Sixth ranked Kentucky went down to Columbia, South Carolina on Tuesday night and left with a court storm and an ugly loss. The Wildcats were out-shot, out-defended, and overall, out-performed. Their three losses now turn into four, falling to 14-4 (4-2 SEC).
Kentucky never regained the lead from the 8:10 mark of the first half where they were up 21-19, which put them into the halftime break trailing by eight. Overall, South Carolina led for over 29 minutes of this matchup in dominant form. They could not miss as they went 48.3% from the field and 45.8% from the three-point line on a high volume of shots. We expected Kentucky to give up a lot of points, but to allow your opponent while being on the road to make essentially one out of every two shots is just about as guaranteed of a recipe for a loss as you could ask for. The final score would back that statement up.
At halftime, the offense - which Kentucky puts all of their eggs in one basket for - was about as worse as we've seen all year. Outside of Rob Dillingham, the rest of the team had a combined 14 points.
Things would've been way worse if Robert Dillingham didn't find some buckets at will, keeping things within range from his 11 first half points (16 total) which was later trailed by Antonio Reeves' 13 second half points (16 total). Here is the full stat sheet from the loss.
Kentucky missed eight three's, 60% of their shots, and finished with a season-low in points. Also, for the first time in nearly two months, did not hit the over in projected team points. I guess the key to beating Kentucky is to kill out the offense because without the elite shooting this is what they look like.