Five things you need to know from No. 19 UK’s dispiriting 89-75 loss to Missouri

Five things you need to know from the No. 19 Kentucky Wildcats’ 89-75 loss to the Missouri Tigers in the SEC opener at Mizzou Arena on the campus of the University of Missouri in Columbia:

1. Cats continue to struggle vs. power-conference foes. With its loss, Kentucky is now 1-3 this season against teams from basketball’s major conferences (the football Power Five plus the Big East).

In its last 54 games against major-conference competition, UK is now 27-27.

2. A perplexing beat down. Missouri head man Dennis Gates is in his first year as head man of the Tigers after coming from Cleveland State.

His roster is not filled with McDonald’s All-Americans. Instead, the Mizzou roster is stocked with transfers from mid-major schools. Four players came with Gates from Cleveland State. Missouri also has players who have transferred from Milwaukee, Missouri State, Massachusetts and Northern Iowa.

Yet Mizzou, with its first-year head man and its team filled with mid-major emigres went up against Kentucky and its Hall of Fame head man and played with far more belief, more confidence and more chemistry than the Wildcats displayed.

Gates, a Leonard Hamilton protege as a former assistant at Florida State, has instilled an up-tempo, aggressive style of basketball right out of the gates at Missouri.

While winning 12 of its first 13 games, Missouri has now gone over 80 points 11 times.

Kobe Brown, one of only three holdovers on the Tigers roster from the Cuonzo Martin coaching era, followed up a 31-point game in a 93-71 upset of then-No. 16 Illinois with 30 points vs. Kentucky.

3. Kentucky looks lost. UK star Oscar Tshiebwe had 23 points and 19 rebounds in defeat. Freshman guard Cason Wallace went for 19 points in spite of battling foul trouble. Sahvir Wheeler, the polarizing Wildcats point guard, had 12 points and eight assists. Role-playing big man Lance Ware (six points, six rebounds, three assists) brought some fight on a night when the Cats lacked that quality.

True freshman Adou Thiero got some late run and produced five points and three rebounds in 17 minutes of playing time. At plus-three in the plus/minus ratio, Thiero was the only Kentucky player on the positive side of that statistical category.

Yet most of the other Cats seem to be playing without confidence. As Missouri built a 12-point halftime lead, 42-30, Kentucky was horrid offensively, making only 12 of 30 shots and two of 12 three-pointers.

In half two, UK shot far better — 14-of-26 field goals, 6-of-11 treys. But the Wildcats could not string together enough stops to ever get closer than nine in half two.

As much criticism as John Calipari’s allegedly “outdated offense” takes, it was poor defense that did Kentucky in at the end of 2021-22 and which remains a problem so far this year.

4. Calipari in first true road game. Missouri was UK’s first contest on an opponent’s home court. Kentucky has now lost in its first road game of the year for three straight seasons. UK lost at Louisville, 65-62, in its first road game in 2020-21 and fell to Notre Dame in South Bend, 66-62, in its initial road tilt last season.

In the John Calipari coaching era, UK is now 5-9 in its first true road game of the season.

5. Calipari in SEC openers. With its loss, Kentucky is now 11-3 in the John Calipari coaching era (since 2009-10) in its first Southeastern Conference game of each season.

UK’s only other losses under Calipari in a season’s inaugural SEC contest came in 2010-11, a 77-70 loss at Georgia, and 2018-19, a 77-75 defeat at Alabama.

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