Kentucky’s season went from on the brink to off the rails on Tuesday as the 19.5-point favorite Wildcats fell at home in a stunner to unranked South Carolina 71-68. The loss snapped Kentucky’s 28-game home winning streak at Rupp Arena that was the longest running streak in the SEC and dropped the Wildcats to 1-3 in conference play for the first time since the 1986-87 season. The disastrous loss comes only days after falling by 26 points to Alabama — its largest margin of defeat in the century-long series against the Crimson Tide — on Saturday.
The Wildcats have struggled at various points throughout the season, either on offense or defense, but Tuesday against the Gamecocks was a combination of everything going wrong at all times. South Carolina scorched the nets from 3, smashed on the offensive boards and raked in 21 second-chance points in a wire-to-wire win in front of the UK faithful. And each time the Wildcats were on the prowl lurking to make things tight, South Carolina seemed to have an answer all the way to the end.
South Carolina got 26 big ones from Meechie Johnson — a new career-high — in an out-of-his-mind scoring performance on the road to pull off the upset. Johnson hit six of his 10 3-point attempts, including an absurd stepback from deep range late in the second half and another from close to the logo to cushion the lead as UK was pushing to make it closer. Star freshman GG Jackson also added two 3s on two attempts and contributed 16 points on 6-of-10 shooting.
South Carolina was as scorching hot as Kentucky was ice cold in yet another flat performance from the Wildcats. Even with reigning Player of the Year Oscar Tshiebwe, UK got worked on the boards and the offensive glass, and got no help from the offensive side of things to even out the scales. The team took only 10 3s and made three, a confounding strategy by a team that statistically rates as one of the best 3-point shooting…
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