Way back in the preseason, back before the first ball had been tipped, before the loss to Kansas in Chicago and the loss to UCLA in New Orleans, back before SEC play began, John Calipari would half-joke about the panic button.
If practice was going well, the Kentucky basketball coach would say he had removed one foot from the panic button. If matters had regressed a bit, he’d again reference the panic button, only in a less positive light.
After Cal’s Cats blew a 14-point second-half lead and collapsed in Columbia on Tuesday night, falling 76-68 at South Carolina, no doubt a sizable cross-section of the Big Blue Nation is sitting directly atop that panic button.