Ole Miss Scare in SEC Opener Shows Kentucky Isn't Invincible

At some point before the NCAA tournament, Kentucky was inevitably going to be challenged by an SEC team.

We certainly weren't expecting it to be an 89-86 overtime thriller in its conference home opener against Ole Miss, though.

Loaded with new transfers of both the JUCO and D-I variety, the Rebels have been anything other than consistent. They have nice wins out of conference against Cincinnati, Creighton and Oregon. They have horrendous losses at home to Charleston Southern and Western Kentucky.

What they didn't have was anything to suggest they could score 86 points against the best defense of the past decade before coming up just short in overtime.

According to KenPom.com (subscription required), the projected score for this game was 77-56. Based on those algorithms, Ole Miss had a 3 percent chance of winning the contest. Vegas was even less optimistic, as Kentucky was a 23-point favorite, according to Odds Shark.

A few hours before the game began, ESPN's Eamonn Brennan wrote about the possibility that Kentucky could get even better, stating in his introduction:

"

Kentucky's 7 p.m. tip at home vs. Ole Miss on Tuesday marks the start of an SEC season the Wildcats are expected to emerge from not only as the sport's clear national title favorite -- that status is secured no matter what happens -- but also unbeaten, with a chance to make March history.

"

Long story short, nobody saw this coming. Least of all, ESPN and CBS Sports reporter Seth Davis, who tweeted earlier in the day Tuesday that this Kentucky team should go undefeated in SEC play three out of four times:

What makes Tuesday's result all the more surprising is that Kentucky actually played pretty well.

The Wildcats shot 11-of-20 (55.0 percent) from three-point range and attempted 40 free throws. Prior to this game, they had yet to shoot better than 47 percent from downtown or attempt more than 33 free throws in any game. They even blocked seven shots and won the turnover battle by a margin of eight.

Show me those numbers for Kentucky an hour before tipoff and I would have guessed the Wildcats would win by about 60.

But Ole Miss shot extremely well—49.2 percent from the field, 52.9 percent from three-point range and 86.4 percent from the free-throw line. In perhaps their one last chance to prove to the nation (and the selection committee) that they belong in the NCAA tournament, the Rebels gave it everything they had.

For Kentucky, there will be plenty more where that came from for the next two months, a sentiment echoed in comments shared by ESPN's Jeff Goodman:

From the moment the final buzzer sounded in Louisville on December 27 and the entire world unanimously and simultaneously decided that Kentucky should have no problem getting to 34-0 before the NCAA tournament, a fire has been steadily growing in the stomach of every other SEC program.

If you think you're sick of hearing about how likely it is that Kentucky will go 40-0, imagine being on the roster or coaching staff of one of the teams that has already been given zero chance of beating Kentucky.

As we witnessed on Tuesday night, any SEC team could be the one to pull it off.

Now, I've been saying since April that Kentucky should go undefeated this season, and I'm not backing away from that stance because of one overtime scare.

However, winning 21 straight SEC games was never going to be a guarantee. Even if you assume the Wildcats have a 91 percent chance of winning each conference game, that still only leaves them with a 13.8 percent chance of actually entering the NCAA tournament with a 34-0 record.

Joe Robbins/Getty Images

Rather than diving into the world of statistics and probabilities, though, let's think about what we learned from this game.

First and foremost, the platoon system is dead and buried.

Aaron Harrison played 40 minutes. Willie Cauley-Stein played 39. Marcus Lee played one.

We may disagree with his choice for primary players—where in the world was Tyler Ulis for the final 13 minutes of regulation and overtime?—and we may disagree on whether this was the plan all along or if the Alex Poythress injury forced his hand, but it's pretty clear that John Calipari's rotation is slimming down now that we're into the second half of the season.

Second, Ole Miss showed more than any other opponent has so far that there might actually be a blueprint for beating mighty Kentucky.

Hot shooting is the most imperative portion of said blueprint. Based on how Ole Miss was shooting, College Basketball Talk's Rob Dauster questioned how the team could lose to Charleston Southern at home:

Stefan Moody had 25 points and might have had a dozen more were it not for leg cramps that kept sending him to the sideline, a fact that was not lost on Kentucky coach John Calipari, who told reporters: "If (Stefan) Moody doesn't cramp up, we probably lose the game. He was just ridiculous. We couldn't do anything with him."

Snoop White shot 3-of-4 from three-point range and drained another would-have-been three-pointer if his toes hadn't been just barely on the line.

It's been said often this season that no team outside the Top 10 is safe. You can go ahead and forget about that "outside the Top 10" part. If an opposing team is going to consistently hit contested three-pointers, it doesn't much matter where it's ranked.

Moreover, fundamentals such as defensive rebounding and free-throw shooting are Achilles' heels that we've been conveniently overlooking while fixating on everything the Wildcats do so well. According to KenPom.com (subscription required), they now rank 274th in defensive rebounding percentage and 229th in free-throw percentage.

Joe Robbins/Getty Images

Ole Miss isn't particularly big—especially when compared to Kentucky's plethora of giants—but the Rebels grabbed 10 offensive rebounds that led to 11 second-chance points. And while the Wildcats got to the free-throw line with regularity, they missed 12 free throws while actually improving their team percentage in the process.

For most of the season, Kentucky has blocked enough shots, forced enough turnovers and grabbed enough offensive rebounds to make those minor struggles irrelevant, but those warts shine brightest in close games.

Tuesday night taught us that a team can at least give Kentucky a serious threat by draining three-pointers, crashing the offensive glass and forcing the Wildcats to beat them at the free-throw line. It's not rocket science, but it isn't impossible, either.

Most importantly, though, we learned that Kentucky can take a punch and keep going.

The Wildcats had been challenged early against a few teams, but this was the first time a squad really threatened to knock off Kentucky late into the second half. You simply never know how a group will respond the first time it faces that type of challenge, but Kentucky showed a lot of strength in not getting discouraged or befuddled when Ole Miss refused to go away.

Joe Robbins/Getty Images

Maybe the Wildcats were just complacent on Tuesday night. Maybe they saw they had a 97 percent chance of winning the game and gave a little less than a 97 percent effort as a result. Maybe the nine-day break between games was just too long, and they struggled to find a defensive rhythm.

Maybe they aren't quite as good as we thought.

Or maybe this was exactly the wake-up call they needed before ripping through the rest of the season unscathed.

However you choose to view Kentucky in the aftermath of this scare, one thing is for certain.

Nobody is invincible.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.