LEXINGTON, Ky. – John Calipari’s time in Kentucky has not quite reached a full decade, but the time accumulates like dog years when you are coaching UK basketball. He has been in charge long enough to recognize when a massive overreaction might be imminent. So, he acted quickly to defuse the next one.
“That’s as good as we play, so the fans in Louisville should not be … their team has played well,” Calipari said. “They should have beaten Purdue; they had them. The Seton Hall kid made like a runner at the buzzer. So what they did today, we just played about as well as we could play.
“But I really like their team. They did not make shots today. Thank goodness for us … They hit us on a bad night.”
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Yes, that’s right. On an afternoon at Rupp Arena when his team put four players in double figures, held the opposition to 35 percent shooting and won by the most lopsided score in this rivalry in 18 years, Calipari was playing defense for the losing coach.
David Padgett got the Louisville job under the worst of circumstances. Already sanctioned for NCAA violations, U of L was surreptitiously mentioned as allegedly being involved in arranging payment to a top prospect in the criminal complaints issued by the Justice Department in early October; these revelations led to Hall of Famer Rick Pitino and two other staff members being let go.
Padgett had to gain the confidence of his team despite never having served as a head coach, construct a staff capable of helping him and put together a plan for building toward a successful season. Oh, and that five-star prospect, Brian Bowen, never will play at Louisville.
Padgett performed admirably until Friday, when his team’s starting frontcourt picked up early fouls and he tried to skate to halftime with his young reserves. Playing mostly without center Anas Mahmoud and forward Ray Spalding, the Cardinals plunged from a one-point deficit to down 14 at the break.
“You’re trying to mix and match lineups and try to get to halftime,” Padgett said. “They took advantage of it.”
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It wasn’t so much that UL got skunked down the stretch of the first half, though, or that it was beaten even more decisively over the second 20 minutes. What was disconcerting about Louisville’s performance was the lack of competitive fire in the Cardinals. Mahmoud meekly committed his third and fourth personals in the first four minutes of the second half. The second, in particular, was so pointless it looked like the work of a player who wished not to stick around to see how this concluded.
Padgett put that in the category of a shot-blocker trying to block shots. It was a nice deflection from someone who had 157 blocks in his own college career. “It just was a day where we just couldn’t do anything right, it seemed like,” Padgett said. He did admit, however, that the Cardinals allowed struggles on offense to affect their defensive intensity.
“They hit us hard. From mentally and a preparation point, we didn’t come out and compete,” said wing Deng Adel, who led the Cards with 13 points. “They hit us early, and we just never reacted. We just kept taking a beating … we just didn’t compete hard.”
It was only this past week that Kentucky had endured its own episode of postgame hysteria, the result of an 83-75 neutral-court loss to UCLA. That UK performance had the same missing ingredient: passion. The Kentucky players defended the Bruins lifelessly. Watching the game tape afterward, Calipari was horrified by the number of uncontested 3-point shots allowed.
They turned that dreadful performance into the impetus for a better one, and thus the Wildcats will enter their Southeastern Conference opener Sunday evening against Georgia with an understanding of how effective they can be.
“They came ready to play,” Padgett said. “I’m not saying we didn’t, because we were in there for a while. But you’ve got to give them credit. They responded to a loss; they obviously made a lot more plays than we did.”
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The difference with the Cardinals is they are effectively functioning with a substitute teacher. There was not the sense of apparent fear toward the bench that occasionally broke down the Cards in past seasons but almost invariably led them to respond with glorious March runs.
This group has enough talent for a successful season in the Atlantic Coast Conference, but this game underscored how young Louisville’s reserves are, how far they are from contributing at a high level. The starting five includes two seniors, two juniors and a sophomore. This team will only get one shot at this, and they’ll need to show more fight for their coach than was evident against Kentucky.
Padgett has played in this rivalry, and served as an assistant coach under Pitino in games against the Cats. A reporter posed the question of how it felt to experience UK-UL from the head coach’s chair.
“If you ask me right now,” he responded, “I’d say it’s not very much fun.”
This was mere minutes after the final score had been posted. The postgame (over)reaction hadn’t even begun.
