How to defeat Kentucky
Kansas has a long to-do list tonight to beat Wildcats’ all-star lineup,
NEW ORLEANS — From freakishly talented and tall Anthony Davis to often-overlooked sixth man Darius Miller, Kentucky has an all-star lineup on the verge of becoming one of the youngest to win the NCAA men’s basketball championship.
As heavy favorites, the Wildcats should feel the weight of Big Blue Nation.
“They’re ripe to be beat,” says Saint Louis coach Rick Majerus, who led Utah to the NCAA tournament title game in 1998. His team lost the final to Kentucky, and that was the Wildcats’ seventh and most recent national championship.
“Heavy is the head that wears a crown,” Majerus added, liberally paraphrasing Shakespeare to illustrate the potential consequence of so many observers conceding the title to Kentucky.
But someone might want to clue in the Wildcats (37-2) about the pressure they’re supposed to feel. After scoring 18 points to go with 14 rebounds and five blocked shots to beat Louisville 69-61 Saturday in the national semifinals, Davis hollered, “This is my stage!”
He will attempt to own today’s NCAA championship game against Kansas (32-6) at the Mercedes-benz Superdome. How can Kansas stop him? Or, moving on to the buzzing question in the Big Easy: How do you beat Kentucky? It starts with Davis. “You have to go right at him,” Kansas assistant coach Kurtis Townsend said Saturday night after
Kansas defeated Ohio State 64-62 in the other national semifinal.
Push Davis and his teammates around, Majerus says.
“You cannot out-skill Kentucky,” Majerus says. “You’ve got to hit them, but not in any illegal or dirty way.”
Kansas All-america forward Thomas Robinson might want to take heed. Davis requires a lot of attention, but that seemed lost on Robinson on Sunday.
“Anthony Davis is a great player, but he’s not Superman,” Robinson said. “We just have to be Kansas. We’re not going to change anything we do.”
No change in Kansas’ approach would seem likely to produce no change in Kansas’ success this season against Kentucky. The Wildcats defeated the Jayhawks 75-65 in New York on Nov. 15, with Davis racking up 14 points, six rebounds and seven blocked shots. He went on to edge Robinson as national player of the year and become college basketball’s most intimidating presence this season.
Louisville players too often made the mistake Saturday of trying to get around Davis, Townsend noted. Davis got into their heads. He has a tendency to do that. The freshman is 6-10 but can extend well beyond 7 feet with outstretched arms. The Southeastern Conference single-season recordholder for blocked shots has 180, including 23 in five NCAA tournament games.
“You have to keep him occupied with a body on him,” Michigan State coach Tom Izzo says. “Do not let him roam. When he roams, he’s swatting everything.”
Physical play could be an issue for Davis. He has been getting comfortable playing in the post, but he’s not quite fully there.
Indiana got to Davis, forcing him into foul trouble, in a one-point victory vs. Kentucky in December and again when the Hoosiers met the Wildcats in a South Regional semifinal. Physical play by Vanderbilt’s Festus Ezeli, a 6-11, 255-pound redshirt senior, gave Davis trouble in the SEC tournament final, which Vanderbilt won after two competitive regular-season losses to Kentucky.
“He’s not accustomed to people hitting him consistently,” Majerus said.
“We played really solid defense all game,” Vandy’s Jeffery Taylor told news reporters after the SEC final. “Also, you have to be a little lucky. They missed some open looks.”
On Saturday against Louisville, Davis used his long arms freely to grab high passes and he moved fluidly from screens toward the basket for catches he converted to dunks as he made seven of eight shots and Kentucky shot 57%. Louisville coach Rick Pitino said he had wanted his center, 6-11 Gorgui Dieng, to keep his body on Davis.
“Not until the end did Gorgui get what we wanted him to do,” Pitino said. “We wanted him to block Davis out. . . . He had a very difficult time early because he’s a little weak. He’s only a sophomore.”
Robinson, a 6-10, 237-pound junior, could have more success. But Kansas coach Bill Self likely will turn to Jeff Withey, a 7-0 redshirt junior, against Davis. He said Robinson and Davis would go one-on-one by happenstance.
Withey has developed his own knack for altering shots. He scored four points Saturday against Ohio State but had a national semifinal-record seven blocks, giving him 27 for tournament — two shy of the record Florida’s Joakim Noah set in 2006.
Yet no one does it better at this level than Davis does. “He’s probably the best in the country,” Self said. Unstoppable on the run
At its best, Kentucky buries teams in transition. Kansas needs to disrupt that.
Kentucky is so tough to beat in transition that Self should consider telling his players, except for Robinson and Withey, to forget about attacking for offensive rebounds, Ma- jerus says. Whenever a Jayhawk shoots, most of the players should immediately get back on defense.
No team has tried that in the tournament, and it seems unlikely that Self would. But for Majerus to suggest it is telling. Kentucky becomes unstoppable on the run.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to run with Kentucky,” Michigan State’s Izzo said.
Izzo tried that in the 2009 NCAA championship game against eventual champion North Carolina. “We were a running team, and I kept saying, ‘We can run with Carolina,’ ” he says. “Twenty-five down at halftime, I decided it was a bad idea.”
Poor shot selection would doom Kansas. So would turnovers. Patience is critical.
“When you take a bad shot or turn the ball over, Kentucky is on the other end in the blink of an eye,” Izzo says. Kansas’ long to-do list
Kentucky has an array of scorers. Kansas could make life uncomfortable by taking away or limiting the left-handed dribble of forward Terrence Jones, Majerus suggested.
The Wildcats excel on the drive and draw fouls frequently. Pitino said he was glad his players limited Kentucky to “only” 20 free throw tries Saturday. When Kentucky beat Louisville on Dec. 31, the Wildcats shot 43.
The to-do list might get too long for Kansas, which also must contend with 6-7, 232-pound freshman forward Michael Kidd-gilchrist, who could join Davis as a top-five pick in June’s NBA draft. KiddGilchrist is praised as the hardest-working Wildcat. He had foul trouble against Louisville but made plays late in the game worthy of highlight reels.
If Kansas plays the percentages, it might let up against freshman point guard Marquis Teague, who entered the Final Four with the lowest field goal percentage (41.2%) among Kentucky’s top seven players. But that’s not an easy call.
The offensive juggernaut that is Kentucky can be defeated, Majerus says.
“But it’s going to be damn hard.”