Tournament-like schedule a problem for the Cats

Welcome to tournament time, John Calipari and Co.

For many, this is your first time. It’s not your coach’s first rodeo with this schedule, by far. But for most of you, this one-day break between games (at least on this level) is an unknown.

Not any longer.

You see, for most of the year, the Cats have received a pretty lucky roll of the scheduling dice. On many weeks when they were playing late Tuesday night games, their opponent was playing the Thursday night game. While the Southeastern Conference brass made sure no team played two road games in a Thursday-Saturday turnaround, there was usually travel involved somewhere.

At noon on Saturday, the Cats realized why so many SEC teams were so easy to roll right on over — fatigue.

Not that UK’s players didn’t realize it. Look at the postgame quotes, they all know. A noon game 36 hours after the Cats played one of their most emotional games against South Carolina was a recipe for disaster.

Do you think the NCAA tournament will be in any different?

With the Thursday-Saturday, Friday-Sunday line-up, the Cats will often have a situation like Saturday’s — emotional first game, followed 36 hours later by an equally important game. If the tournament started tomorrow, I think they’d be some worries about how capable the Cats are of winning through such a schedule.

The good news is that the tournament doesn’t start tomorrow and a second loss doesn’t mean that someone else will win the SEC title or that UK will be a second-round bust (although they could be). It just means this team doesn’t have every little problem figured out yet.

But with one week left until March Madness begins, there’s not a lot of time to fix it.

If a good seed and a deep tournament run is the goal (and by the way, winning the SEC should be too, Calipari), then it needs to be fixed tomorrow. Lest the great season so far turn into a bitter-tasting early round knockout.