1. UK gets off to an energetic but not very productive start. For most of the first half yesterday, Kentucky was clearly the better of the two teams. IU's offense was a mess, and Kentucky seemed to be able to get the ball where it wanted. If Kentucky could have been more efficient on offense, the Cats could have taken control of the game. But Teague couldn't do anything right in the first half, and UK just kept making one silly turnover after another. So with 8:19 seconds to go, UK led by only 20-14.
2. Things go bad toward the end of the first half. For UK, the problems all began with foul trouble. Anthony Davis picked up his second foul with 8:03 to go in the half, and the Hoosiers started running wild. They went on a 16-2 tear to go up 30-22, although the Cats then steadied themselves to make the score 30-29 at the half.
3. The roof caves in at the beginning of the second half. IU came out on fire to start the second half, and with 16:10 left in the game, they were suddenly up 45-35.
4. UK spends most of the second half on the comeback trail. In this case, I thought IU's big lead made a huge difference in how the game was called. From the 17:19 mark of the first half to the 14:55 mark of the second half, UK shot exactly zero free throws. During that same stretch, IU went 11-13 from the line. Also, during IU's run, the Cats were called for at least five charges or traveling violations. But once IU got its big lead, the officials were suddenly looking at a different game. UK could drive to the basket without getting called for walking or charging, and IU players stopped getting to the line. Kentucky still couldn't get much help from Anthony Davis (who only played 24 minutes because of foul trouble), and they got very little help from Terrence Jones (who had a horrific game -- 4 points, 1 rebound, 6 turnovers). But Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (18 points, 9 boards), Teague (15 points, 5 assists), and Doron Lamb (19 points) started wearing out the Hoosier defense, driving over and over to the basket. Realizing that their three-point shots weren't going to work (UK only took seven threes in the game and only made two -- both in the first half), the Cats still scored 37 points in the last 16 minutes of the game. And after they made two great defensive stands in the last minute, they had a 71-70 lead with Lamb on the line and only 5.4 seconds left.
4. UK loses. Sometimes you are just unlucky. Lamb shoots 82.1 percent from the line, so there was a 67 percent chance he would make both free throws and give UK a three-point lead. Christian Watford shoots 48.1 percent from three-point range. So the chances that Lamb would not make both free throws and that Watford would make a three to win the game were less than one in six -- just over 15 percent, to be precise. Of course, given that this is at least the third game since the 2008 season where UK lost to a three-pointer at the buzzer, it may seem like this sort of thing always happens to us. But these things have a way of evening up -- just ask Ohio State, who missed a three at the buzzer against us in last year's NCAA tournament. And we will hope they will even up again.
So what have we learned? First and foremost, these are not the 1996 Wildcats, and they are not going to crush almost every team they play. Lamb is their only major outside threat for now (Miller, who shot 44.3 percent from beyond the arc last year, is a dreadful 6-26 from long range this season), so teams can load up on Davis inside. (Davis did not get double digit points against either UNC or IU). Unless the Cats develop some better outside shooting, they will find it very difficult to break down physical defenses of the type they saw yesterday.
Second, the Cats have a very good chance of winning the whole thing. Last year the Cats were manhandled by UConn early on; I don't think any team -- with the possible exception of Ohio State -- could do that to this team. UK plays extremely hard, and they will play smarter as the year goes on. If this year's team improves at the same rate as last year's team, they could go all the way.
Third, UK would probably win the title if there were no three point shot. In their last two games (against UNC and IU), the Cats scored 145 points and gave up 145 points. But the distribution of those points varied widely. Here's how UK got its 145 points:
52-96 from two point range (54.2 percent) for 104 points
6-24 from three point range (25.0 percent) for 18 points
23-35 from the foul line (65.7 percent) for 23 points
104+18+23=145
Here's how UNC and IU got their points:
30-85 from two point range (35.3 percent) for 60 points
20-33 from three point range (60.6 percent) for 60 points
25-31 from the foul line (80.6 percent) for 25 points
60+60+25=145
As these figures show, Kentucky absolutely dominated UNC and IU inside the arc -- they outscored those two teams by 44 points on two-point scoring. But the Cats were simply blow-torched from three-point range. Again, some of this is bad luck -- you just won't see that many teams hit over 60 percent of their three-point shots, even in practice. In the NCAA's, however, one hot team from beyond the arc can send you home -- as John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins could attest. Given that I don't think UK is likely to become a huge three-point shooting team itself, they will have to find some way to stop other teams from lighting them up from the outside as UNC and IU have done.
The Cats also have to make sure that Terrence Jones -- who I think is their most important player -- does not have the sort of terrible game that plagued him yesterday. I have no idea what Jones's problem was -- Calipari actually pulled him out of the game before it ended -- and I'm glad it's not my job to figure it out. That's the sort of thing Cal is paid for, and I trust him to do the right thing.
I feel very, very bad for the UK fans who live close to Indiana, and who will have to put up with a lot of grief from Hoosier-land. But I don't think the loss was necessarily all that bad for the Cats in the long run. Ken Pomeroy still has us at number 2, and I hope we can use the next few home games to improve before U of L comes to town.
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