Instant Reaction: Kentucky defeats Texas A&M 100-58

2016 was terrible, they said. Next year has to be better, they said.

They were wrong. Or at the very least, they weren’t talking about Aggie Hoops.

Our Aggies went up to Lexington as 15 point underdogs, and the game never even seemed that close. Let’s break it down.

A message was sent.

That message was sent via an interesting starting lineup, which gave Chris Collins and Tavario Miller their first starts of the season.

The patchwork lineup was completely overwhelmed in the opening passages of play, and Kentucky built a 15-3 lead by the team we submitted our regular lineup.

Just like that, the game was over. It was an indefensible decision by Coach Kennedy.

Turnovers. Turnovers. Turnovers.

At some point, I stopped counting... but the Aggies surely set a season high in turnovers tonight. Kentucky loves to run, and we were all too happy to oblige. By the second half, this became little more than a glorified slam dunk contest.

This was an absolute beating of a two hours. Let’s talk about something else.

What’s next?

Literally? A trip to South Carolina to face a very tough Gamecock squad.

Figuratively? Who the hell knows. It’s the type of loss that can derail the season, and we’ll need all hands on deck to try to turn this thing around on Saturday.

Happy New Year, gang. Surely it gets better from here.