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John Calipari

Georgia game helps unbeaten Kentucky gut-check another box

Dan Wolken
USA TODAY Sports
Kentucky forwards Karl-Anthony Towns (12) and Willie Cauley-Stein (15) had their work cut out for them in an eight-point win Tuesday night.

ATHENS, Ga. — There is a widely-held theory that championship basketball teams need their flaws exposed to adjust and grow, that adversity at some point in a season is the foundation of whatever intangible thing gets you through six games in a one-and-done tournament.

And because we have far more examples of a team suffering a well-timed loss before going on to win the NCAA title than we do teams actually getting through an entire season undefeated, there is probably some merit in that belief.

Even if Kentucky had lost to Georgia on Tuesday night in Stegeman Coliseum, it would not have changed anything about how the Wildcats are perceived, what seed they will get in the NCAA tournament or what most people believe will happen on April 6 in Indianapolis. College basketball is long past the point of anyone else being considered the favorite — and an overwhelming one at that — to win the national title.

But even as Kentucky's winning streak has grown, there has been this underlying search for some sort of moment that can define adversity for John Calipari's team; that can propel the Wildcats into the NCAA tournament with a requisite number of tests to survive the combination of late-game pressure and increased level of competition they'll face in an Elite Eight and Final Four.

For this Kentucky team, though, it's been a bit of a manufactured storyline. At most, there have only been five games out of 30 that the Wildcats were in any legitimate danger of losing coming down the stretch.

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One of those happened here on Tuesday, with Kentucky coming back from a nine-point deficit in the final 10 minutes to beat Georgia, 72-64, in its final true road game of the season.

"I don't remember a game where we were down by so much in the second half," freshman big man Karl-Anthony Towns said, "but games like this we need badly, especially going into tournament season."

One way or another, Tuesday is bound to be the kind of game that gets remembered as a major turning point in Kentucky's season.

If the Wildcats fall short of a national championship, perhaps they'll wish that Georgia hadn't gone scoreless from the 5:36 mark until there were just 29 seconds left. Maybe they'll wonder what might have happened if the Bulldogs didn't miss 9-of-18 free throws, including three consecutive front ends in the final minutes. There will be a consensus that this Kentucky team needed a true wakeup call before the NCAA tournament and the Bulldogs, much like Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Florida and LSU before them, just weren't quite good enough to deliver it.

Georgia was tough on Kentucky when the Wildcats like Devin Booker (1) went inside Tuesday night, and when Georgia went inside.

Conversely, if Kentucky goes on to become the first team since 1976 Indiana to complete an undefeated national title, this will be remembered as the night Kentucky became tournament-ready, mustering everything it had down the stretch and against a worthy opponent that played extremely well for 35 minutes.

"When we were down nine, I said, 'I hope we go down 10,' " Calipari said. "We need to find out who's who."

***

Calipari understands the well-timed loss theory as much as anyone. In 2012, Vanderbilt stunned the Wildcats in the SEC tournament championship game, stopping their 24-game winning streak. Kentucky subsequently rolled through the NCAA tournament, and the Vanderbilt loss was viewed as nothing more than a good moment for a young team to learn how to close game.

In 2008, when Calipari's Memphis team reached 26-0, its loss to Tennessee was almost like hitting a reset button. The Tigers played their best basketball of the season following that game and came within a hair of winning the national title.

This Kentucky team is different because, to this point, it has refused to succumb to any situation. The Wildcats haven't gotten in many tight spots, but it's undeniably impressive the way the Wildcats have pulled through them.

"We're just using whatever happens and learning every day," Calipari said.

There was a lot to learn on Tuesday. Georgia's offense, with a lot of off-ball movement and cutting, really got Kentucky out of sorts. Few teams have been able to score at the rim on Kentucky the way Georgia did, getting 40 points in the paint.

And when Georgia answered a Kentucky push with a couple of tough baskets to go back in front 62-56 with 5:36 left, it seemed everything was aligned for the undefeated storyline to end.

"We have a pretty confident team," sophomore Andrew Harrison said. "Some younger guys hadn't been in a situation like this before. Most of them were pretty relaxed. But I just told them, 'We're not losing.' I told them what we had to do to win and we did that."

***

The recipe was fairly predictable. Kentucky fixed its defense in a hurry, snagged a key offensive rebound off a missed free throw with 4:46 to go that Willie Cauley-Stein dunked in and got the ball to the uber-talented Towns a whole bunch down the stretch.

The Wildcats looked anything but panicked about losing their shot at history.

"We were down nine and thinking, what do we have to do? What do we have to do to get back in the game?" Towns said. "We came in the huddle we said we wanted five straight stops and my brothers got five straight stops. From there we let the defense win us the game. They played better than us, but we're just so happy we played at the right moment."

But playing well in the right moment at Georgia in early March isn't the same as playing well with everything on the line in the final minutes of a do-or-die game against Duke or Wisconsin.

Tuesday is as close as they've gotten all season, though, and given what remains in Saturday's regular season finale against Florida and next week's SEC tournament, this was probably the last meaningful preparation they'll have before the real tests start next week.

Only time will tell whether it's enough. ​

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