Several times Mississippi State coach Rick Stansbury frantically gestured for his players to back off those players and let them shoot. That group was a combined 1-for-10 from 3-point range.
"Some guys should not be shooting beyond the (3-point) arc," Gillispie said. "We need to understand better what good shots are. They did a good job on Pat, but we should be doing a better job offensively."
The Bulldogs weren't afraid Kentucky's other shooters could beat them. Stansbury convinced them that stopping Patterson and Jodie Meeks, who combined for a season-low 30 points, would be enough to win - and he was right.
"Coach told us some of those guys weren't great shooters, so we took our chances and it worked," said Mississippi State center Jarvis Varnado, who had seven blocks when the Wildcats tried to come inside. "We had to triple-team Patterson because he is such a great low-post player. We were not going to let him and Meeks beat us.
"We were going to make the rest of them beat us, and they couldn't."
The Bulldogs' Phil Turner said it was not a lack of respect for UK's other players that led to the Bulldogs' defensive philosophy. Instead, it was simple logic to concentrate on Meeks, who had 15 points on 6-of-15 shooting, and Patterson, who had 15 points but also made six turnovers.
"The whole team is good, but the head of the snakes are Patterson and Meeks. We were just daring somebody else to step up and beat us. If they could, we would live with that," Turner said. "But we were just going to limit Meeks' touches and blitz Patterson on every play and dare somebody else to make a shot. They couldn't do it."
It didn't help UK that Mississippi State's four-guard lineup neutralized the Cats' running game. Kentucky had only one fast-break basket in the game.
"With me playing four (small forward), it limits transition baskets. I could run with their bigs because I'm a guard. Patterson and (Perry) Stevenson couldn't get loose for those easy scores they like. As the game went on, they quit running the floor quite as hard because they knew they couldn't beat me down the floor," Turner said.
Varnado also thought the Wildcats wore down in the second half.
"There's no doubt they wore down. Patterson got triple teamed all night and that took his legs out from him. Then Barry Stewart was chasing Meeks all around and making him work for everything. He got tired, too. Anybody would with the way we were concentrating on the two of them," Varnado said.
"We were bumping them, chasing them. We made them both work really hard on defense. Two guys can't do everything and we just wore them down by really concentrating on stopping them."
