Kentucky basketball is in a bad spot after losing two games in Rupp Arena in one week.
It’s hard not to hover the panic button after losing in Rupp Arena and giving up 90+ points and 100+ points in the two losses. This defense has not been good, and what is frustrating is that it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. In all honesty, over the last few weeks, it has been much worse. Now, playing good teams, of course, plays a role in this, but these teams getting wide-open looks has to be fixed. Kentucky is getting lost on screens, leading to a ton of open looks.
College basketball expert Jon Rothstein put out his “Rothstein 45 Rankings,” which had the Wildcats coming in at the 16th spot, which seems a bit generous after last week. In his reasoning, Rothstein says, “Allowing 97.7 points per game in its last three home games.’ The defense has national college basketball writers concerned about this team.
The Wildcats are still confident, as Adou Thiero had this to say after the loss to Tennessee, “I mean, we have yet to play with our full team, but not making excuses, you know we going to figure everything out. We are going to find a fight in ourselves. We are a group of competitors, you know. We got to get it figured out.”
John Calipari and his coaching staff understand that the defense needs to improve and will be working on it over the next few weeks. If it doesn’t get better, it’s hard to see a world where this team makes a deep run in March.
