Here’s what John Calipari said after UK basketball lost early, again, in the SEC Tournament

John Calipari’s Kentucky men’s basketball team has gone one-and-done in the SEC Tournament for a second straight year.

And this year’s loss is far more perplexing, and disappointing, than last year’s.

The No. 2 seed Wildcats (now 23-9 overall this season and 13-6 against SEC opponents) handily lost to the No. 7 seed Texas A&M Aggies (20-13 overall) 97-87 in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals on Friday night inside Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.

It’s the second win this season for the Aggies over the Cats. And unlike January’s close overtime win for Texas A&M in College Station, Friday night’s game was comprehensive.

Texas A&M led for more than 38 minutes of the 40-minute contest, and Kentucky’s five-game winning streak flamed out in spectacular fashion with renewed questions about UK’s physicality and defense ahead of the NCAA Tournament.

Kentucky allowed 26 second-chance points to Texas A&M and committed 14 turnovers, which the Aggies turned into 18 points. Texas A&M even beat UK at its own game: The Aggies finished the contest with a 18-14 advantage in fast-break points.

Foul trouble plagued Kentucky for much of Friday’s game, specifically with fifth-year guard Antonio Reeves, who scored only 13 points (snapping his streak of seven straight games with at least 20). Both Reeves and fifth-year forward Tre Mitchell (who had a game-high nine rebounds) fouled out of the game.

Freshman guard Rob Dillingham led UK with 27 points.

Defensively, UK offered no rim protection: The Aggies had 36 points in the paint and went 15-for-19 on dunks and layups. And this atrocious defensive showing came on the heels of comments from Calipari earlier this week on his radio show that praised Kentucky’s physical presence as postseason play began.

Both of Texas A&M’s 90-plus point games this season have come at UK’s expense.

UK had risen to a No. 3 seed in most bracketology projections entering Friday’s game, but who knows how the Wildcats’ seeding will shake out now after another early exit in front of a clear home-court advantage in Nashville? Kentucky is 2-5 in its past five appearances at the SEC Tournament.

Selection Sunday beckons.

Afterward, Calipari met with media members at Bridgestone Arena to discuss the defeat.

Here’s everything the UK coach said:

Opening statement:

Give A&M credit. They played a physical game. Did a great job. Defensively they made it hard. Just wasn’t one of our better games.

I told ‘em after, we didn’t pass the ball to each other like we’ve been doing. When the ball stops, we’re not the same team. Go one on five, you can’t make a play that way. We haven’t for weeks. Today we kind of did.

Whether they did things to make us play that way ... But they deserved that game the way they played. Again, I mean, we give up 97. How many games you going to win giving up 97 points? Two guards got 72 points. You’re not going to win.

We got some stuff to figure out. But this is an unbelievable group that I’m coaching. All I told ‘em is they got to stick together now. We’ve been on a run, it’s all been fun, you win. All of a sudden you get dinged and now the real stuff starts next week. We got to be in the right frame of mind.

Question about how concerned he is with Kentucky’s defense:

Yeah, we’ve been working on zone. We were good for a minute. You make a sub, one guy gives up two threes. Part of it, we hadn’t played it that much, but we were prepared to go to it if the guards kept getting downhill.

But you got to have Plan B in that thing. I think we do. Crazy thing was there were times we weren’t bad defensively. They just made, like, a tough shot.

When I watch the tape, I’ll have a better idea. There were some times we had miscommunication. Get, not enough talking. A young team. They don’t talk enough. A guy can’t hear what they’re saying and gets clipped a little bit.

We have shown that we can guard the best teams in the country. We have shown that you can score a hundred on us. We just got to lock in and know we’ve got to get better defensively.

When you’re not passing the ball to each other, and everybody’s not touching the ball, it bleeds into your defense, too. But they did this to us down there, too. We knew. They only outrebounded us by a couple, but their turnovers, points off of turnovers, 18, ours was four. But we shoot 50% from the two, 40% from the 3-point line. Nine blocks. Pretty even. Twenty-one assists. Just got to guard better. Eighty-seven points is enough to win most basketball games, unless they score 97.

We’re going to have to lock in. Again, I keep coming back to offensively, whoever I put in, we seem to be okay. Some defensive players may have to step in there and let’s get it locked down.

We just weren’t ourselves today. I want to give credit to A&M because they played well. They did good stuff today. They made more 3s probably than they have in a while. Give them credit.

Question about Kentucky’s youth and needing to know that each possession matters:

Much of that is your first game is the hardest one. I told them that. I’ve done this a long, long time. Been in a lot of these kind of tournaments, a lot of NCAA tournaments. Hardest game is the first one when you got a team like we have. When you get by the first one, a little bit more of a downhill run.

There’s teams around the country right now losing this game because they’re learning it, that that first one’s a hard one.

Now, I think they’ll know when we talk about it next week, that wherever we end up, we’re going to have a tough first game. It will be hard.

Question about if having a young team will make it easier or harder to recover from Friday’s loss:

I think they’ll be fine ... They’re competitive. They got a will to win. Their body language ... When we walked in at halftime, they were so good at convincing each other we’re fine. We started pretty good, and then it’s a couple foul shots. All of a sudden you can’t get it any closer.

Again, the guys that didn’t play as much, Aaron, just how the game kind of played out. Justin. I mean, we need those guys. When they play well, we win. That’s the stuff that we need to keep an eye on and just make sure they know you’ve just got to be ready for your moment. It’s hard if you’re not playing as much. But you got to be ready for your moment.

The rest of their basketball lives, you better be ready for your moment. No excuse, no nothing. Just be ready.

I got a good team. We’re young. We’re young. We had some really bad turnovers today that led to baskets. When you’re talking a four- to six-point game, eight-point game, but you gave them three breakaways, think about that. I’m chalking it up to, you know what, they played really good, we didn’t play as well as we’ve been playing, and you lose. Now let’s get these guys ready.

I’m excited about going into this tournament. I am. When you can score the ball, you got a chance. Now, c’mon, let’s just guard a little bit. And we did it at Tennessee. Tennessee is one of the best teams in the country. We did it at Auburn. Alabama in the end. So we can do it. It’s are you locked into that more than anything else?

Question about Calipari balancing his message that the NCAA Tournament matters more than the SEC Tournament against his players wanting to still win the SEC Tournament:

You know what this is, this was about seed. It was also about our fans. I told them that. We got a lot of people that traveled, spent money. This is their opportunity to watch this team. But this tournament for us was about the seed. You got to win and you got to advance to improve your seed.

We had every chance. All that’s going around the country, we had our chance. But we had to go and play well today. You do know how many games my teams have won in this thing, championships? Like 16. We are playing to win. But we’re playing for a bigger picture, which is that seed.

I don’t think that affected them that way. They wanted to win this game. They were frustrated and disappointed. I felt for the fans. I said it to Tom after on the radio. You want to win for them. They put everything into being here, all that. You want to win for them.

But our kids did, too. I told them, When you walk in this arena, you’re going to think you’re in Rupp Arena. Let’s go play for ‘em, have some fun, let them see who we are. Some of these people can’t get in Rupp Arena. Let’s go.

Sometimes your teams don’t play well. Sometimes they do and you advance and you win. Sometimes they don’t. Especially young teams. We didn’t do it today.

I don’t want you to take away from A&M because they played well.

Question about the effect of teams on the bubble having good wins (like Texas A&M’s two wins over Kentucky), but also bad losses:

They got eight Quad 1 wins. They’re fine ... I think they’re fine. I think they’ve done enough to be in the tournament. The way they played today, if they shoot the ball the way they shot it today, they’re going to win games. They’re a good team.

Question about Antonio Reeves’ foul trouble and the impact of him only playing 18 minutes:

I thought there were some opportunities for him to get shots before he got in foul trouble. Went through that little floater you have, he had two or three opportunities to do it. He never really got in rhythm. He made a couple. I thought at half, he makes that shot, now he’s going to get going.

I’m going to say they’re not machines and robots, they don’t play great every night out. Can we say it’s rebounding or the foul trouble? Can we say it’s Texas A&M, the way they played? Reed didn’t get as many shots off in the second half. We’re trying to get him more shots. They did a good job. Couldn’t quite get ‘em off.

Yeah, we need him. We need him. Again, we need all of ‘em. We need everybody on the team.

Kentucky goes one-and-done in the SEC Tournament again. Texas A&M beats Cats in Nashville.

Box score from Kentucky basketball’s 97-87 SEC Tournament loss to Texas A&M

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Shot charts from Kentucky basketball’s 97-87 SEC Tournament loss to Texas A&M