Devin Askew talks to Dontaie Allen during UK's loss to Tennessee. (SEC Photo)
Kentucky has lost six of its last seven games, including the last three, going into tonight’s game with Arkansas. The Cats have defeated Arkansas eight straight times, including last year when coach John Calipari got ejected with 8:19 left and UK trailing 47-44 before the Cats went on a 15-0 run in less than six minutes to secure the win.
Kentucky is now not only 5-12 overall but 4-6 in SEC play and sinking toward the very bottom of the league. A loss tonight would put UK in real jeopardy of having to play in the opening round of the SEC Tournament for the first time.
So what is the mood of the team like?
“I think there is obviously some frustration. There is disappointment because they don’t like to lose,” Kentucky assistant coach Joel Justus said Monday. “I think that would be from top to bottom is a group of guys that are working hard.
“They’re trying hard, they’re listening. We just need some success. I think that there are definitely some instances of success within the game. We just need more of them. We have to do some of them when a little bit of adversity hits.”
But here is the part that makes you wonder if this team can really ever win consistently.
“I think with young people, young players, players on inexperienced teams, you start to see the kind of individualism creep in when there’s a little bit of adversity, and we have to continue to work with them on relying on each other when there’s adversity,” Justus said.
Does individualism creep in? That’s never a good thing and goes along with what Calipari has said several times about players wanting to win on their terms and not his terms.
“If a team goes on a run, we can’t then worry about, ‘OK, my man can’t score.’ Or, ‘I have to go make a play.’ That’s when you really have to rely on each other. So, that’s something that we’ve talked about and we’ll continue to talk about,” Justus said.
“We need just need a little bit of that breakthrough. We need a little bit of luck. We need a little bit of everything to kind of breakthrough at this point.”
