TAMPA, Fla. — Maybe no loss has haunted the Kentucky men’s basketball team over the last decade quite like last year’s Elite Eight loss to West Virginia in the 2010 NCAA Tournament.The favorites to cut down the nets in Indianapolis following the early ouster of Kansas, UK’s super team of John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins and Patrick Patterson seemed like a lock for the Final Four, which would have been the program’s first appearance since 1998.The trip became such a sure thing that hundreds – perhaps thousands – of fans put off going to the earlier rounds of the NCAA Tournament in anticipation of taking their vacation to the Final Four in the Hoosier State.And then, in one of Kentucky’s all-time most heartbreaking losses, West Virginia shocked UK 73-66, ending the run of the team that reestablished Kentucky’s place among the nation’s elite.”I still remember it,” said junior guard DeAndre Liggins, one of only three UK players (Darius Miller and Jon Hood being the other two) to play in last year’s game. “I’ll remember it tomorrow when we play them.”Said senior forward Josh Harrellson: “They just pretty much beat us to everything – layups, fastbreaks. We really didn’t play the game we played the whole year. We really didn’t play very well at all.”One can image the enjoyment the Kentucky players had Selection Sunday when West Virginia popped up in the same bracket, setting up a possible third-round matchup.From Patterson to Wall and even some of the current players, they all say last year’s game has played over and over in their heads like a reoccurring nightmare. For the last year, it’s long been their dream to right one of the few wrongs with last year’s season.”We’re ready to get our win back,” Liggins said.But this isn’t a rematch, or so the players say.Both teams put on their public relations hats Friday to dispel any storylines of revenge or payback. They’re two different teams, they both say, and by and large, they really are.Only one Kentucky starter (Miller) returned from a year ago, and three of WVU’s top five leading scorers are gone.”They have a completely different team,” said senior guard Joe Mazzulla, who torched UK for a season-high 17 points in last year’s game. “I’m not sure they have that inside presence like what they had from Cousins, even though (Josh) Harrellson does a pretty good job. On our end, we’re a much different team. We kind of spread the load out as far as what we’re going to do offensively, and we really have to rely on defense and rebounding, so I don’t think it’s too much of a rematch.”The main difference is this is a much better Kentucky shooting team. Led by sharpshooting freshmen Brandon Knight and Doron Lamb, UK enters Saturday’s 12:15 p.m. game at the St. Pete Times Forum with a 3-point shooting percentage of .398, 11th in the country.Although the Cats had some of the nation’s best individual talent last year, they bricked their first 20 attempts from behind the arc. For the game, UK was an almost unbelievable 4 of 32 from long range.”I just thought if we would have made shots we would have beat them,” Liggins said. “We didn’t.”To expect a poor shooting team to make most of its shots would have been unrealistic, but to miss so many last year with so much riding on the line was perplexing. When Liggins was asked why they missed so many shots, he had a hard time finding a reasonable explanation.”We just missed shots,” Liggins said.The answer may lie somewhere between West Virginia’s brutal physicality and the implementation of former coach John Beilein’s 1-3-1 zone. What this West Virginia team lacks in style points, it makes up for with its sheer punishing style of play. One of Bob Huggins’ staples as a head coach is rebounding and defense, both of which the Mountaineers do well again this year. West Virginia is averaging 3.6 more rebounds than its opponents while holding them to only 64.5 points per game.And while there isn’t a consistent scorer on offense like Da’Sean Butler and no athletic wing like Devin Ebanks on this year’s WVU team, there’s plenty of muscle in the paint and a pretty consistent scoring load (six players average 6.7 or more points, including three in double figures).”Watching last year’s game, they were physical with us,” Harrellson said. “They were very physical the whole game – pushing, setting good screens, keeping guys away from rebounds and boxing us out. They’re definitely a very physical team.”But perhaps the biggest challenge for UK will be a non-Huggins trademark: the 1-3-1 zone. Although Huggins has preferred to play physical man-to-man defense over the years, he decided to keep Beilein’s 1-3-1 zone for his occasional disposal because of the leftover personnel from the previous regime.It’s worked wonders for him, especially in last year’s matchup.”A lot of their shots were contested, under duress, from the 1-3-1,” Mazzulla said. “We got them off of the 3-point line and probably a few steps back. That’s just what we’ve got to do tomorrow. We can’t let them get standstill shots and we can’t let them set their feet.”Miller doesn’t quite remember it like that, insisting they had a lot of looks that they couldn’t knock down.”I think we just settled too much really,” Miller said. “We didn’t really pound the ball, which was one of our strengths last year. I don’t know if we panicked or not, but we continued to settle for the jumpers and they weren’t falling.”Liggins, however, was willing to concede a sense of fear when the shots didn’t go down. “I think we panicked last year,” Liggins said. “They were just trying to rattle us, and they did.”In Kentucky’s hindsight, the most frustrating part about the zone was it wasn’t a pregame plan. “We thought we could do a better job man to man a year ago than what we did,” Huggins said. “We’d put (Ebanks) on a lot of really good players, and because he was so long, he bothered people. John Wall went by him a couple times and he came over to me and said, ‘Coach, man, that cat is fast. I’m trying, I’m trying, I’m trying.'”He couldn’t stay in front of him, so we had to try to do something else. We didn’t go in planning on playing 1-3-1 as much as we did, but you’re just trying to win.”Huggins doesn’t plan to use the 1-3-1 as much Saturday because of Kentucky’s ability to shoot, but should he decide to unveil it again, the Kentucky players say they’re ready for it this time around.”We’ve got to penetrate the gaps and see what we’ve got in there,” Liggins said. “If we’re wide open, we’ve got to shoot the ball.”The only fear is, is that exactly what West Virginia wants again?