SportsPulse: After some stunning results in Thursday's Sweet 16 games, the Elite Eight is beginning to take shape. USA TODAY Sports
Uninspired. Embarrassing. Sad.
Pick a word to describe Kentucky's upset loss to Kansas State in the Sweet 16 on Thursday night.
The best way to summarize it is by putting it bluntly: Kentucky choked, big time.
The No. 5 Wildcats, the remaining best seed in the shattered South Region, had a red carpet rolled out to get to the Final Four — facing No. 9 seed Kansas State and, had they won, No. 11 seed Loyola-Chicago on Saturday. No. 1 Virginia was gone. No. 4 Arizona was out. And so was No. 2 Cincinnati. All these teams were a part of coach John Calipari's overall complaint heading into the NCAAs about his team's bracket fate by the selection committee.
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Yet Calipari warned his players about overlooking a gritty KSU team, and an argument could be made that this batch of freshmen didn't heed their coach's advice.
But the fact of the matter is this team didn't want it as bad as Kansas State did. There's really no way around that. Last year's Elite Eight exit saw Kentucky players De'Aaron Fox and Bam Adebayo sobbing in the locker room. Sorry, but that same passion wasn't here with this group. UK didn't just play bad, it played uninspired.
We saw Kevin Knox and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander getting blown by with poor defense against KSU's penetration late in the game. If this young team had any fire, KSU put it out. So much is made up of veteran teams vs. inexperienced teams. But the real difference in this Sweet 16 clash was Kansas State imposing its defensive will. KSU has allowed 51 points a game, the fewest of any team left dancing.
Gilgeous-Alexander, who carried this team with 27 points in a second-round win over Buffalo, finished 2-for-10 shooting from the floor. The team shot just 3-for-12 from beyond the arc.
And big man PJ Washington, who had several momentous plays, shot 8-for-20 from the free-throw line. That stat alone speaks to Kentucky choking. He shoots over 50% from the line and UK advances.
Most puzzling of all is the fact that Kansas State's best player, a not-fully-healthy Dean Wade, an All-Big 12 performer, played just four minutes. Kentucky did not take advantage there, nor did it seize the moment when KSU had one fourth of its team fouled out late in the game.
After the loss, Calipari took part of the blame for the loss.
"I should have called that timeout late with 19 seconds to go," he told reporters. "But we had worked on something and I thought we could catch them off-guard. (Kansas State's) a veteran team. I should have called a timeout. I can't put that on these guys. That's right on my shoulders.
Whether the blame falls on Calipari or his players' shoulders, this was one of the most disappointing losses in the Calipari era at Kentucky.
That's because of how good UK had become heading into Thursday's matchup.
Kentucky's freshmen-laden team seemed to have blossomed over the last two weeks, winning the SEC tournament and looking like one of the national title favorites alongside Villanova and Duke in the first two rounds. Yes, they were playing that great of basketball. Calipari got this team to buy into a defense-first mindset and check their egos at the door while coming together as a unit. He's done it multiple times over the years, but it's always impressive to see the November-to-March maturation.
Yet sadly, this evolution process doesn't have a happy ending. And labeling it a sad ending for a talented group is letting this team off the hook.
Not only should Kentucky have won this game, whether by double-digits or single-digits, but it should have gotten to the Final Four. Regardless of how Calipari tried to spin it in news conferences before the game on Thursday, anything less than a trip to San Antonio was an underachievement.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE NCAA TOURNAMENT'S SWEET 16
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