After a long finals week on UK’s campus, isn’t the weekend a time to relax?

For some, absolutely. You’ve earned it. But for others — say, those with commitments Saturday afternoon — the work never stops.

Maybe under stacks of study guides and empty coffee cups, that memo to UK’s basketball players got lost. Because against Austin Peay on Saturday, the Cats were asleep. Perhaps daydreaming of their performances against North Carolina or Connecticut, the Cats clearly didn’t want to play against an Ohio Valley Conference team in front of a crowd as lethargic as is possible for 23,938 people.

As coach John Calipari said after the win, every day on the court is an experience to learn from. From Saturday’s game, what was the lesson?

Even if you don’t want to play, you have to play.

Leave behind all the stress of final exams. Try to forget about those big wins the past two weeks. And certainly don’t worry about Monday’s game (expected to be the program’s 2,000th win) and all the media attention it will garner.

Saturday’s game could have easily gone the other way if only a few small factors had played out differently. Credit the Cats’ defense for forcing the Governors into 31.4 percent second-half shooting. And also credit the Cats for finally giving themselves a bit of breathing room thanks to perfect free-throw shooting (18-of-18).

But the Cats couldn’t get rid of Austin Peay, which was within eight points until the 7:05 mark in the second half. Why is that?

“We just have to learn how to play when we don’t feel like playing,” said Darius Miller, who pleaded guilty to having one of those days. “There will be days when you don’t have as much energy as maybe you thought you would, so we have to learn to play like that.”

Maybe this group of very gifted, very young athletes came out like that Saturday because they’ve still yet to lose a college game. Six of the team’s 13 players are still undefeated for their college careers. So why wouldn’t they feel like Saturday’s win would come easy, since their last three wins were over North Carolina, Connecticut and Indiana?

If those players hadn’t figured it by now: Not a single win against a Division I opponent will come easy. Some may appear easy by comparison, but none of UK’s 1,999 all-time wins came easy.

In fact, those the Cats may have thought were easy instead fall under a different category: the program’s all-time 631 losses.

With a team as young as UK’s, valuable lessons like Saturday’s have to come at some point. Fortunately, uncanny talent can provide that those lessons be taught and, at the same time, be marginalized since the team got away with it.

“We all came out very lazy and sluggish today,” said DeMarcus Cousins, who recorded 19 points and eight rebounds. “If the same thing happens and we’re playing a better team, that win might be a loss.”

Even though the Cats won’t have to deal with juggling final exams with game preparation again this year, they won’t feel 100 percent up to playing every game. League play will drain a lot of this team’s battery, as it does with every team. Traveling to a school like Mississippi State on a Tuesday night for a 9 p.m. game won’t be fun, and the Cats may get to Starkville a little bit tired.

If they don’t want to play that night, they won’t be let off the hook like they were Saturday.

I know a lot of college students take the next four weeks to themselves. But stick it out, UK. You can relax in April.