It’s a pretty deflating feeling showing up knowing you have to play near-perfect basketball to win a game like this. At full strength, Kentucky absolutely has the talent and depth to beat this Alabama team. The Wildcats nearly did it in Lexington back in January — and that was with Andrew Carr just starting his journey with the back issue, by far his worst performance in blue and white, yet still losing by just five in a game that saw 199 combined points scored.
This time around, you’re down Jaxson Robinson and Kerr Kriisa for the year, then see Lamont Butler suffering a setback in the SEC Tournament opener, declared out ahead of the quarterfinals. That’s your second-leading scorer, starting point guard and backup point guard, all out against a red-hot Alabama team battling for a No. 1 seed on Selection Sunday.
You can believe in your guys all you want — as KSR’s resident homer who picked Kentucky to leave Nashville with a championship trophy before Butler’s injury, I certainly did — but sometimes the reality just is what it is. It was going to take an otherworldly effort with a lot of things going their way for the Wildcats to get it done against the Crimson Tide on Friday. Someone was going to have to go off individually or the bench would need to provide some serious help to offset what was missing on the floor.
Neither of those things happened, and that’s how you get that result inside Bridgestone Arena.
To Kentucky’s credit, this group hung in there to make things interesting in the first half. When Alabama made moves to push the lead, the Cats had some responses to throw back, down just four with 2:05 to go and a manageable seven at the break — they’ve come back from worse. Then it got to double figures within the first two minutes of the second half and the dam broke, the Tide pushing it to 20 with 11:02 remaining, then 30 with 1:39 on the clock before wrapping up the 99-70 smackdown.
For all of the excitement of Otega Oweh‘s game-winner on Thursday, it was a completely different story on Friday, leading to yet another exit before the weekend in Nashville. That’s crushing for a fanbase that hasn’t seen one since 2022 and still looking for their first title since 2018.
Should that frustration be directed toward the result or the situation, though? I’d argue the latter.
Sure, the effort and fight left plenty to be desired there in the second half. Kentucky let go of the rope as Alabama gained confidence, unable to overcome the lost momentum as the Tide hit nine threes after the break with the basket seemingly doubling in size while it cut in half for the Cats. It’s easy to say you’d dive on the floor for loose balls and take charges until the final buzzer no matter what the scoreboard said, but truthfully, how realistic is that for this group given the circumstances? Emotional fatigue is just as important as physical, this team a revolving door of players joining and exiting the lineup due to constant injury issues essentially since game eight of the regular season at Clemson — Butler tweaked his ankle there and missed the Gonzaga game where Kriisa broke his foot as the starter, and the rest is history with Carr’s back, Butler’s shoulder and Robinson’s wrist.
Am I missing anything?
Carr only started looking like himself again in late February, right when Robinson was officially ruled out for the year after giving it one last shot at Oklahoma. Butler also missed two weeks in February, only now starting to return to form before yet another issue against the Sooners to open the SEC Tournament. It’s impossible for Kentucky to truly play at ‘full strength’ these days with two season-ending injuries, but this version of the Cats had been as healthy and cohesive as they’d been in months to wrap up the regular season, only to get that rug pulled out once again in Nashville with their starting point guard and veteran leader declared out two hours before tip-off.
Oh, and then Oweh takes an elbow to the mouth and is forced to get stitches, blood everywhere as the team’s leading scorer was limited to nine first-half minutes. Carr was also called for three fouls before intermission to keep him at seven minutes, too. If we’re being honest, it was a miracle the game was as close as it was for as long as it was before the blowout. Sometimes you just don’t have enough gas in the tank or the horses necessary to win the race and that was the case Friday. You felt it from the players in the last 20 minutes as things unraveled and the celebration started early for the Tide.
A 29-point loss is a tough pill to swallow, but there is something to be said about turning the page and using what’s ahead as a fresh start. This is a group that experienced a ridiculous amount of adversity throughout the season and the basketball gods did their part to add one final hurdle ahead of March Madness. Learning that Butler is ‘gonna be in good shape,’ according to Pope, and the team looks ‘forward to having him as we move forward’ is a total game-changer considering where the conversation started after the Oklahoma win — “It just doesn’t seem fair,” he said, adding “I’m praying like crazy he can find his way back onto the floor at some point this year.” You went from thinking Kentucky had lost its starting point guard for the season to thinking he may be ready for the start of the NCAA Tournament next week. Quite the win for a team that got crushed on the floor the same day.
Carr was a bright spot (18 points, 8-10 FG), as were Amari Williams (16 points, seven rebounds, four assists) and Travis Perry (11 points, four rebounds). The bench gave Kentucky essentially nothing, though, Alabama winning that battle 44-9 while also scoring 19 points on fast breaks compared to three for the Cats. The Tide also forced 16 turnovers leading to 29 points the other way while also dominating points in the point, winning that one 46-30. That’s how you lead for 39:09 the way Bama did with only 46 seconds tied, no time favoring UK.
The players said afterward they were ‘humiliated’ by the performance while Pope made it clear ‘this is not okay for us.’ They were all hard on themselves — and understandably so. The messaging was great, something this fanbase was looking for after the importance of this event had been minimized in recent years. No one can question if he understood the assignment going down to the Music City, whether they left with hardware or not.
Don’t miss the forest for the trees, though, when filling out your pre-March Madness report card with takes explaining why this was the most embarrassing loss in the history of the world and how this is ‘no longer Kentucky basketball’ or whatever — I’ve seen plenty of it. Context is important, Kentucky having a No. 3 seed almost certainly locked up at this point while just trying to get as healthy as possible, as quickly as possible. You want to win big in this one, but you need to make a run over the next couple of weeks. Butler’s new injury threw a wrench into those desires and reshuffled the priority deck a bit.
For now, we turn the page on the regular season and an all-time SEC gauntlet, a league schedule that took just about everything out of this Kentucky team from a health standpoint. The highs were exhilarating while the lows were hard to stomach at times, limping across the finish line with a standout resume that came at a cost. Now it’s time to see if those bumps and bruises — including the ego hit that came Friday — pay off in the form of a tough, battle-tested team no one wants to see in their region when brackets are revealed on Sunday.
