NEW ORLEANS — The critics would have you believe that Kentucky can’t shoot from the perimeter. The Cats calmly answered that concern with 15 three-pointers.
They’d also have you think UK is too young to cut down the nets. The Cats’ first-year players responded with 64 points.
The Kentucky men’s basketball team did all the things it wasn’t supposed to be capable of doing Thursday night in New Orleans Arena in crushing No. 16 seed East Tennessee State 100-71. Playing in its much-anticipated NCAA Tournament game for the first time in two years, the Cats looked like a team that was out to prove it’s one of the favorites to march to the Final Four.
Eric Bledsoe scored a career-high 29 points behind a record-setting day on the perimeter.
The freshman guard drilled 8-of-9 attempts from behind the arc to set the school record for most three-pointers in an NCAA Tournament game. Bledsoe’s barrage broke Tony Delk’s previous mark of seven set during the 1996 national championship game against Syracuse.
Bledsoe, grinning ear to ear, had a few words for UK’s assistant director of basketball operations after the game.
“I just said, ‘Tony who?’ ” Bledsoe joked. “He got mad. He said I should have stopped at seven.”
The Cats dropped 15 three-point bombs in all, coming just one short of tying UK’s team record in the NCAA Tournament. Shooter’s touch, good luck, whatever you want to call it — it was pretty obvious things were going UK’s way when a Ramon Harris three-pointer clanked between the glass and the iron and rolled in. Freshman guard John Wall would later bank in a trey.
Not bad for a team that can’t shoot it.
“I’ve been playing well for the past couple of weeks and in the SEC Tournament,” Bledsoe said. “Coach just told me to keep my aggressiveness. Once I started playing hard on the defensive end it carried over to the offense.”
Bledsoe wasn’t heralded as a three-point shooter coming out of high school and described himself as streaky shooter. An hour of work with assistant coach Rod Strickland before practice every day is quickly changing that reputation.
“I knew Eric throughout his high school career,” freshman forward DeMarcus Cousins said. “Eric is shooting the ball real well now. He puts in the work every day in the gym. He’s in there every day before practice just shooting the ball. It’s helping him and it’s shown.”
“Usually he would just take over the game with layups. Now he’s doing it everywhere.”
Kind of sounds like the rest of Kentucky, huh?
UK shot the ball well (59.4 percent), Wall dished out 11 assists, junior forward Patrick Patterson scored 22 energetic points, and freshman forward Daniel Orton added eight big points, seven rebounds and three blocks off the bench. All that came in spite of a pedestrian five-point performance from Cousins, who scored his first field goal with 8:06 left in the game.
“It’s pretty tough (to beat us playing like that),” Wall said. “If we play defense like we do and we’re making three-point shots, we can beat anybody in the country.”
Even more encouraging was Kentucky’s efficiency and ability to share the ball. Out of the Cats’ 31 field goals, 27 came off assists.
“That’s the key to this team,” Wall said. “We’re not selfish. If somebody is open we’re going to make the extra pass.”
It makes you think: If the Cats can shoot like the ball like it did Thursday and get all-around performances from its youth, how good can they be?
“We’re pretty much unbeatable,” Cousins said.
It looked like it during stretches against the Buccaneers. Sure, it was against an Atlantic Sun team that didn’t boast a player taller than 6-foot-8, but the Cats looked dominant during their first-half run.
Trailing 10-9 with 15:51 to play, UK went on a 29-4 run to take control of the game. Patterson provided all the muscle the Cats need inside, routinely finishing plays from the passes of Wall with his patented two-hand slam.
When the ball wasn’t going inside, Bledsoe was pouring in triples. On a pair of daggers, the net hardly moved.
“Eric can do that,” Cousins said. “When he comes out with that mindset, with that tough-man mindset, he’s pretty much unstoppable. He’s just as good as John.”
If that is indeed the case, maybe this team is unbeatable.
