Bad News for Cats Fans

And, no I'm not talking about yesterday's devastating 60-53 loss at Florida, which eliminated whatever small hope Kentucky had of earning an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. Not directly, anyway. Rather, I'm talking about a story that emerged from that game.

Jerry Tipton's game story for the Lexington Herald-Leader opens with an account of an on-court exchange between Kentucky's Jodie Meeks, the nation's fifth-leading scorer, and Florida freshman Ray Shipman:

"We (were) at the free-throw line and Meeks was like, 'My coach just told me not to shoot the ball anymore,' " Shipman told The Miami Herald after the game. "I was like, 'Your coach told you not to shoot anymore?'"

If that exchange really happened, it begs a few questions:

1. Did Billy Gillispie really tell Meeks to stop shooting?

Meeks wasn't having a great game. He finished only 6-18 from the field, 2-9 from three point range. He certainly didn't score efficiently, needing 10 more shots to get one more point (15) than Ramon Harris (14). Patrick Patterson didn't fare much better (though, with 13 rebounds and 2 blocked shots, he had a better overall game), scoring just 16 points on 7-17 shooting, with many of the misses coming at point blank range.

That said, a great deal of shooting is confidence, and Meeks isn't generally short on that. For the season he's averaging 24.7 points per game as one of two focal points of an offense that has trouble finding a third scorer. Even after two frigid games from the field, he's still getting an efficient 1.49 points per shot (even better than the nation's leading scorer, the luminescent Stephon Curry's 1.44 points per shot!). And, despite shooting just 4-16 from three point range over the last two games, he's still shooting a remarkable 40.8% from there for the season.

Watching Meeks play this season, I sometimes get frustrated with the shots he takes. If he can get even a sliver of a window, he'll let it rip, with or without rebounders in place. But the more I've watched him, the more I've had to tell myself that sometimes what looks like a bad shot really isn't a bad shot. Not, at least, for Jodie Meeks. He may be a high-volume shooter, but he's also a high efficiency shooter, and that matters a great deal more. Simply put, he makes shots, even bad shots. And so, when he's making shots, there are no such thing as bad shots.

Ask Tennessee, who he torched for 54 points on 15-22 from the field, including 10-15 from three point range. Ask Appalachian State, who he torched for 14-21 from the field, including 9-14 from three point range. Those 9 three pointers, by the way, we a school record for all of three weeks, before he hit his 10 against Tennessee. And don't forget to ask Arkansas, who lost to a Patterson-less Kentucky team when Meeks torched them for 45 points 17-24 shooting, including 7-12 from three point range.

Meeks' game has problems. He (like the rest of his team) turns the ball over far, far too often, costing his team roughly 3 possessions per game with careless ball handling. He also gambles for steals too much on defense. While his tendency to jump the passing lanes has created turnovers that lead to fast break points, it has also opened the defense up to back-door cuts that lead either to easy layups, or, if the post defenders rotate in time to challenge the shot, offensive rebounds.

But shooting the basketball isn't one of his weaknesses. And, even when his shot isn't working for him, I simply can't imagine a coach who would tell him - one of only two effective scorers on the entire team - to stop doing what he does best.

Like I said, shooting is about confidence. And what, exactly, does it do for a shooter's confidence when the coach tells him the team would be better off if he'd just stop shooting?

This isn't just bad strategy, it's bad psychology. For Kentucky to win, it needs Jodie Meeks to shoot often, and with confidence. And if coach Gillispie told him to stop shooting the ball against Florida, I can't see how that would help things.

2. Why would Meeks tell Spipman that his coach told him to stop shooting?

This is a worse sign than the alleged order not to shoot. Either Gillispie told Meeks to stop shooting, or he didn't. In either case, why would Meeks complain about that to an opponent. It doesn't help the team. It doesn't reflect well on team unity. It certainly doesn't make the coach look good. Oh, yeah, and isn't there a game going on?

Meeks' value to the team lies primarily in his ability to score. Because he is both such a high volume and a high efficiency scorer, and because Kentucky has so few other offensive options, opposing defenses have to focus a great deal of their attention on Meeks. Their first goal is to deny him the ball, and then, if he gets the ball, their second goal become to deny him a look at the basket. His scoring exploits have focused so much defensive attention on him this season that I think that some games he should be credited with an assist for every single time a teammate scores while he's on the floor, because his mere presence and the attention it attracts from the defense opens things up so much for everyone else.

But if

a.) the coach has, for whatever reason, ordered him to stop shooting, and if

b.) he has, out of frustration, anger, or for whatever other reason, told an opponent that his coach has ordered him to stop shooting,

his value to the team has been greatly diminished.

From a basketball standpoint, this doesn't make much sense. But from a psychological standpoint, the friction this incident sheds light on may be much, much worse.

Kentucky has, as John Clay points out, now lost their last 4 games, 5 out of their last 6 games, and 8 out of their last 11 games, leaving them with a very un-Kentucky record of 19-12 overall, and a lowly 8-8 in the SEC. This is, simply put, not what most of these players signed up for. That fact alone would create a great deal of stress. But incidents like the alleged exchange between Meeks and Shipman point to an even deeper level of frustration. As Clay writes:

You wonder if by now everyone isn't ground down, tired of being one error away from being yanked to the bench.

If the Cats don't particularly care for their coach, that's hardly an exclusive event. But they need to respect him, to at least believe in what he's saying. I'm not sure that's the case with this group. There are whispers that there's not a lot of love in the (locker) room, and maybe you should expect that from a team spiraling downward. Maybe not.

All I can say is that, at least from where I'm sitting (which is, it should be noted, a long way away from the Joe Craft Center, where the Wildcats practice) it looks like even the players are losing faith in coach Gillispie.