Kentucky 69 - 62 Louisville (No. 2,065)

I don't read much about U of L basketball, so I don't know whether this has been discussed or not, but it seems to me that Rick Pitino has made a major shift in his basketball philosophy in the last few years. When he was at UK, he used to say that the key to winning basketball games was to shoot the three and defend the three. And, I have to say, that philosophy worked pretty well. Not only did Pitino win the 1996 national title at UK, Tubby Smith won the 1998 title with Pitino's players, and Pitino's most talented assistant -- Billy Donovan -- won titles in 2006 and 2007. For those of you keeping score at home, that's four national titles in 11 years.

But since Louisville joined the Big East, Pitino seems to be putting together a different sort of team. No more run and gun. No more waves of guards raining three's from all over the floor. While he still uses the full-court press -- very effectively -- his players, for the most part, look like the sort of guys you see for teams like West Virginia, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh: big, tough, bangers who don't shoot very well but who can grind out tough, low-scoring wins.

Now personally, I don't like this philosophy as much as his old one. I think it's very difficult to make it all the way through the NCAA tournament without running into a hot-shooting team, and that low-scoring teams are easier to upset. But from the perspective of a U of L fan, one potential advantage to Pitino's new approach is that it gives Calipari fits. The last two years, Kentucky has been eliminated from the NCAA tournament by Big East teams who played great defense. UK has also had some difficulties with the bruisers at Alabama and Georgia since Coach Cal arrived.

The best way to beat a bruising team that packs its defense around the basket is to hit so many three's that they can't keep up with you on the scoreboard -- that's Coach K's approach, and it certainly worked against the West Virginia team that beat John Wall. But Cal's teams usually don't feature that type of quality outside shooting. Today, for example, the Cats looked a lot like they did when they lost to West Virginia in 2010. They were only 3-16 from three-point range, and only 14-41 from two-point range. The guys we tend to think of as shooters -- Lamb, Miller, and Wiltjer -- were a combined 5-20 from the field. U of L's approach also prevented Teague from driving to the basket, and his jump-shooting remains dreadful. He was only 1-8 from the field, with the one being a layup toward the end of the game.

But it's important to remember that what really killed UK against West Virginia wasn't the Wildcats' problems on offense, but the fact that the Mountaineers went a remarkable 10-23 from three-point range. Similarly, Indiana went 9-15 on three's when they beat UK a few weeks ago. In other words, to beat UK it's usually not enough to stop the Wildcats -- you have to score yourself. And this Louisville could not do. With the remarkable exception of Russ Smith, who played one of the best games ever by a visiting player at Rupp, the Cards really struggled on offense. Smith was 10-20 from the field and 7-10 from the line to finish with 30 points. The rest of the Cards went 10-42 from the field and scored only 32 points. U of L went only 4-18 from three-point range.

So while we certainly wish that Lamb, Miller, and the rest of the guys had shot better, it is important to give them credit for the great defense they played. It's also important to celebrate their rebounding. Second-chance points are huge in Big East basketball; I have sometimes thought that Pittsburgh plays as if its offensive possession doesn't begin until the Panthers have missed a shot. But UK did a great job of shutting down that pathway today; the Cats out-rebounded U of L 49-28. In fact, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (19 boards) and Terrence Jones (11 boards) combined for more rebounds than the whole Cardinal team.

UK also won because in a tough, physical game, it had the one player best suited to a Big East scrum. Michael Kidd-Gilcrist played 39 minutes and scored 24 points to go with his 19 rebounds. UK also had Anthony Davis, who may literally be the most talented player in Wildcat history. Davis played only seven-and-a-half minutes in the first half because of foul trouble, but in the second half he destroyed the Cardinals; he scored 18 of UK's 33 second-half points, in part because he went 12-13 from the line.

MKG and Davis were also the key players during the most important stretch of the game. With 5:09 to go in the first half, UK was up 31-15 and everything looked fine. But with Davis on the bench and UK struggling against the press, U of L cut the lead to 36-33 at the half. With 15:23 to go in the second-half, Russ Smith made a four-point play to tie the game at 40. Here is what happened next:

14:56 to go: MKG makes one of two FT's (UK leads 41-40)

14:12 to go: Davis blocks Russ Smith's shot, MKG gets rebound

13:55 to go: MKG makes layup (UK leads 43-40)
13:25 to go: MKG gets another defensive rebound and passes to Davis, who is fouled

13:25 to go: Davis makes two FT's (UK leads 45-40)

13:12 to go: U of L misses a three

12:52 to go: Jones misses a three for UK

12:32 to go: Jones steals the ball back; Davis is fouled on the ensuing possession

12:18 to go: Davis makes two FT's (UK leads 47-40)

So in just over three minutes, MKG and Davis had a 7-0 run to give UK a lead it would not relinquish.

As you can probably tell from the above, there were a ton of free throws in this game. UK went 32-43 from the line. U of L went 18-27. UK was somewhat fortunate, I thought, that the game was called relatively close. But I thought the game was called fairly, because there is no question U of L was determined to use physical play to overcome the fact that its basketball players weren't as good as ours. That is how the rules are supposed to work. And the Cats did shoot relatively well from the line.

Finally, I want to comment on two players who will be the source of a lot of commentary in Kentucky this week. As I mentioned above, Teague's numbers were not good -- he had only four points and five assists, and he fouled out. And his poor jump-shooting is a problem. But I thought he handled U of L's pressure pretty well, he played very hard, and his defense was solid. I would also point out that he was a welcome contrast to U of L's veteran point guard, Peyton Siva, who took way too many bad shots and really hurt his team in key stretches (Siva went 2-13 from the field). As for Terrence Jones, I thought he looked pretty good. He is still struggling on offense; he went 1-9 (!) from the field and 0-4 from the line for only two points. But I think a lot of that is the result of rust and his bad finger. He did have 11 boards, he played great defense, and I thought he seemed very focused. I'm trying, for now at least, to think of Teague and Jones in a half-glass-full sort of way -- if they get better, the Cats could be really good.