Path to the Mountain Top

If you are like me, and you probably are if you are reading this, you’ve wondered what this UK team would look like if they played a full forty minutes.  It’s really hard to ask a team to play a full forty minutes, by the way.  Most coaches would be doing back flips to get thirty full minutes of play.  As for this team, now we know.  It wasn’t really forty minutes, but it was as close to it as you can get.  And when they do, this team is unbeatable.  And when I say unbeatable, that includes the Nets as well.

 So now that we have that answer, the next big question is, what flipped the switch for this team?  What made them decide to finally keep the foot on the gas the entire game?  I contend that the answer lies square in the events that will happen when the polls come out on Monday.  Consider that this team was given a lot.  They were ranked third before they ever took their first dribble.  I’m not saying they didn’t deserve the ranking, or maybe a better way to put it is no one deserves their ranking, good or bad, when you have zip to back things up.  All UK had to do to maintain their ranking was to win.  And win they did.  Most nights, they put just enough effort in to get the wins.  The sum of the wins is impressive.  The wins themselves mostly were not.  Then something happened.  Losses by Kansas, then Texas happened.  These Cats decided they did want to be number one and I think they know that to be number one, you must play at another level.  What we found out yesterday is this team is scary good when they play the entire game.  They didn’t play a perfect game by any stretch.  They had 15 turnovers,  and shot 68% from the free throw line.  I’ll truly pity the team (after the final horn) that plays these Cats when they play the entire game AND play a perfect game.  I would probably even pity the Lakers.  I do not mean to knock the team for not playing a perfect game and actually my intent is to show that this team does not need to play a perfect game to destroy teams.  All they have to do is follow the game plan, dominate the boards (margin was 20) shoot a high percentage for the game (46%), shoot 30 percent from three, and defend like mad.  The rest tends to take care of itself. 

 When we talk about playing the entire game, we aren’t just talking about consecutive minutes or even stretches of minutes.  We are also talking about minutes by position.  We know what can happen when UK gets play from the 1,2,4 and 5.  The other question asked as been, what happens if UK also got production from the 3 as well.  Now we know.  Miller and his subs, in my mind, was the difference.  The Hogs chose to let UK’s wings have open looks and the wings responded in a dominating fashion.  Miller, Liggins, Harris; the three did not miss a beat as the lead swelled to 46.  This may continue to be the game plan, then again, I don’t think anyone will feel very good about using this game plan.  It can get you spanked.