Placed between a big win over Louisville and the start of SEC play against South Carolina, a Tuesday night game against Arkansas-Little Rock was supposed to be a comforting segue.

Supposed to be.

It ended up a 73-51 win, but forget about the final margin of victory.

For the majority of the game — the entire first half and the first few minutes of the second half — No. 2 UK was outplayed by a team with five wins, 10 losses and missing its leading scorer and rebounder.

The Cats entered halftime trailing 30-27.  It played absolutely atrocious basketball, committing 13 turnovers and shooting 39.3 percent.

“They had more energy, more intensity and more toughness as a group,” Anthony Davis said.

Those are three traits Calipari constantly implores his team to possess.

So when they didn’t his reaction was obvious.

“He was very angry with us,” said Anthony Davis of Calipari in the locker room. “And when he gets angry, we get angry. So we tried to pick it up the second half.”

UK did. A 26-3 run relatively early in the second half finally brought UK back from the deficit, putting them up 57-37 and sealing what should have been a sure win.

But again, forget about the final margin. The Cats were relieved they had shaken their stupor in time to avoid an embarrassing, devastating loss before SEC play starts.

“The way we played the first half, that’s not going to be acceptable,” Davis said.

It is, on some level, understandable. This team is young — not quite a team of “all freshmen,” as Calipari refers to it, but definitely young — and they’re still learning. That includes how to come out energized against a bad team in the middle of a week after a huge win.

“A little bit,” one Arkansas-Little Rock player said when asked if he thought UK overlooked them.

Even if UK did, it took 25 minutes for the Cats to look at them.

“Until you really get knocked, I don’t think they’ll understand,” Calipari said.

At least from here on, UK won’t play an opponent like this. It will probably take some losses, and that’s fine — nothing is truly riding on games until March. We learned that last year.

But this team should be farther along than it is right now.

And right now, the competition is about to go up, as well.

“It’s another level,” Calipari said of SEC play.

Ultimately, the game was sloppy. UK will learn and move on.

Starting right after the game.

“I’ll watch (the tape) on the drive home, just to get rid of it,” head coach John Calipari said. “I don’t want to see it. I want to get it done quickly. The first 40 minutes will be that tape, then I’ll throw it out the window.”

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