By Les Johns | @KernelJohns

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It’s not that they lost.

They were underdogs, playing an Arkansas team that was undefeated at home in SEC play, with wins over the likes of Tennessee, Missouri and top-10 ranked Florida.

It’s how they lost — flat-footed and ball-watching, despondent and defeated, shaken and shell-shocked.

The Cats didn’t take a few possessions off in their 73-60 loss at Arkansas on Saturday; they took the majority of the second half off.

They “fought like Wildcats,” as freshman Nerlens Noel would say, for 45 minutes to beat Missouri a week ago and then seemingly forgot what got them back on the smiling side of the bubble.

Arkansas outrebounded the Cats, 44-37, earning 20 of them on the offensive end.

“They got 20 offensive rebounds, and we turned it over 19 times — a bunch of them unforced,” UK head coach John Calipari said. “We weren’t as tough as them and we didn’t play as hard as them and they wanted the game more than us, and that team usually wins.

“And they did. They deserved to win. They played better; they were better coached. They deserved to win the game.”

Freshman forward Willie Cauley-Stein said the team lacked the same energy as in previous outings.

“The last three games we were playing with high intensity. Everybody,” Cauley-Stein said. “Today, we had people that didn’t show up with the energy and it proves for us to win and move on to be successful everybody has to play with energy.”

Why is Calipari dealing with effort issues with just two games left in the regular season and a nine-loss team struggling to just get in to the NCAA Tournament?

“You must have a will to win. Winning must be important, not just how you played,” Calipari said. “You must want to be coach and challenged and pushed, from not only the staff, but from within. You’ve got to accept that.

“This team, we could go the next game and play out of our minds — and I’ll be really happy.”

Even if that happens, the happiness would be brief because the chances are the Cats would go out the next game and lay another egg.

Once you are 29 games into a season, you pretty much are who you are. These players have never completely bought in to Calipari’s direction and have never completely bought in to each other.

They have yet to win six straight games the entire season, and there is absolutely no reason to believe they can win six straight games to win the NCAA title.

Quite frankly, unless they win two straight to finish the regular season, there is a great likelihood they won’t even compete in the NCAA tourney.