LEXINGTON " There's no reason for University of Kentucky basketball fans to be pushing any panic buttons just because the Wildcats threw away a winnable game to the Miami Hurricanes, 73-67, Saturday night at Rupp Arena.
Junior guard Jodie Meeks will probably never go 4-for-17 shooting from the field as he did in this game. UK freshmen DeAndre Liggins and Darius Miller will probably never start off as poorly as they did in the first half Saturday, a period that saw Kentucky fall behind by an astonishing 46-26 margin.
The only lingering problem I see is coach Billy Gillispie's stubbornness in keeping junior guard Michael Porter in the starting lineup ahead of Liggins, who I repeat, is only going to get better.
So, again, stop the panic. Kentucky is 5-3 going into today's game at 4 p.m. against Mississippi Valley State (coached by former UK guard Sean Woods) at Rupp.
The Wildcats, in fact, will probably not lose again until Jan. 4 at Louisville. In between today and Jan. 4, UK faces Indiana, Appalachian State, Tennessee State, Florida Atlantic and Central Michigan. The Wildcats will win most of those games easily.
They'll have an NCAA bid clinched by February, and a top seven NCAA seed clinched by the SEC Tournament. A good finish in the SEC Tournament and I could see UK seeded as high as No. 5 in the NCAA.
I base my optimism on what I believe will be rapid improvement from some of the younger players on the Kentucky roster, namely Liggins and Miller. Those two guys struggled along with their older teammates against a big, strong, physical, athletic Miami team for much of the night Saturday. But they appeared to mature and gain confidence as the game progressed and UK rallied as close as 56-52 down the stretch.
All of the Wildcats will learn from this experience.
Trust me, it isn't ever good to lose, but when tournament time comes, Kentucky will be glad it faced a team like the Hurricanes, who have lost only to No. 2 Connecticut and to Ohio State in seven games. The Wildcats will likely see teams like Miami in the NCAA Tournament, if not the SEC.
Gillispie, most of my peers, and apparently all of the callers to the post-game call-in shows Saturday night do not agree with me. I'll admit, that does lead me to believe I could be wrong to be so optimistic. But I look at this team and I remember last year's Wildcats at this period, and there's no contest. This UK bunch would beat last year's Dec. 7 team by 25 points.
I realize last year's team improved immensely as the season wore on. These Wildcats will do the same. They miss the leadership of Joe Crawford and Ramel Bradley, but the superior talent around UK now will make up for that.
Gillispie was hard on his team Saturday night, but that's just coach-speak. I suspect a big reason for his disappointment is that he, too, sees the potential.
On Saturday night, Gillispie was furious that his players did not carry out what he saw as the game plan early on against Miami.
"It was a big difference in effort and trying to do what we should have been doing from the word go," Gillispie said when asked about the difference in his team's play from the first half to the second.
"We started enforcing our will instead of just letting them dictate everything to us in our own gym. So it was all a matter of effort and concentrating a little bit in trying to carry out assignments."
The difference from one half to the next was the first question Gillispie faced after the game. The second was about Meeks and his 4-for-17 shooting (including 2 of 12 from three-point range). It may be needless to say that these two questions did not get the post-game press conference off to a roaring start.
Gillispie has not previously seemed to have any qualms with Meeks' 'aggressive' trigger, but he sure did in this game. Meeks did not, in fact, start the second half.
"He just missed a bunch of shots," Gillispie said of Meeks. "When you're lethargic offensively and not moving the ball like you need to and not carrying out assignments offensively against a zone when you should be able to get the ball exactly where you need to, that's exactly what's going to happen when you take guarded shots. People don't make guarded shots, and we were foolish to take them.
"Our whole deal," Gillispie added, warming to the topic, "was we were going to take the ball inside against their zone, and you look after the game and Jodie got 17 shots, DeAndree got 15 shots and Patrick has 7 or 13 or something like that (it was 13 actually)?
"Patrick is shooting 71 percent from the field, so it doesn't take too much to figure out who ought to be getting the ball all the time and play inside out. When you play outside in, you're in for long nights, and that's exactly what they did."
I agree with Gillispie that Meeks got carried away outside, but I think the Kentucky coach is wrong to take any shots at Liggins. As I saw it, MOST of Liggins' misses came when his teammates stood around, leaving Liggins with little choice but to fire up something. Liggints was 6 of 15 from the field, by the way, finishing with 18 points, seven rebounds, five assists and three turnovers in 32 minutes.
Porter, the man Liggins is playing behind, had two points, two rebounds, no assists and one turnover in 17 minutes of action.
I'm no fan of Porter's skills, but it was not the finest hour for the UK fans when many of them cheered as Porter fouled out late in the game. But that's another issue I won't dwell on today.
Patterson led Kentucky in this game with 19 points (8 of 13 from the field) and 16 rebounds in 40 minutes. Patterson is playing better and better after a sluggish start the first few games of this season.
And clearly that's one reason Gillispie was so irritated with his guards on this day.
"We were playing on the perimeter too much," Gillispie continued on his rant of the day. "We were taking guarded shots when all we had to do was reverse the ball and throw it to the high post or throw it to the short corner or drive. When we started doing that, when we started doing what we were supposed to, then we started getting the ball where we wanted every single time. And then sometimes we finished plays and sometimes we didn't."
On a brighter note, the Wildcats out-rebounded the more physical Hurricanes 45-35, including 25-14 in the second half. And the Wildcats turned the ball over only 14 times.
So it's not all gloom and doom.
You'll see.