Takeaways From The Heartbreaker In Nashville

Kentucky’s SEC Tournament run fell short in Saturday’s semifinal as the Cats dropped another one to the Vols in the rivalry’s rubber match. Tennessee crawled out of a big deficit late in the game to pull off the big victory in front of rowdy audience in Nashville.

Some takeaways from the heartbreaker…

 

That was a wild game.

It’s hard to say a game is fun when it ends in a Kentucky loss, but that was a fun game to watch. Fans were treated to a war in an insane environment in Bridgestone Arena with Rocky Top and Go-Big-Blue chants bouncing back and forth throughout the entire game. Those two teams went at each other for 40 minutes and it’s too bad someone had to go home on the losing end. Lots of fun and good basketball in there.

UK blew it by giving up an eight-point lead late in the game.

The Cats had a 72-64 lead with just under three minutes to go (and a 95.7 percent chance of covering the spread), before Tennessee went on a run that included points on seven straight positions. If you’re going to be a championship team, you can’t be giving up a comfortable lead like that in such little time. Kentucky can only blame Kentucky for its collapse and the team is going home early because of it.

Here’s the main reason behind that collapse:

Kentucky really missed Reid Travis down the stretch.

The last two and a half minutes served as another example of Reid Travis’ importance to the team. Without him in the game, Williams grabbed a crucial offensive rebound that led to Lamonte Turner’s go-ahead three-pointer; the play before that, Williams snuck over to the corner to hit a go-ahead three-pointer of his own. Travis likely would’ve prevented both from happening, which would’ve kept six Tennessee points off the board in the final two minutes. He also would’ve taken some of the pressure off PJ Washington on those last couples of drives.

And for the record, it was a bogus fifth foul call that sent him to the bench. He didn’t even touch Williams on the play, yet still got the boot from the game. Kentucky fell apart defensively from there.

Tennessee is really good.

I know we’re supposed to hate Tennessee around here, and I do and always will, but let’s at least acknowledge how good that team is this year. As Kentucky was folding in the end, Tennessee hit big shot after big shot to crawl back and steal the game away from the Cats’ grasp. Grant Williams and Admiral Schofield and Jordan Bone are great players and some other guys made some big plays and I can’t believe I’m saying nice things about the Vols right now but it’s all true. Tennessee is a legit national title contender and some teams are going to be very unlucky to meet them in the tournament.

Ok enough playing nice.

PJ Washington had the put-back to tie it back up but it just wouldn’t go in.

Washington was so close on his follow-up shot with only 13 seconds on the clock and Kentucky down two. Sometimes it just doesn’t fall though.

Tyler Herro’s turnover was a big moment in the game.

Herro made a costly mistake one second into a possession that really helped Tennessee’s comeback. He traveled right in front of the Tennessee bench and the Vols capitalized by converting an and-1 (on the phantom foul that sent Reid Travis out) to cut the lead to only three. If Herro doesn’t travel there, UK likely runs a lot of time off the clock while up six. But it is what it is.

Herro had a pretty good game otherwise, although I wish he had gotten the ball a little more than he did.

Ashton Hagans tied the school record for assists in an SEC Tournament game.

If you’re like me and believe Kentucky needs Ashton Hagans to play great in the tournament, Saturday’s game was comforting. Hagans opened the game with a three-pointer and finished it with 12 assists, matching the school record in an SEC Tournament game. He could’ve been a little better defensively down the stretch, but he was also assigned the task of guarding Jordan Bone, maybe the best point guard in the conference, so let’s not be too critical of his defense. Offensively, Hagans did a pretty good job running the show.

Blue got in.

Kentucky outnumbered Tennessee fans with about 65 percent (my guess) of the crowd. Those folks saying Tennessee would outshine Big Blue Nation were completely wrong as UK fans did what UK fans do during the conference tournament. Way to go, BBN. Way to go.

Okay, let’s talk about the officiating.

You didn’t think I’d go on without mentioning it, did you? Sadly, the officiating stole the show from a great college basketball game. It was absolutely terrible on both sides, so bad that at one point John Calipari and Rick Barnes just looked at each other with a shrug and a smile. I thought for sure Cal was going to get ejected (early on it seemed like he was trying to) as Doug Shows was trending on Twitter for his outrageous performance. Shows and his colleagues had a really bad afternoon, and he even had a fan ejected for letting him know about it. It was brutally bad.

On that note, let’s try to put it all behind us and get ready for an NCAA Tournament run.

Go Cats.