Riddle Me This: Where Was Darius?

I could conjure up a nice explanatory blog post tonight about Chris Warren getting just enough daylight to launch the game-winner in UK's 71-69 defeat at Ole Miss....

A poor job of fighting through the screen by DeAndre Liggins (normally a great defender), and a slow step out to help by Terrence Jones (a freshman with nice wingspan), would pretty much sum it up.

Granted, when the shot was fired, I thought it was a fairly low-percentage look for Warren. Not a complete "out of your nether regions" heave by any means, (and I would say everybody in the gym knew that he would take the final shot), but still not the cleanest look in the world. It was well beyond the arc, and a hand did get up in his face in the last split second. So I think you give Ole Miss credit there. It happens.

I could also envision a lengthy post centering on UK's lapses in scoring--those stretches of 3 or 4 minutes seemingly every game where it looks like the Cats come up empty on a dozen trips down the court. Is it a lack of cohesion in the dribble-drive? Absence of a true, back to the basket, low-post threat? Perhaps just a simple loss of concentration by a freshman-oriented team? Most Big Blue fans might choose "D", and you know what "D" means....

But instead I'm going to darken up the pixels this evening by lamenting the recurring theme of the amazing(!), stupendous(!)....disappearing Darius Miller.

Because all you need to know about the loss in Oxford is this: Darius played a total of 31 minutes tonight, and in all that time, he turned the ball over four times, scored three points, and pulled down exactly one rebound. That's your ballgame right there.

Now, plenty of UK fans have been more or less confounded by the former Mr. Basketball... for almost as long as he has been on campus. It's a classic case of being brilliant "at times", but completely absent from the proceedings at others.

Miller has started all 21 games this season and averages 10 points per game. He hits 81% from the charity stripe and a quite healthy 45 % from the three-point line. Heck, his overall FG percentage is at 48! That's better than Knight and Jones, both of whom average over 17 points.

Stop me if you've read this before, but it just seems like Darius has all the talent in the world, the ability to score both in the paint and from the perimeter, and yet he's prone to simply vanish from games like a puff of smoke.

Why? Why is that?

In his defense, by all accounts Darius has played better of late. The last several games saw what many were describing as a "true emergence" for the young man that wears the number one on his back. More aggressive....looking to score...a real leader and a presence. But when he turns in a stat line like this, in a road game against a conference foe that really has no business in upsetting UK...well, he just gets me more frustrated than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest.

Of course to be fair, this loss is not entirely on him. UK had a very subpar start to the second half as a team. They allowed Ole Miss to hit 8 of 17 threes. Maybe Coach Cal again did a poor job of setting up a clear, concise play on UK's final possession. And certainly Warren had a good game for the Rebs, along with Reginald Buckner.

So I don't mean to just throw the goat horns on Darius, and blast away at him for kicks. But the fact remains that when you give a guy that much playing time, and get that little production in return, then you're basically playing 4 against 5. Makes it awfully tough.

And it's going to remain tough for UK as the conference plays out. A trip to Gainesville is next, and Mr. Miller needs to ensure that he makes it on the bus to the arena on Saturday.

I understand through the miracles of the twitter-verse that Darius has already sent out an apology for UK's loss tonight, in 140 characters or less. That's fine. I like the self-awareness and the courage that it takes to publicly acknowledge a poor performance. But Cal has got to have him playing closer to his potential if Kentucky is going to live up to secure any hardware this season. The riddle must be solved.