Kentucky basketball coach Tubby Smith spoke to reporters for exactly five minutes about his team’s dismal play Saturday, before abruptly announcing, “I gotta go, that’s it,” and dashing back into the locker room and out of the spotlight.

It’s probably better that way.

While Kansas University stole the show with a 73-46 pounding of the Wildcats, Kentucky was scrambling to get the heck out of Allen Fieldhouse, once again a palace of pain for college basketball’s all-time winningest team.

The last two times Kentucky has played in Phog’s barn (Saturday and December of 1989), the Jayhawks have won by a combined 82 points.

Saturday’s game was the lighter of the two whippings, but the 27-point loss was more than pitiful enough to have Smith discouraged afterward.

“We’re just not very good,” Smith said. “We’re not very good at passing the ball, and we’re not very good at screening.”

The stat sheet – and scoreboard – made the deficiencies bleed through. Kentucky (10-4) had zero assists in the first half compared to eight turnovers.

The Wildcats shot 21 percent from the field in the first half.

And they trailed 41-19 at intermission.

“Nobody was screening. Nobody was passing,” Smith said. “Dribble, dribble, dribble : they pushed us out of our offense. You have no chance of even competing when you don’t pass the ball.”

To be fair, Kentucky had just six first-half field goals, and five of them were second-chance points. So perhaps the shooting was even worse than the futile passing Smith ranted about.

Overall, Kentucky hit 12 percent of its three-point shots and 24 percent of all its shots.

It also had a hard time containing KU freshman Brandon Rush, who scored 24 points.

“You would think somebody would have read the scouting report and made him go left one time, but that didn’t happen,” Smith said. “He is a great player, just a great athlete. We just made him spectacular.

“It disappoints me that we are not defending very well,” he added. “Not scoring is one thing, but not defending on the other end is another.”

It’s all moot now.

“We just weren’t ready to play,” said junior Bobby Perry, who didn’t make a shot Saturday. “We didn’t adjust, and they came out and kicked our butts.”

It definitely was a humbling experience for Kentucky, which opens league play Tuesday against Vanderbilt.

“We have to look at ourselves in the mirror and see if we have any heart,” guard Ravi Moss said. “They beat us to loose balls. We just got outworked. They were tougher than we were today.”