What were they thinking?

Kentucky completely collapsed at the end of a winnable game against Missouri. Up 8 with 4 and a half minutes left, up 3 points with 1:40 left, at home against a team not likely to make the NCAA Tournament.

Kentucky's play down the stretch was horrendous, to put it bluntly. The defense was a steady stream of sloppy play off-ball and miscommunications. The offense was aimless and ill-focused.

It was so bad, I am writing this just to show you the clips.

clip #1: Williams interior "defense"

Kam Williams is guarding a 6'10" benchwarmer from Mizzou. Williams for some reason steps away from his man, creating a passing lane. Williams is unable to challenge the interior shot, again by a guy Mizzou never plays. I don't know what Williams was doing, but it's a bad sign that UK gave this up so easily. Still, UK is up 6.

clip #2: Oweh does something off-ball?

After a couple of empty offensive possessions, UK really needs a stop here. Missouri runs a pick and roll and creates a bit of a threat as Moreno steps up away from his man. Otega Oweh may have been trying to help on Moreno's man, but in doing so he completely leaves his man wide-open. His man is Jayden Stone, who hits 42% from three and takes more threes than twos. If UK has 2 7-footers in the game and both are around the basket, I think Otega Oweh should stay with a perimeter shooter instead of helping inside.

Now UK is up 1.

clip #3: Creating an advantage, then doing nothing with it

Jaland Lowe and Malachi Moreno run pick and roll and get a switch. UK should be doing this because they think they can either exploit Lowe against a big or Moreno against a guard. 2 UK players are in the post so Lowe can't really drive, and there's no attempt to post up Moreno after the switch. Lowe is 5-24 on threes this season and UK creates that. Also, Garrison and Moreno make no attempt to crash the offensive glass despite Moreno being guarded by the guy who was guarding a poinst guard. At least UK had scored a Garrison basket inside before this, so they are still up 3!

clip #4: About as badly as you can guard pick and roll

3 UK defenders are involved here and none of them make any impact on the play. Moreno appears to switch, or drop deeply. However, Jaland Lowe very much does not switch, and so both Moreno and Lowe are tracking the ballhandler but neither is affecting him. The screener rolls to the basket with nobody watching him, and Kam Williams basically watches him slide right on by. Normally in this position, Williams would "tag" the roller to slow him down with a bump. Or, Williams could switch onto the roller since Williams' man came over to set a 2nd screen in the play. Instead, he does absolutely nothing. It looks like none of the 3 UK players knew what the other players were doing, or how they would try to affect the play. Now UK is up 1.

clip #5: Running the offense through the bigs?

Here UK probably wanted to get the ball to Lowe off the inbounds pass, but he's guarded so it comes to Moreno. At that point it doesn't look like Moreno knew what to do. Lowe comes over like he's expecting a handoff, but Moreno turns and tries to run a quasi-Zoom action with Oweh. Malachi Moreno is not a good enough passer/decision-maker to be running this action here. Mizzou's entire defense sees Moreno laser focused on Oweh, and is helping aggressively to take away the layup. Oweh catches it and has a defender in his face, and the ball skips out of bounds.

clip #6: actually solid defense, but Mizzou scores

This is much cleaner pick and roll defense, but Mizzou's Mark Mitchell gets the ball in an area where he hits about 50%. Garrison recovers nicely to contest, but Mitchell scores. The reason the defensive screw-ups are so bad is that UK then is in a position where things get dire if a 50/50 possession like this goes against them. now Missouri is leading, almost entirely because of UK screwing up.

clip #7: the most important offensive possession is this?

UK took out Jaland Lowe for Denzel Aberdeen, but on the most important offensive possession they post up Garrison at the three point line and have him try to thread a backdoor pass. Like Moreno previously, Garrison is in a terrible spot as there are 4 Mizzou defenders around the paint. Williams wasn't going to score even if the pass was perfect. This feels like Kentucky spun a random wheel of what they could run on offense. Brandon Garrison has 18 assists and 15 turnovers this season, what is UK doing here?

clip #8: complete failure defending an inbounds pass

UK needs a stop or turnover here, and gives up a layup. Collin Chandler appears to be the deepest defender, and he lets a Mizzou player run right past him. Oweh appears to be telling him to switch, but Chandler is completely caught off-guard. What the hell is this? Again UK seems completely unprepared and out of sync.

This is ridiculous. There are too many players involved in defensive breakdowns here, there are too many incomprehensible offensive possessions. Kentucky lost against Missouri because the Wildcats fell apart when asked to guard pick and rolls and the Wildcats didn't put their players in a position to create offense successfully.

This isn't about effort or fight or heart, it's about being prepared and focused on defense and understanding the path to offense. Kentucky has skilled players: Aberdeen and Oweh can score off the drive or outside shot, Lowe can create off the dribble and pass at a high level, all of the bigs can rebound and score fairly well inside, and UK can probably find one shooter out of Williams, Noah, or Chandler. Even a guy like Jasper Johnson can make outside shots. The problem is that there isn't a plan to use players together. UK's bigs have to stay around the paint, which means the guards don't have much room to drive. UK doesn't have a consistent shooter, much less multiple shooters, so teams can help aggressively without penalty. UK has size and interior guys, but against Missouri there was very little attempt to hit the offensive boards.

The path forward involves having a cohesive plan on defense, including benching guys who don't have the defensive awareness to play team defense. UK needs to take a page from Michigan State and pound the ball inside, crash the offensive glass, and ride their on-ball creator to get the ball in the right places. Maybe things will work out better, but I no longer am willing to give the staff the benefit of the doubt in figuring it out this year. Right now, UK-Mississipi State is tipping off. I'll watch and hope things look better, but I won't be surprised any more if they don't.

Next season, get some transfers who can shoot.