‘You want something? Go get it! Period’
How Evansville toppled Kentucky
LEXINGTON, Ky. – In the hours before taking the floor in Kentucky’s Rupp Arena to face the top-ranked men’s basketball team in the country, Evansville’s coaching staff gathered the Aces to show them a clip from “The Pursuit of Happyness” for inspiration.
Evansville was a 25-point underdog entering a raucous atmosphere where its head coach, Walter McCarty, once played. No one on the outside expected the Aces to win. McCarty believed. “Don’t ever let somebody tell you, you can’t do something. Not even me,” Will Smith’s character told his real-life son, Jaden Smith, as they stood alongside a basketball court. “All right? You got a dream? You gotta protect it. If people can’t do something themselves, they want to tell you, you can’t do it.
“You want something? Go get it! Period.”
Tuesday evening felt like a movie, fittingly.
Evansville shocked the country in defeating No. 1 Kentucky 67-64. It’s the program’s first road win over a ranked opponent. The third-biggest upset in college basketball in the last 15 seasons. The first win by a true midmajor on the road against a No. 1 team since 1993.
“No one expected us to come in here and play the way we did,” McCarty said during his postgame interview.
The Aces (2-0) didn’t luck into a win. They spent 29 minutes, 34 seconds with the lead.
They shot better than the Wildcats, shared the ball better and even outrebounded them. K.J. Riley scored a game-high 18 points while Sam Cunliffe finished in double figures with 17.
They sent Evansville basketball – a proud program with deep tradition that hasn’t been to an NCAA tournament since 1999 – back to national relevancy, if even for one night. Social media couldn’t seem to get enough of the Aces’ improbable upset.
“We just showed the world we can play,” Riley said. “Anybody can play with anybody. We played with confidence and we stuck to the game plan.”
They said they believed they could win before they even got to town.
“It’s amazing,” said Cunliffe, who had faced Kentucky twice at Arizona State and Kansas. “Coming to a school like this, you talk about making history like this. You know, making history and playing in front of these bright lights.
“We prepared the right way and had our minds in the right spots, so to actually do it is surreal. I couldn’t have imagined this ever in my life.”
Cunliffe willed the Aces in the first half, scoring 15 of his 17 points, all of which came off the bench. Evansville carried a 3430 lead into the break and kept pace with the Wildcats when some likely thought the Aces would crumble.
Cunliffe added that he felt like he perhaps has an added advantage coming off the bench because it allows him to evaluate the flow of the game and pick his spots. The Aces believe they have 10 players capable of starting.
“As long as I play, I don’t care if I start or come off the bench,” Cunliffe said.
Kentucky had a chance to send the game to overtime, but what would’ve been the tying 3-pointer was off the mark during the final seconds. Disappointed Wildcats coach John Calipari said the Aces deserved to win because they were the tougher team. “If we would’ve somehow pulled it out, it kind of wouldn’t have been fair. They made shots, threes and free throws, and my hat’s off to them. He had his team better prepared than I had my team,” he said.
Meanwhile, Evansville students on campus congregated to cheer, “Aces, Aces,” to celebrate. The Aces players themselves could be heard cheering from inside their locker room throughout the postgame interview sessions.
“I believe in this team and we’ve got enough to compete with anybody in the country,” McCarty said.
McCarty doesn’t talk about his playing days much anymore. He even admitted Tuesday that his players’ parents probably remember his career better. Although he was sure to point out he’s never lost a game of 1-on-1 to them.
Tuesday would’ve been special to the second-year coach regardless of the result. But his homecoming couldn’t have gone better. He said he felt as if he were back in college when he arrived at Rupp.
“I felt like I was getting ready to play – and it’s a good thing I still don’t play because I can’t play anymore,” McCarty said.
“Those juices as a competitor start flowing and I start getting excited. I just feel like, ‘Let’s go.’ I think our kids saw that. I don’t know if anything matches this other than winning a national championship.”
Evansville has now proved it has talent. People now have seen why DeAndre Williams was an NBA Top 100 camp invitee, why Cunliffe was a top-40 prospect and why its veteran leaders like Riley, John Hall and Noah Frederking mean so much to this team. Everyone’s individual skills complement one another, and they believe in each other. They also seem to truly like their coach.
“This was for coach,” Riley said. “Coming back to where he won a championship, we did this for him . . ... We knew he wanted to win and we did everything in our power to win.”