Kentucky Basketball: Let's All Overreact and Panic About the Buffalo Game

For 20 minutes Sunday night, No. 1 Kentucky showed that it was overrated, overhyped and over-everything-else as it lost 38-33 to unranked Buffalo. It was a sloppy game for the Cats and confirmed suspicions that "deep" is not synonymous with "good." It's back to the drawing board for John Calipari.

Only, wait, aren't games longer than 20 minutes? Oh yeah, they're 40 minutes long. I knew I was missing something. Well, when you factor in that, we should probably chill out. Kentucky won the game by 19 points and outscored Buffalo 38-14 in the second half.

But that's not going to stop fans and critics from making wild assumptions for the season based on this game. Let's take a look at some of those overreactions and why they're stupid.

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Tyler Ulis is better than Andrew Harrison.

This is a real thing that people are saying.

"

At the beginning of the year I've been said Tyler Ulis is better than the Harrison's

— Juwan Lynch (@_Bubbzy) November 16, 2014"

Ulis had 12 points on 4-of-5 shooting, all from beyond the arc, and six assists. He was a spark plug both offensively and defensively, and didn't turn the ball over once.

Andrew Harrison went 1-of-6, looked sluggish right out of the gate and never really got going. He had one assist and one turnover.

Those are the facts, and, yes, Harrison was not at his best against Buffalo. But just one game ago against Grand Canyon, the headlines were literally "Harrison Leads No. 1 Kentucky to Blowout." He had 16 points and three assists in that game. Meanwhile, Ulis had five points and two assists, but he had minimal impact on the outcome.

The point is, sometimes players are going to have off games, and sometimes different players are going to have good games. The greatness of the platoon is that when guys like Harrison are having a good game against Grand Canyon, Ulis still gets some solid minutes as well. So when Harrison has a down game, Ulis uses that extra time and experience to pick up the slack.

Cal even said as much himself.

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The platoon system doesn't work and Cal has already abandoned it.

Thanks to Karl-Anthony Towns' foul trouble, Calipari had to switch up his platoons a good amount this game. By the end, he was mixing and matching so much that it was hard to tell exactly "which" platoon he was currently using. Coincidentally, it was around this time that Kentucky applied the knockout punch.

Is this the end of the platoon experiment already?

No, and again, Cal was clear about this.

It's not that he's going away from the platoon system, but it's pretty clear that he's not afraid to switch them up. That's a good thing.

Earlier this year, I advocated for essentially a "veteran" platoon and a "newcomer" platoon. Calipari has said he's against using all the freshmen on one platoon, which is fine. I like what he eventually settled on, with splitting up Towns from the other freshmen and putting Dakari Johnson with them. 

However, Sunday he switched Johnson and Willie Cauley-Stein for an extended period of time. That I like. I see the Harrisons/Alex Poythress platoon as more of a physical, power platoon, and Johnson fits better with them. Whereas the Ulis/Devin Booker/Trey Lyles platoon is the energy, speed platoon. Cauley-Stein fits better there.

We'll see Calipari keep trying different combinations and, of course, making adjustments according to foul trouble, but he has committed to the platoon system. 'Til death do they part.

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Kentucky can't shoot.

Aside from Ulis' hot hand, Kentucky went 2-of-15 from three. Going into the season, there was some concern that even though it has height on height on height, shooting the ball might be an issue.

Yes, the Cats took too many threes this game. They slowed things down in the second half, taking only six threes to the first half's 15, and the second half was obviously the better half. To me, it's not an issue of not being able to shoot, it's just making good decisions on when to shoot.

We know the Harrisons are streaky, but they are clearly good shooters. Ulis and Booker might actually be the two best shooters on the team. And, the cherry on top, Lyles has turned out to be a knockdown shooter who is playing with a lot of confidence right now. Even Poythress and Towns have the green light at times.

Kentucky is not going to be the best shooting team in the country, but it's certainly good enough. And when shots aren't falling, it can just rebound them and shoot again. You get enough shots, some are going to fall, no matter what.

The game against Buffalo wasn't perfect. Far from it. But when you really look into it, it boils down to one bad half and a few bad performances out of 10 players.

Expectations are so high that there's the temptation to panic over the smallest things. Let's give this team a little bit more of a sample size.

Like one more game, because if it stumbles against Kansas, I am SOUNDING THE ALARMS, PEOPLE.