Kentucky Gentlemen? Wildcats chided for skipping handshakes after Sweet 16 loss.

Kansas State’s Xavier Sneed, right, shook hands with teammates but not opponents after Thursday’s win. (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

Thursday night’s Sweet 16 game between Kentucky and Kansas State was both a close game — Kansas State pulled off the upset by three points — and a rough-and-tumble affair, with 51 fouls called. Nevertheless, the two teams came together for the usual postgame handshakes, right?

Nah, that didn’t happen: Kentucky’s players left the court before the typical flesh-pressing, a fact that did not go unnoticed by Kansas State’s players afterward.

[ Bluegrass blue blood bounced as Kansas State ousts Kentucky in Sweet 16 ]

“They didn’t shake our hands,” Kansas State junior guard Amaad Wainright said afterward, per ESPN. “It’s sorry. … They know what they did.”

Said forward Levi Stockard: “That’s not the sportsmanship you like to see, but that’s them. They just walked off the court. I don’t know what it was. I don’t know.”

Kentucky Coach John Calipari said he tried to do his part, but that it was hard with all the celebrating.

“Well, I went down to shake their hands, too, and they were turned and celebrating so that I walked off,” he told reporters afterward. “I had no disrespect for anything, just that they were celebrating and I was happy for them. I walked off, too. But I went down, I shook all the coaches’ hands, I went down to shake their hands — which I understood. They’re in an Elite Eight game now, a chance to go to the Final Four. My team is not like that, neither is our program. There’s no disrespect in any way. They beat us. They deserved to win the game.”

On Friday, Calipari didn’t address the handshake issue specifically in a series of tweets but said it was a difficult loss to stomach (he never had lost in the Sweet 16 at Kentucky in six previous region semifinals).

[ ‘I got shivers down my whole body’: Michigan walk-on hits the shot of his life ]

“I woke up this morning feeling as sick as I did last night after that game. This is going to hurt for a while for all of us. The players took it as hard as any team I’ve had when it ends,” he wrote. “As a coach and as a fan, all you can ask is that they give their very best and that they do it as a team. This team tried to do that all year. Losing stinks, but I’m proud of each and every one of them.”

While not as regimented as the handshake lines that mark the end of series-deciding playoff hockey games, college basketball teams usually gather for at least cursory greetings at game’s end. There have been notable exceptions, of course, like the time Iowa Coach Fran McCaffery pulled his team off the court before handshakes could be exchanged after a regular season game against North Dakota in 2016.

Or the 2017 game between Rider and Siena that was marred by an in-game brawl, after which Broncs Coach Kevin Baggett pulled his team from the court. Saints Coach Jimmy Patsos then added to his already-considerable legend by taking part in an imaginary handshake line.

It was better than no handshakes at all, I guess.