chant followed that one.

When the Commodores came out a couple of minutes later, the response wasn’t nearly as welcoming.

This one was set up perfectly for Kentucky to steal a victory on the road in the SEC, the best conference in college basketball this season. Instead, the Cats turned it over.

Miscues plagued Mark Pope’s team all afternoon, and Vandy completed a second-half comeback — after blowing a double-digit halftime lead — to escape with a 74-69 win on their home court.

Before the game, Vandy touted that this was the second consecutive sellout for Memorial Gym — the first time that’s happened since the 2011-12 season.

Perhaps the thinking was that the Commodores’ better-than-usual start — they’re now 16-4 overall, 4-3 in the SEC, and flirting with an AP Top 25 ranking for the first time since 2015 — was responsible for the swift ticket sales.

Nope.

It didn’t take long for Memorial Gym to take on that familiar look: blue everywhere, Kentucky fans clearly making up the majority of those in the stands. Too bad for the Cats, the Commodores are looking different on the court itself. Yet another example of how difficult life will be in the SEC this season.

Kentucky committed 17 turnovers for the game, many of them coming at inopportune times. Vandy had just five turnovers. The Commodores outscored the Cats 14-7 off those miscues, more than the difference in their five-point victory.

“They did a good job getting us on our heels. It’s super disappointing,” Pope said. “This is a style of play that we love for teams to play, and it’s a part of the game when we’re at our best offensively. And for a bunch of reasons that I know and some reasons that I don’t, we were just heavy on our heels.

“And credit to Vanderbilt, of course, but it’s a really tough lesson for us, for our guys. But yes, it was due to their pressure.”

This was expected to be a fast-paced game, and it was from the start.

Everyone knows by now that Pope’s Cats prefer to run. Vanderbilt, in its first season under new head coach Mark Byington, enjoys doing the same. The Cats and ‘Dores came into the day ranked second and third in the SEC in tempo — only Alabama, which beat UK last weekend and toppled Vandy on Tuesday night, plays a faster style — and it was a race from the opening tip.

The two teams each had five possessions in the first two minutes. It settled some from there, and Kentucky took a 23-21 lead on an Amari Williams free throw with 7:49 left in the half.

And then it got away from the Wildcats, who closed the half by shooting 2-for-10 from the floor. They turned the ball over seven times in the final 6:24 of the half. And Vandy went into halftime on a 20-4 run. The ‘Dores were up 41-27 at the break, led by 12 points from Jason Edwards, a shifty guard who kept UK’s players busy defensively.

“It’s that second 10 minutes of the first half that’s plagued us a little bit,” Pope said. “I think we get a little fatigued. Our bench is a little bit disintegrated, and so we got some fatigue out there. That’s an issue. Maybe some focus is an issue. Some credit to Vanderbilt for turning up the heat. (Edwards) got going early. Aside from that, we were really solid, both ends of the floor. And the game had a flow to it.

“And then we started getting punished a little bit on the offensive glass. Disappointing that that happened. And then their pressure kind of kicked in, and the second 10 minutes of the first half was a debacle.”

Kentucky was playing without Andrew Carr, who was sidelined with a lingering back injury. Ansley Almonor made his first UK start as a result, and the ripple effects caused by Carr’s absence — as well as Kerr Kriisa’s ongoing recovery from a foot injury that has kept him out for more than six weeks — led to little-used freshmen Collin Chandler and Trent Noah getting some early playing time.

After those struggles at the end of the first half, UK came roaring back. The Cats scored the first 11 points out of the break, tied it up at 51 on a Jaxson Robinson 3-pointer and then dropped seven more points to take a 58-51 lead with 8:39 still on the clock.

It looked like a repeat of some of the Cats’ other comebacks this season. They were down 16 at the half against Gonzaga — the largest of many halftime deficits — and won that one.

But Vanderbilt hung around.

The Commodores tied the game at 60 just two minutes later. They went up 66-63 with 4:05 to go. Almonor hit a 3-pointer to put UK ahead 67-66, then Otega Oweh drove for a bucket to make it 69-68 with 2:56 left, but the Cats never scored again.

And those turnovers cropped up at the end.

Down two with the ball, Lamont Butler lost it with 90 seconds left, the last of his six turnovers on the day. Butler, who has been battling ankle and shoulder injuries, had just six points and two assists before fouling out in the final seconds.

“Lamont, he’s got a lot right now,” Pope said of his health concerns. “We all know what a warrior he is. He is giving us everything he’s got right now, but it’s hard for him.”

Oweh, who led UK with 21 points and made several big shots during their runs, turned it over twice in the final 48 seconds. He had four turnovers for the game and exhaled deeply when it was relayed to him that the Cats had 17 as a team.

“A couple plays, they turned us over, for sure,” he said. “And then other plays, we were just careless with the ball. I had a couple plays, I was careless with it. And then they turned us over, which is not like us really.”

Kentucky came into the weekend ranked No. 7 nationally in turnover rate. The Cats had, for the most part, been one of the best teams in the country at taking care of the ball, with turnovers on just 13.6% of their possessions. On Saturday, they turned it over on 26.6% of their possessions, looking uncomfortable for long stretches.

This version of the SEC — with nine ranked teams and Vandy sitting at 28th in AP voting this week — will do that to you.

Kentucky, which is No. 9 in the AP poll but will likely fall out of the top 10 on Monday for the first time since November — dropped to 3-3 in league play.

And a trip to No. 6-ranked Tennessee is coming Tuesday.

“I think it makes us better,” Pope said of playing this league schedule. “I would choose this league this way, this year — the way it is this year — every single year. Like, it can rip you to pieces, for sure. But our job is to keep finding a way to get better. And I have a really good locker room of guys that are going to keep focused on getting better. We’re not going to lose our confidence. We’re not going to question each other. We’re not going to doubt what we’re doing. We’re just going to use all these experiences to get better.

“And there’s really specific things that we talk about to our guys all the time, but our guys actually experienced together as a team today for the first time, where they’re like, ‘Oh, those words actually really mean something. And it’s really painful if we don’t actually do that.’ And so it makes us a better team. I’m not worried about that at all. I think we’re really blessed to be facing this competition every game.”

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