Houston ? Billy Gillispie has accomplished something Rick Pitino also did in his first year at Kentucky.

He’s lost four games in a row.

Houston matched its best start since the days of Phi Slama Jama with an 83-69 victory over Kentucky on Tuesday night.

Joe Crawford scored 28 points for the Wildcats (4-5), who have lost four straight for the first time since 1989-90 when Pitino’s first Kentucky team dropped five in a row.

“We’ve got to figure out exactly what we are,” said Gillispie, coaching in his home state for the first time since leaving Texas A&M last April. “We’re caught in between offensively, we’re caught in between defensively.

“Maybe, in some people’s minds, we want to outscore everyone,” he said. “At the biggest times in games, you have to get stops. We haven’t gotten a stop all year when we’ve really needed to, I think.”