This wasn’t a bunch of happy players in that locker room. Or excited, or relieved, or content.

This was a locker room of stunned players, disappointed players, mad players.

A loss will do that to you, especially when that loss is the first after 24 wins, especially when it should be you on that podium being handed the SEC Tournament trophy to cap a perfect 19-0 SEC season instead a Vanderbilt team you had already beat twice.

Instead of celebrating, the players had to simultaneously mull over their recent defeat and cope with questions about that recent defeat.

Anthony Davis sat in his locker, speaking in a dull monotone.

“We’re not on a win streak now,” Davis said.

Michael Kidd-Gilchrist didn’t want any part of talking. He did, but he said that having to talk about it was the last thing he wanted to do. It hurt too much, especially after he had a lackluster game. Plagued by foul trouble, he was limited to 16 minutes. Even in that time, he didn’t do much: five points and zero rebounds, the first time he recorded any lower than three boards.

“I don’t have any idea,” head coach John Calipari said on what was wrong with Kidd-Gilchrist. “That’s unusual for him.”

So what happened? What led to the first loss in three months and a day?

On a narrow-minded track, confined to just the 40 minutes against Vanderbilt, it was cold shooting down the stretch. The Cats missed their final 13 shots over the game, going without a field goal for the last 8:04.

“We just went ice cold,” Teague said. “It was like a lid on the basket. Nothing was falling for us.”

On a broader scale, however, is a more (potentially) problematic issue: arrogance. Davis said Calipari told the team they needed the loss, a statement supported by other teammates.

“I guess he thought we were getting full of ourselves, or something like that,” Miller said. “This kind of brought us back to reality, that we can be beat.”

Miller didn’t think the team was overconfident, although he admitted that, at times, UK looked the part during film study, most notably during sluggish starts.

“Maybe now everybody realizes we’re not invincible,” Calipari said.

Invincible UK was not in this game. And Calipari hopes that realization will refocus his team on the verge of the Tournament That Matters Most.

“My comment to them after this was, maybe I’ll have your attention now and you’re really going to focus in and listen to what I’m saying,” Calipari said.

The loss won’t relieve the pressure, at least not all the way. UK remains the No. 1 overall seed and the prohibitive title favorite. But maybe it takes some of the strain off, and maybe that minor difference will make a major impact.

The theory that UK needed a loss — no team in the last 30 years had a winning streak longer than 13 games entering the NCAA Tournament and won it all — will get another test case.

“We get this (streak) off the plate,” Calipari said. “We don’t have to worry about it. Let’s just go play this tournament.”