Two things can be true at the same time. On one hand, Auburn is a terrific basketball team. They’re not just 26-2 (15-1, SEC) because of National Player of the Year candidate Johni Broome. It’s also because of players like Miles Kelly, Chad Baker-Mazara Tahaad Pettiford and Denver Jones that make this Auburn team just so good and so dominant. Kelly, Baker-Mazara and Pettiford combined for 73 of Auburn’s 94 points on Saturday afternoon, as Auburn led for all but 31 seconds in a 94-78 win.
“Auburn played great basketball,” Kentucky head coach Mark Pope said. “They’ve been playing great basketball all season long. Bruce (Pearl) has done an unbelievable job not just assembling but growing and fitting together the pieces on their team. So, congratulations to them. We are pretty disappointed with our performance.”
Coming into this game, there was a sense that Kentucky could pull of the upset of the No. 1 Tigers. And why not? The Wildcats already had wins over No. 2 Duke, No. 3 Florida and two wins over No. 5 Tennessee this season entering Saturday afternoon. Even without star shooting guard Jaxson Robinson, there was a sense that Kentucky would find a way, at home, to pull off the upset.
Instead, what followed was one of the worst performances for Kentucky this season. Eighteen turnovers, just 4-17 from three-point range and leading for just 19 seconds. A lot of things were missing from Kentucky on Saturday in a game against the No. 1 team in the country.
“I think it was just our defense, our intensity,” Kentucky graduate guard Koby Brea said. “I don’t think our defensive intensity was where it had to be, letting their three guards go up the way that they did. I put that on us, the guards. We’ve got to do a better job. We will do a better job, most importantly. But yeah, that was the biggest factor.”
Whereas Kentucky struggled to generate offense from its back court, Auburn’s back court was stellar. The Tigers hit 12 of 26 three-point attempts, including nine from Kelly, and only turned the ball over eight times. Auburn only had eight assists, which, as Jay Bilas pointed out multiple times on the broadcast, shows you how how good Auburn’s players are at individually creating plays, shots and at scoring.
“Right now, (the Tigers) are the best team in the country,” Pope said. “It’s a real credit to their guys, to their players, and a real credit to coach Pearl and their staff because they do a lot of switching on the fly. And, you know, there were only small moments in the game where we were able to take advantage of that.
“They communicate so well together, and they have so much makeup ability that it makes it really difficult. And they also play with tremendous energy. They have a length. You know, they are playing elite level basketball.”
Jaxson Robinson out for the season
Kentucky’s second-leading scorer on the season, Robinson is now out for the remainder of the season with a right wrist injury. It’s the same wrist he injured at practice back on February 7th, and he has been working through it since then. Robinson played the day after he initially injured his right wrist, against South Carolina on February 8th, but then missed Kentucky’s next four games.
After playing 12 minutes at Oklahoma, Robinson sat the whole second half with an ice wrap on his wrist. Now, Robinson will be getting surgery and will miss the rest of the season.
“He’s got a torn sub sheath to his ECU tendon, so what’s happening is it is slipping out and when he went down, you know, we kind of knew that he was going to need surgery,” Pope said. “But he just wanted so badly to play.
“So, it’s in a groove and there’s a sheath around it that holds it in place. That is ripped, the distal side of it, I think it’s the distal side of it is just ripped a little bit, and so now it’s coming out of the groove and after the hit it actually relocated it a little more. There’s just no way that he’s going to be able to play.”
Pope was once a medical school student at Columbia for three years. It’s actually a breath of fresh air, in a way, to hear him be so transparent about a player’s injury. Not sure how many other head coaches would share that much information to the media about a player’s injury.
What’s this team’s ceiling?
Kentucky is now 19-10 (8-8, SEC) going into the final week of the regular-season. Their resume is impressive, especially when you factor in all the injuries the Wildcats have had to navigate this season.
But Saturday’s loss to No. 1 Auburn may have been an eye-opener. Even on a day when National Player of the Year candidate Johni Broome scored just nine points and pulled down just six rebounds, the Tigers still managed to win in Rupp Arena- for the first time since 1988- by 16 points. That is a testament to how good Auburn is, but it also may show how Kentucky’s limitations may keep it from going as far in the NCAA Tournament as we thought they could go earlier this season.
This team still has talent; Otega Oweh, Lamont Butler, Koby Brea, Amari Williams and even the Bluegrass State Freshman combo of Travis Perry and Trent Noah. But without Jaxson Robinson, who had a terrific first month to SEC play to earn his way onto the Julius Erving Small Forward of the Year Watch List, it’s fair to think about how this Kentucky team may have too many limitations the will keep it from advancing far in the NCAA Tournament. In particular, they’re not nearly as athletic as teams like Auburn and Alabama.
“I think it’s tough [for Robinson] to be out for the season at this point, but we’re a resilient team, and I think it’s just a next man up mentality,” Kentucky graduate guard Lamont Butler said. “We’re just going to have to step up and step up to the plate and bring our A game every day so we can win games.”
This Wildcats team has been resilient all season. They will have to be even more resilient this month of March if they’re going to advance far in the NCAA Tournament.
