First thoughts after Wisconsin’s semi-final win over Kentucky.
By PAUL GOTHAM
Turning the tables…errr…boards
In last year’s national semi-final, UK converted 11 offensive rebounds into a 23-10 advantage in second-chance points on their way to a 74-73 victory. Six of those second-chance opportunities came during a 15-0 Wildcat run early in the second half. Saturday night UW outrebounded UK, 34-22 including 12-6 on the offensive glass. The Badgers scored 13 second-chance points to Kentucky’s six.
Decisive run
Less than eight minutes after grabbing an eight-point lead, Wisconsin trailed by four with 6:37 left on the clock. At that point Sam Dekker sparked an 8-0 run, and the Badgers never looked back. The junior forward score six in the spurt including a dagger three with 1:44 on the clock to give Wisconsin a 63-60 lead.
They said it
Wisconsin’s Frank Kaminsky on winning the rebound battle: “Just staying into ’em, attacking them, trying to do whatever we can. The ball bounces your way sometimes. It’s just the luck of the bounce sometimes. You saw how they got some bounces on some offensive rebounds as well. We just tried to do whatever we could to stay into them. We know if they get another offensive rebound, they get another chance to score. They’re such a good offensive team, if they get buckets that way, it’s going to be a long night. Just trying to keep them off the glass is one of our main priorities.”
Wisconsin’s Bo Ryan: “Well, Frank might have been a little animated because somebody said to him, Frank, you just gave up three offensive rebounds. They had six for the game. Didn’t they get three on that one possession? I don’t know what the score was. Anybody have that?…Yeah, and they scored after those offensive rebounds. We were not sitting in an envious position, nice way of putting it. But we let it out a little bit in the timeout. Okay, now, conversation’s over, now we go out on the court and get it done with our actions. Frank was one of the leaders of that. And Sam hitting the three, the defender went back. It’s a lot better than that three that he launched that they checked the glass on as to whether or not it had cracked. So it was a much better three. The fact that it went in didn’t surprise anybody on our bench.”
Kentucky’s John Calipari: “But you have to give Wisconsin credit. They did to us what we have done to teams. I’m going to look at the tape. There’s some things I probably should have done, a timeout here, I maybe should have changed up something. But we normally execute down the stretch, and we didn’t. They did. They made plays down there and we didn’t.”
Double-double effort
UW’s Frank Kaminsky posted game-highs with 20 points (7-of-11 shooting) and 11 rebounds.
Closing it out
Wisconsin hit three of its last five shots. Kentucky went one of eight. The Badgers held UK to one field goal in the final six minutes a stretch including three shot clock violations forced by the UW defense.
Wisconsin’s Sam Dekker on the three straight shot clock violations: “Well, I don’t think we necessarily did anything different than what we were supposed to do. I just think we clogged up the driving lines a little better and just made it tough on them to get easy looks inside. If they get you behind them on the low block, those guys are so big and so talented, they’re going to score that 70% of the time. So we just tried to make it tough off the dribble, for them to enter the post. Those shot-clock violations were big for us. Gave us confidence on the defensive end and maybe hopefully drained a little bit of their confidence on the offensive end. Any stop we can get, hopefully we can turn it around and get a bucket on it. And we were able to take a lead back on it.”
Taking advantage of generosity
Wisconsin hit seven of eight free throws in the game’s final 25 seconds to put away the game.
Et al
Kentucky outscored Wisconsin in the paint (34-20), off turnovers (13-6), bench points (12-8) and on the fast break (4-0). The Badgers had a nine-point advantage at the free throw line going 18-of-22 to UK’s 9-of-10. Wisconsin also scored 21 points behind the arc to UK’s nine. The game consisted of seven lead changes and 11 ties. Wisconsin led for 22:22. Kentucky for 10:17. The game was tied for 6:57.
Nod to the offense
Wisconsin scored 1.246 points per possession against the number rated defense in the country which held opponents to 86.5 points per 100. Kentucky came in leading the nation with a field goal percentage defense of 35.2. UW hit 48 percent.
24 years later
The year was 1991. UNLV brought a 34-0 record (45 straight wins going back to the previous season) to Indianapolis. The Runnin’ Rebels lost in the national semi-finals. Ironically, UNLV lost to a Duke team that it beat in the previous year’s final. Kentucky’s unbeaten season came to an end in Indianapolis to a Wisconsin it beat a year ago in the semi-finals.
Leave a Reply