For those of you that read Bill Simmons, The Sports Guy on Page 2 over at ESPN this may be familiar. What you just witnessed comes in at number four on his 13 levels of losing chart. That’s right, the fourth most painful way for your team to lose a game. It is appropriately named The Broken Axle, because the wheels just came flying off in that game.
While watching the first half I had the feeling (as I’m sure most people did) that the players only meeting that Ramel and Bobby called earlier this week, and the long practices actually did some good. That the extra measures taken this week had been effective at stopping the losing streak at one. It felt as if it had finally “clicked” for everyone and that Tubby had an excellent game plan for the Dawgs. Mark Coury looked like he belonged on the court, Joe Crawford was scorching hot with 17 points, and all the substitutions were playing defense. On a side note, Perry Stevenson has a new nickname on this site: Ricochet.
In the second half UK made Takais Brown look All-World and for the second game in a row Randolph Morris did his best “Tyler Hansbrough vs Kentucky” impersonation. Did the team come out flat after halftime? Yes. Was Tubby out coached after halftime. Most definitely. Just to recap for a second, UK goes into the locker room with a 43-30 lead. What do you tell the team at this point if you are the coach? Keep up the energy, keep up the defensive pressure and stick with the game plan?
Tubby has always been (and I don’t think there is to much contention on this point) excellent at making adjustments during halftime. In my opinion one of Tubby’s weaknesses is that he isn’t very good at making strategy changes during the game. Dennis Felton “pulled a Tubby” and changed his defensive scheme and the Kentucky could just never adjust. That was truly one of the worst losses in recent memory.