Kentucky suffered an embarrassing 20-point loss to Kansas in the State Farm Champions Classic Tuesday night. Fast-forward a couple of days, and the Wildcats narrowly escaped one of the worst teams in Division I college basketball by one point.
The Northern Arizona Lumberjacks of the Big Sky Conference, who were 0-3, averaging 67 points per game and allowing 91 points per game, stormed into Rupp Arena and gave UK a run for its money. NAU suffered losses to UNLV, New Mexico and No. 12 Arizona, two of which (New Mexico and Arizona) were 30-plus point defeats.
The box score doesn’t always relay what actually transpired in a game, but sometimes it speaks a lot of volume, and in this case, it does; UK was out-rebounded 32-20, and NAU’s 6-foot-3 guard, Chris Komin, led the game with seven boards, passing UK’s 7-footer Malachi Moreno, who had a total of six. Unacceptable.
UK led 45-37 at halftime and was outscored 40-33 in the second half, resulting in a 78-77 win courtesy of Alex Wilkins.
UK was trailing 77-75 on its last possession, and Wilkins drained a deep ball from the corner to lead the Cats to a win. One shot, yes, one shot was the difference between a win, on paper at least, and one of the worst defeats in Kentucky basketball history. If it wasn’t for Wilkins, Mark Pope would’ve officially suffered his worst loss as the head coach of his alma mater.
A lot of Big Blue Nation has turned their backs on Pope; is it warranted? You can make that call, but what the third-year leader said postgame definitely didn’t help his push to get back on their good side.
“I hope everybody at Rupp had fun. It was a pretty exciting game… It’s pretty entertaining, if not well executed,” Pope said following the one-point victory. “I think it’s going to be a fun team to follow. This team is, they’re with one exception, they’re finding ways to win games and we will continue down that path as we try and kind of settle the ship and execute better.”
Not that anyone asked for my opinion, but I’m going to give it anyways: beating a mid-major team that was 0-3 and ranked 299th in KenPom by one point, with the help of a single shot, while getting out-rebounded, is not “well executed.”
Now we’re left with this question: where does Kentucky go from here? Because NAU is nowhere in the same realm as the strongest opponents UK will face. Could the Cats have been adjusting to the boatload of backlash that followed the Kansas loss? Were they unprepared? Did they look at NAU as an easy opponent? Who really knows what factors contributed to the result that we saw on the court, but one thing is for sure: UK has no business beating a team like Northern Arizona by just one point.
“I feel like this is the lowest you’ll see us at,” Momcilovic said following the win on the UK Sports Network. We’ll see how long it takes for UK to trend upwards, but Monday night will be the perfect chance for it to get on the right trajectory.
The Wildcats host another mid-major school, the Grambling Tigers (1-1) of the SWAC Conference, in Rupp Arena. Tipoff for that contest is set for 7 p.m. ET and can be viewed on SEC Network +.
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