NEED CLAWS TO BEAT CATS
Irish take aim at purr-fect Kentucky
CLEVELAND — Notre Dame is the latest team to participate in an installment of “Mission: Impossible” during this NCAA Tournament.
The Fighting Irish will try to solve the riddle of Kentucky’s inscrutable defense Saturday night in the Midwest Regional final here at Quicken Loans A rena.
Notre Dame showed flashes of being the best offensive team in the country when it shot 75% in the second half of Thursday night’s 81-70 victory over Wichita State in the Sweet 16. The Irish (32-5) are somewhat undersized and have limited depth, but that did not stop them from winning the ACC Tournament on Tobacco Road three weeks ago by lighting it up with a pro-style offense that is a college version of the San Antonio Spurs’ scheme.
The Irish play one post man, 6-10 Zach Auguste, surrounded by four perimeter players — Demetrius Jackson, Steve Vasturia, Pat Connaughton and Jerian Grant — who all are excellent passers and can all make threes. When their offense is in rhythm they make the most out of circulating the ball around the 3-point line for the best open shot or sending cutters through an open lane for back-door layups.
Notre Dame ran a clinic on North Carolina in the ACC championship game, rallying from a 6456 deficit with a furious 24-2 run to take an 80-66 lead with less than three minutes to play against a team that prides itself on running the secondary break.
The same thing happened against Wichita State when the Irish used a pair of threes from Jackson to turn a 38-37 deficit into a 54-44 lead and plant the seeds for a convincing victory. Notre Dame coach Mike Brey calls the runs “lightning strikes.”
“We’re confident in our offense,” Vasturia said. “We know we’ve got a lot of weapons. We know we can score.”
Unlike West Virginia guard Daxter Miles — who opened his mouth at the wrong time when he said Kentucky would lose Thursday and that the Wildcats did not play hard and should be intimidated by the Mountaineers’ press — Brey’s team can back up its words with success in the best league in the country. The Irish have beaten Duke twice, defeated Carolina and Louisville and are 19-0 when they score 80 points or more. Now, they are taking aim at the 37-0 Wildcats the same way the Irish took aim at UCLA’s 88-game win steak in 1974.
“They’re just another basketball team like us,” Fighting Irish freshman forward Bonzie Colson said. “They tie their shoes the same way we tie our shoes. It’s nothing different.” That Bill Walton-fueled UCLA team looked unbeatable before Dwight Clay sent the Bruins crashing down to earth with a jump shot in the final two seconds in South Bend. So there is always hope.
But this Kentucky team is a new breed of ferocious Cat, with two platoons of talent.
“We don’t have subs. We have reinforcements,” coach John Calipari said. “I coach every player on this team like a starter. That’s why we can have guys like (7-0) Dakari Johnson and (6-9) Marcus Lee come off the bench and make significant contributions.”
Kentucky made a huge statement in crushing West Virginia, 78-39, in a Sweet Sixteen blowout. And if the Wildcats play to their potential, no team has a shot to knock them out. They have at least eight future pros and any one of them can score in high double figures on a given night. Five did that against West Virginia, and the Wildcats rolled despite the fact that 6-11 freshman Karl Anthony Towns scored only one point and was benched for what Calipari construed as lack of effort.
“Here’s a guy who is going to be the No. 1 pick in the draft. And I’m probably harder on him than anyone,” Calipari said. “I want Karl to be the best big man in the country and I’m not going to settle for anything less.”
The Wildcat defense created carnage, limiting West Virginia to just 24% shooting from the field and just 13% (2-for-15) from the 3-point line. The Mountaineers managed 18 points in the first half and 21 in the second.
Notre Dame should be a harder guard. Anything is possible if you have a good shooting team, but the Irish will have to make a lot of threes on kick-outs because they’re not going to score close to the rim against that Big Blue skyline of 7-0 Willie Cauley-Stein, Towns and 6-10 Trey Lyles, Johnson and a team with imposing length that has an average wing span of 6-10. Kentucky’s suffocating defense, for the record, is limiting opponents to just 28% shooting in the tournament and 32% on two-point shots for the season, forcing teams to take the worst possible shot in basketball — the long two-point jumper.
The Cats are on a pursuit of perfection, and their fans are already talking 40-0.
“If I had to deal with their expectations,” Calipari said, “I’d be under the desk in a fetal position.”