PITTSBURGH – The name “Saint Peter’s” was cited in the locker room after the biggest upset the 2024 NCAA Tournament will see between now and early morning hours of April 9.
This was not mentioned, though, where the Kentucky players were lamenting their season’s end as quietly as a human could speak.
This was in the joyously cramped Oakland Golden Grizzlies locker room, where the smiles were as wide as the Monongahela River. They knew. Kentucky had been had recently in a game such as this. And they also recognized it would be their achievement discussed in the years to follow in the with the same reverence as accorded Weber State, Mercer and Florida Gulf Coast.
This 80-76 Oakland victory was not about Kentucky’s program history, though, as much as it was this Kentucky team’s season.
“I have so many emotions going on,” UK senior power forward Tre Mitchell said, “I can’t feel them.”
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Ultimately, of all John Calipari’s freshman-rich teams at Kentucky, this was the freshmaniest. In past years, we saw the growth through the season of such players as Brandin Knight in 2011, Julius Randle in 2014, Bam Adebayo in 2017. This team had the national freshman of the year, Reed Sheppard, but remained a group prone to errors identical, or nearly so, to those in games that cost the Wildcats what could have been a share of the Southeastern Conference title.
There were plenty of UK execution errors along the way that helped facilitate Oakland guard Jack Gohlke’s 10 3-pointers and astonishing 32-point performance. We’ll get to that. First it’s important to consider the play that clinched victory for the Grizzlies with 29 seconds left.
The Wildcats had cut a once-ominous deficit to a single point on freshman guard Rob Dillingham’s audacious 24-foot 3-pointer at the 1:05 mark. Kentucky had to get a stop at that point or, at the least, allow only a 2-point basket that would permit a game-tying three. With the shot clock lapsing, Oakland guard Rocket Watts attacked down the left side of the lane. He told The Sporting News he recognized Dillingham was approaching him as a help defender and leaving DQ Cole open in the corner.
The first piece of strategy I remember Calipari citing – probably in a practice session or film session more than a decade ago – was this declaration: “WE do not leave corner shooters.”
There was Cole alone, though, and there was Dillingham unable to recover to the corner.
“That was definitely my fault,” Dillingham told TSN. “I jabbed at it, he threw it right to the corner, and he hit the three. That was definitely my bad. It was a big part of the game.”
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It was the same sort of thing we saw when Kentucky blew a 4-point lead with 37 seconds left in regulation of a home game against Florida. In that game, UK was ahead by 3 in the final seconds when Sheppard helped against a drive and left alone shooter Walter Clayton Jr., whose 3-pointer forced an overtime period where the Wildcats were outscored.
And we saw it in the Wildcats’ loss at LSU, when UK trailed the Tigers by a point with 5 minutes left and Sheppard got caught watching a drive by Tyrell Ward that center Ugo Onyenso had covered, allowing Mike Williams to shoot an uncontested corner three that helped the home team carry its lead toward the finish.
Calipari has not abandoned his approach to defending corner threes. That remains a core tenet of his defensive strategy. Just as the Cats were instructed to begin hedging on the hard curls Oakland was running for Gohlke toward the top of the key, but almost never did. When he made one of his last, when he’d already approached the 30-point mark, Onyenso was hanging back in the lane, defending against a roll man who never was going to see the ball.
When senior power forward Tre Mitchell at last hedged off the screen, with 2:47 left and Oakland ahead 3 points, Gohlke threw his shot attempt into the end zone seats. It felt a little late at that point. And when Dillingham missed a layup on the Wildcats’ trip up the court, that feeling was confirmed.
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Calipari did not cite any of this in his conversation with reporters. He was more general.
“When you have a really young team and you look at where the mistakes come from – they were freshmen,” Calipari said. “But they had performed on the road in hostile environments, and I didn’t expect some of the stuff today. But they have gotten so much better in what they’re doing. They never stopped. They fought. They just made some errors.
“I come back to: This one hurt because they are the team you love coaching. I wanted them to advance because of all they’ve been through. I wanted them to have a chance to relish it and cherish this event. I’ve been in this 20-some times. My teams have done really well. We’ve lost a couple of these now. But them – this is their time.”
Calipari was asked what he might have done differently, and it was a fair question. Because the players’ mistakes were hard to avoid if he were to handle the previous questions honestly. He cited a timeout he could have called more quickly, just before Antonio Reeves threw away the ball with 1:24 left. He mentioned possibly going earlier to a box-and-1 gimmick zone against Gohlke might have helped. Although the Oakland decision to deploy a zone defense clearly bothered the Wildcats, who shot 42.6 percent from the field, Calipari insisted his team typically excelled against that tactic.
Those who will want to chase out Calipari for failing in this game, along with the Kansas State game a year ago, along with the Saint Peter’s game in 2022 – Kentucky has not advanced to the Sweet 16 since 2019 — they will make of this what they wish. It’s what those with few answers (and sometimes a lot of money) do in sports now.
Although freshman guards Dillingham, Sheppard and D.J. Wagner shot a combined 3-of-19, Calipari talked about continuing to believe in developing 5-star freshmen into the best possible team, possibly with continued complements of veterans such as Mitchell and wing Antonio Reeves, who combined for 41 of the team’s 76 points.
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“It’s going to be hard for me to change that, because we’ve helped so many young people and their families that I don’t see myself saying, ‘OK, I don’t think we’re going to recruit freshmen,’ ” Calipari said. “The thing that we’ve been blessed with is, families bring their sons to us and we do what we’re supposed to do to help them prepare for the rest of their lives.
“How do we get tougher? How do we get more physical?”
Most important, how do the UK coaches get their players learn from their mistakes? Every athlete makes some. Those who make the same ones habitually find out what life is like on the wrong side of the March Madness bracket.
