Kentucky Takes Brutal Loss to Georgia 86-78

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Kentucky coach Mark Pope discusses his team's disappointing loss to Georgia Tuesday night at Rupp Arena.

By Hayden Kennedy

It was a very ugly setback Tuesday night as Kentucky suffered a brutal 86-78 loss to unranked Georgia at Rupp Arena.

And it was the first victory for the Bulldogs (18-8 overall, 6-7 in SEC) at Rupp Arena since 2009.

The Cats have dropped to 17-9 overall and 8-5 in SEC.

Leading UK was Otega Oweh, who tied his career high with 28 points, shooting 11 of 18 from the field. He also had four rebounds and four assists. Kentucky's Collin Chandler knocked down a career-high six three-pointers on his way to an 18-point performance while collecting four rebounds and two assists.

In several games this season, Kentucky often had to regroup in the second half, typically cutting away at a deficit, after a slow start. But this time, it was Georgia who would rally as the Wildcats led by as many as eight points in the first half.

“Tonight, it kind of felt like we lost focus for a second, and it really slipped away from us there in the second half,” said Chandler. “We were pretty focused for a good amount of the first half, and so there’s a few possessions that I think we’d like to have back that led to that. We just weren’t able to get it done, to find a way to win, and so we need to do that and learn from that.”

Kentucky coach Mark Pope was asked about the breakdown. “Well, we don’t have many players, first of all. We’ve got to find a way to get our guys' minutes down. Probably can’t have Otega at 38 and DA at 36 just because our performance suffers as those guys get fatigued. In fact, really, what we saw in the first half, we kind of had the game in hand, and we’ve been really diligent in transition defense. Georgia is the fastest attacking team in our league.

"And then we fell apart, we had some poor offensive possessions where we bailed on and transition defensive assignments. I mean, it’s just as simple as that. And you know, you cannot take plays off in this league. You can’t get distracted, especially when it’s the number one thing on the board that we have to accomplish, which is consistently every single possession being in transition defense. And so, we just allowed ourselves to get distracted.”

The loss marked one of the worst setbacks in the Pope era. Georgia, not necessarily known for its basketball program, started the season playing well but has slipped since conference play began, losing five of its last six games before playing Kentucky.

This game could come to haunt UK come NCAA tournament seeding time.

Kentucky will travel to Auburn on Saturday to face the Tigers. The contest will be shown on ESPN or ESPN2 at 8:30 p.m. ET.

Hayden Kennedy, a recent UK graduate, is a contributing writer from Lexington.

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