The Kentucky Wildcats’ NCAA tournament run came to a close on Sunday, as the Kansas State Wildcats clinched a 75-69 win in the second round to advance to the Sweet 16.
Kentucky had its fair share of struggles on the offensive end, shooting 41.3 percent from the field to go along with 16 total turnovers.
Kentucky had multiple players rise to the occasion in the contest, but there were also a few who had games to forget, including Antonio Reeves. On the heels of a formidable 22-point outing against Providence, Reeves shot a lowly 1-15 from the field on Sunday. The senior guard showed promise from beyond the arc during regular season play, but he wound up hitting on a mere one out of his 10 attempts from 3-point land.
During his postgame press conference, Kentucky head coach John Calipari shied away from pinpointing the blame on Reeves for the team’s early exit in the NCAA tournament.
“It hurts you, but I don’t want to put it on him,” Calipari said. “We had other guys not post much either. It wasn’t just one guy. And then you’re left to playing one way, and that’s trying to throw it into Oscar and trying to get [Cason and Chris] to make a basket.”
Calipari also took some time to touch on his team’s overall performance on the day.
“Tough way to end,” Calipari said. “We had some guys really fight like crazy and had a couple of guys offensively not play their game like they did all year, but that can happen this time of year.
“These kids fought. They never stopped.”
Overall, Kentucky has not reached the Sweet 16 since the 2019 edition of the NCAA tournament.