Kentucky Basketball suffered its first loss of the season on Tuesday night, losing 70-66 to Clemson. The Tigers took away a lot of what Kentucky does best, which is pushing the tempo and hitting threes. Kentucky was slowed and unable to fire shots. Additionally, Clemson’s physicality seemed to be too much for the Wildcats.

These are things that need to be improved as schedules become more demanding, especially attending a conference which is notoriously stressful. Mark Pope spoke in more detail about what went wrong in the Wildcats’ tough loss on Tuesday. He credited Clemson’s impressive game plan and said they outscored Kentucky.

“Two things. One was our inability to rebound the ball. They do a good job blocking the ball. Foul trouble with Lamont (Butler) was difficult in the first half, and Lamont’s injury was difficult in the second half. There was that.” A lot of different things, both the circumstances of the game and the way Clemson does it, made it more difficult to play at the pace that we normally want. Sometimes something interesting happens. When you get faster, you actually slow down and that really hampered us offensively. It has to do with the way we play and what we do. We just don’t play like that.

– Pope on battling Clemson.

Clemson certainly took Kentucky off its usual pace, and that was clearly evident in the game. Kentucky appeared to be very quick on offense but was slowed down, resulting in a number of forced shots. Additionally, the Wildcats shot just 7-for-27 from three games on the night. The Tigers made it a grueling, slow, physical game, and Kentucky was nervous.

They’ll get a chance to bounce back Saturday in Seattle against No. 7 Gonzaga.