These aren't last season's Wildcats, but that may not be a bad thing
LOS ANGELES
A simple scan of the Pauley Pavilion crowd was evidence enough that Thursday night’s matchup between the host UCLA Bruins and No. 1-ranked Kentucky Wildcats was a lot more than a basketball game.
It was also a Hollywood party, with stars who usually walk the red carpet instead lining the courtside seats at Wooden Court.
There was Jessica Alba sitting courtside, waving a UCLA T-shirt and hanging out with her husband and his buddy, Baron Davis. Behind UCLA’s bench sat Jerry West and Oscar Robertson having a Hall-of-Fame worthy conversation that no mere mortal could ever appreciate. Starring on the Jumbotron? Shaq, making those goofy Shaq faces.
It really was a star-studded event, and the simple fact that so many big names were in attendance proved what John Calipari always says about his Kentucky Wildcats’ basketball team is true: They really are “everyone’s Super Bowl.” The simple fact is, Alba and Shaq, the Big O and The Logo, didn’t come to Pauley Pavilion to see UCLA on Thursday night. They came to see the No. 1 team in the country.
At the same time, with the gift of playing at Kentucky comes the curse of getting everyone’s best shot, and that’s exactly what happened Thursday night. The Wildcats suffered their first loss of the season – their first regular-season defeat in nearly two years -- in a result no one saw coming.
UCLA opened the regular season with a loss to Monmouth at home on Nov. 13, then lost by nearly 20 nine days ago in their only other matchup against a top-five opponent this season (then-No. 5 Kansas at the Maui Invitational). Yet there they were on Thursday, running over, around and through the top-ranked team in the land in an 87-77 victory.
And frankly, the final score probably wasn’t indicative of just how one-sided this game really was.
“I want everyone to understand, I got outcoached,” Calipari said postgame. “We got outplayed. Their execution, their hustle, their toughness, there isn’t one area where they didn’t beat us. So hats off to them, they did a great job.”
For Steve Alford, this was a signature win. But unfortunately for the third-year UCLA coach and his Bruins, much of the postgame chatter was instead about Kentucky. And for good reason -- the Wildcats started off 38-0 last season and hadn’t lost a regular-season game since March 2014.
Now granted, there is no shame in losing one regular-season game, even if you are the No. 1 team in the country and even if you are Coach Cal’s mighty Kentucky. And there’s especially no shame when it’s your first true road game of the season, when you’re starting three freshmen, and when one of your best players (junior Marcus Lee) leaves early with an injury, and another (sophomore Tyler Ulis) is still recovering from one of his own.
At the same time, the loss did teach Kentucky a valuable lesson: The Wildcats we saw last season -- the team that won 38 games in a row before losing in the Final Four to Wisconsin -- is gone and isn’t coming back. No longer can they simply walk into an arena and overwhelm opponents with raw talent, like they did so many times last season.
They are far from the finished product that we saw obliterate Kansas, North Carolina and this same UCLA around this time last year; instead, they are very much a work in progress, like just about every other team in college basketball.
It’s the new reality for this new group of Kentucky Wildcats.
“Anybody can beat us,” Ulis said when asked about what he and his teammates could learn from this game. “We have to be ready . . . we have to come out and play and we can’t win off just talent.”
For Kentucky, if there’s one silver lining, it’s that the loss really did come when just about everything went wrong. Lee -- who came in averaging a team-high 7.6 rebounds per game -- was lost just four minutes in to a head injury and didn’t come back. Ulis is still recovering from a hyperextended elbow injury suffered last Friday against South Florida but still had to play a game-high 38 minutes Thursday. And freshman stars Jamal Murray and Skal Labissiere both played arguably their worst games in a Kentucky uniform; Murray was held to just 5-of-16 shooting from the field, while Labissiere battled foul trouble and was held to just six points and one rebound.
It was a frustrating night for Kentucky. But one they can undoubtedly learn from.
“This is the growing pains of trying to coach the most inexperienced team in the country,” Calipari said. “I’m fine with it. We got beat, we got kicked, we move on.”
In a lot of ways, that is the most intriguing thing about this loss … the simple fact that it was an actual loss. Virtually none of the players on this roster have ever suffered a regular-season loss, something that in theory is great, but that many believed was a hindrance for the Wildcats last season in their pursuit of a perfect season.
That’s right, we all remember the debates last season about whether a loss prior to the NCAA tournament could have helped the ’Cats ease the pressure as the team entered the home-stretch of the season.
In 2015-16, we get to find out.
“I think taking one (loss) early is going to help this team,” Ulis said. “Sometimes we come out not playing too hard and guys need to understand we can lose. Nobody wants this feeling again.”
No they don’t, which is why in a lot of ways that loss can do plenty of good.
No, these definitely are not last season’s Wildcats. And as it turns out, that might be for the best.
Aaron Torres is a contributor for FOXSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @Aaron_Torres or Facebook.E-mail at ATorres00@gmail.com.
