Experience separates UK and LSU

Experience loomed large in Louisiana State’s 73-70 victory over Kentucky on Saturday. To paraphrase UK Coach Billy Gillispie’s post-game comments from earlier in the week, you saw one team with it and one without.
Kentucky was the team without. UK let a 10-point slip away in the final 11 minutes.
Noting missed free throws, forgetting about big man Patrick Patterson, failure to secure defensive rebounds and that well-chronicled mix-up on a defensive switch in the final five seconds, Gillispie said:
“Those things kill you in close games. We’re a little too immature to understand every possession counts so much.”
By contrast, experience has been a frequently-noted factor in LSU winning the Southeastern Conference regular-season championship this season. The Tigers started three seniors. A fourth-year junior, Tasmin Mitchell, hit the winning shot with 9.8 seconds left.
“That’s one of the things I admired most about the (LSU) team going into the game,” Gillispie said. “They play constantly. . . . They usually play very, very smartly over the entire course of the game. They don’t have mental lapses when they’re supposed to switch.”
That was a thinly-veiled reference to the mix-up between Kevin Galloway and A.J. Stewart (two lightly-used players) that enabled Mitchell to shoot an uncontested three-pointer with the outcome on the line.
LSU’s experience was not an immunity to the normal test of nerves in a possession-by-possession games like Saturday’s. Coach Trent Johnson noted how his Tigers became unsettled during a stretch when an 11-point lead late in the first half became a 10-point deficit mid-way through the second.
“There was a period there where we were trying to do too much individually as opposed to staying in our system,” Johnson said. “Usually that’s when a group of guys want to win so bad.”
Yet LSU “found a way,” as Johnson called it, to regroup and regain the momentum.
When asked what quality LSU used to steady itself, Johnson said, “They’re coachable.”
He singled out Marcus Thornton and Mitchell, who collaborated on the game-winning play. “You have to give them opportunities to make plays,” Johnson said.
Gillispie found one play by Thornton, a 6-4 guard, hard to accept. With LSU trailing 64-63 inside the final two minutes, Thornton knifed into the lane to rebound Mitchell’s missed jumper and hit a put-back while being fouled. The three-point play put LSU ahead 66-64. LSU didn’t trail again.
“That shouldn’t be happening,” Gillispie said. “Your two-guard shouldn’t be getting the most important rebound in the game. We should be a little better on the defensive board. But we weren’t.”
Contributors to LSU’s victory were not all seasoned players. Freshman forward Storm Warren, who hadn’t entered a game since Feb. 14, blocked shots by Darius Miller and Patterson on back-to-back UK possessions.
“For him to come off the bench and play like that . . . speaks volumes about that young man,” Johnson said.
Meanwhile, Gillispie sprinkled his post-game remarks with references to Kentucky players not carrying out assignments.
For instance, while acknowledging the effort to run the offense through Patterson, the UK coach said, “We took some bad shots and forgot about Patrick being down there” in stretches of the second half.
When asked if experience separated Kentucky and LSU (albeit a paper thin separation), Patterson nodded.
“It might be,” he said before noting how senior Ramel Bradley played a key role for Kentucky in close games last season.
Patterson could have added another senior, Joe Crawford, and sophomore Derrick Jasper (now transferred to UNLV) as capable playmakers in the clutch.
Of course, those players are gone. It’s an unavoidable truth that experience only comes through playing and learning.
So when asked how he would fix Kentucky, Gillispie said, “Let’s go to work. Go back to the practice floor and try to get better.”