Kentucky nearly left Texas A&M with a win. What happened showed more room for growth.
Seven seconds left and Kentucky down two points, Rob Dillingham took the inbounds pass from Reed Sheppard and glided up the court.
The UK freshman stopped on a dime and pulled from about 24 feet over the outstretched arm of Texas A&M’s Sol Washington, letting go of the basketball with a little more than 4 seconds left.
Anyone who had watched the previous two minutes surely thought that shot was going in.
Dillingham, who made three 3-pointers in a span of 64 seconds late in the game to put the Wildcats in a position to win, watched the ball in flight and backpedaled into the UK bench area.
It hit the back of the rim. It hit the front of the rim. And then it bounced away.
Luckily for the Wildcats, it landed in the hands of Sheppard, who secured the offensive rebound and got fouled with 0.6 seconds left. Kentucky’s Mr. Basketball smiled as he stepped to the line. Texas A&M’s fans had Reed Arena shaking. Sheppard was as cool as ever. He made the first free throw. He made the second free throw. The game went to overtime.
It looked like the Wildcats might pull out another memorable victory. They didn’t.
Kentucky missed all eight of its shots from the field in the extra period and didn’t score in overtime until Sheppard made a pair of free throws with 39 seconds left. By that point, it was all but over. And a short time later, it was: Texas A&M 97, Kentucky 92.
Afterward, John Calipari lamented what he saw as “freshman shots” down the stretch. “Like, ‘I’m just shooting this.’ What?!” the UK coach said. “We took about four of those.”
He felt like there were moments that his players didn’t get to loose balls. He was critical of the Wildcats’ defense. He turned some of the blame on himself, saying he did “a bad job” down the stretch.
“But we fought,” Calipari said. “And that’s what this team has been. You can see they have a will to win. They’re not gonna give up, even though the other team’s playing well.”
On this day, it wasn’t enough.
Texas A&M — the team picked to finish second in the SEC, the position they ended up last season with a 15-3 conference record — limped into this one. The Aggies have already lost six games. They were off to an 0-2 start to league play, the first of those losses coming at home last weekend to lightly regarded LSU, which snapped A&M’s nearly two-year SEC home winning streak.
The Aggies’ offense has been bad all season — last in the SEC in both field-goal and 3-point percentage going into Saturday — and it was especially bad in the two previous league games. In those, A&M scored 53 and 55 points and went 8-for-47 from 3-point range.
On Saturday, the Aggies dropped 89 points on the Wildcats in regulation and added eight more in overtime. They hit 12 of 32 on 3-pointers — 37.5% for a team shooting 26.0% from deep coming in — and they got to the basket at will, with preseason SEC player of the year Wade Taylor IV (31 points and six 3s) and 24-year-old teammate Tyrece Radford (28 points) leading the way.
“And then defensively,” Calipari said while talking about UK’s areas of struggle. “I mean, they ran downhill the whole game.”
He said he wasn’t surprised.
“They were laser-focused,” he said. “I told our team, ‘They’re desperate. They’re a desperate team at home. They’ve gotta have this game. Let’s make it hard for them to beat us.’ And I thought we did.”
Texas A&M is no bad team, by any means. The Aggies were actually favored by three points Saturday. Nearly all of their losses have come to projected NCAA Tournament teams. They were No. 34 nationally in the KenPom ratings going into the weekend.
And Taylor, who hit three 3-pointers in the final four minutes of regulation, is tough to stop. On Saturday, so was Radford.
“They’re great guards,” Dillingham said, adding that it was difficult to contain them in pick-and-roll situations, where they often got to the rim, and then it became a decision of whether to foul and send them to the line or let them have the shot. Taylor was 11 of 12 on free throws.
“It was hard guarding both of them, but I feel like it was a learning experience,” Dillingham said.
And these Cats, for as good as they’ve been so far, still have a lot of learning to do.
The nation’s No. 6-ranked team was on the verge of moving into the top five for the first time this season. Instead, UK dropped to 12-3 and 2-1 in SEC play.
Antonio Reeves led four Cats in double figures with 22 points — 16 of those coming in the first half. Tre Mitchell had just eight points but added 13 rebounds and six assists. And another Kentucky player came up big at times, too.
With Aaron Bradshaw in all kinds of foul trouble — he played less than four minutes before picking up his fourth foul, finishing with zero points in six total minutes — sophomore center Ugonna Onyenso tallied seven points, grabbed 10 rebounds and swatted five shots in 31 minutes. His previous high in playing time was 20 minutes, coming in his college debut last season, while Oscar Tshiebwe was sidelined. His scoring total was two points short of a career high. He tied his best mark with the 10 rebounds and set a new one with the five blocks.
Still, he gave himself only an “OK” grade afterward. Onyenso, who didn’t make his season debut until Dec. 16 following a foot injury over the summer, said he made a lot of mistakes in the first half and felt like a lot of the points A&M scored them were his fault.
“I just gotta keep working,” he said.
He was much better in the second half, getting all five of his blocks in that period. He showed growth over the course of the game, and Calipari and Dillingham both said this team has a logical route to improve defensively, one of its few shortcomings so far this season.
“I feel like we’ve gotten better on defense since we started,” the freshman said. “It just takes us playing games to get better. We got a group of guys that want to win and want to learn. So we’ll get better, because we want to win.”
Calipari knows there’s plenty of room to improve but didn’t seem overly concerned with his defense, knowing there’s another two months before NCAA Tournament time. He noted that the physical presence of Adou Thiero — out for a fourth straight game with “general soreness,” according to UK — would provide a boost, when Thiero returns.
“I think we’ll get better,” Calipari said.
Dillingham said the way the Wildcats fought back at the end to force overtime was a good sign. And games like this, even if the Cats don’t win them, can be beneficial in the end.
“I feel like it helps us a lot,” Dillingham said. “Because it’s like — everybody’s mad right now, but we fought. We pushed it to overtime. We didn’t come up with the dub, but that just shows we can fight. We’re still freshmen. We’re young. We’re only a few games in. …
“I feel like we will definitely get better from that.”
About that last shot in regulation? The one that didn’t go in?
Dillingham said it felt good, looked good leaving his hand. He was disappointed that it didn’t drop to give Kentucky a one-point lead and likely victory. He was more disappointed with the end result, the team’s first loss in six weeks.
But he was still able to laugh when talking about that shot.
“Honestly, I feel like that shot should have went in,” he said. “But I feel like it didn’t go in, because it’s gonna go in in March. That’s how I look at it.”
Next game
Mississippi State at No. 6 Kentucky
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday
TV: ESPN2
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Records: Kentucky 12-3 (2-1 SEC), Mississippi State 12-3 (1-1)
Series: Kentucky leads 101-21
Last meeting: Kentucky won 71-68 on Feb. 15, 2023, in Starkville, Miss.
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