HOUSTON — DeAndre Liggins, never one to hide his heart and true feelings, was asked the difference between last year’s Elite Eight team full of superstars and this year’s Final Four group of overachievers. “Last year’s freshmen were great freshmen, but personally, too many egos,” Liggins said. “Everybody wanted to be the man out there. This year, everybody knows what they’ve got to do and what it takes to win.”Interesting and maybe true, but maybe it’s a bit simpler than that, or a little more concrete than just a chemistry issue. After all, it’s hard to fault the chemistry of a 35-3 team. The reality is, if UK doesn’t clank, brick and air ball 28-of-32 3-point shots in last year’s Elite Eight, there’s a good chance the Cats not only march to the Final Four but win the national championship.That in there may reveal one of the biggest differences between this year’s team and last year’s. This group can just plain shoot the ball.”Last year’s team, everybody played zone, or at least some point played zone to see if we would make any shots,” Calipari said. “Obviously the (West Virginia) game we were 0 for 20 (to start the game). This team, it’s a little harder to play zone. It’s a dangerous proposition. We can shoot 3s.”That’s an understatement. Kentucky is seventh in the country in 3-point field-goal percentage, a far cry from last year’s squad that ranked 177th. Sure, last year’s team had superstars John Wall and Eric Bledsoe on the perimeter, along with 3-point specialist Darnell Dodson and current Wildcats Darius Miller and Liggins, but that group was a bunch of bricklayers compared to this team of sharpshooters.”It was easy to sag on us and keep us out of the lane,” senior forward Josh Harrellson said. “When DeMarcus (Cousins) posted, it was easy to double on him because if he kicked out, the chance of us making a shot last year was pretty slim.”The 2009-10 team hit an abysmal 33.1 percent from the perimeter. This year’s team? It’s drilled 40.0 percent from behind the arc, the highest mark since the 1996 national championship team hit 39.7 percent. This season’s mark would also be a school record.”Ever since I met the guys, I’ve been saying what great shooters they are,” Harrellson said. “The first time I met Brandon Knight, we were at open gym and he knocked down every shot he had.”And Knight (38.2 percent) isn’t even the best 3-point shooter on the team. Far from it.If the season were to end today, Doron Lamb (48.1) and Miller (44.9) would rank in UK’s top 10 single-season 3-point shooting seasons in terms of percentage. The only reason Liggins (40.2) wouldn’t make the list is because he’s 13 shots shy of the 100 attempt minimum.”We’ve got four or five guys that can shoot it,” Calipari said. “It’s not two of us. It’s like five of us. It’s a different team. We’re playing differently than we did two, three years ago. It’s just a different way to play.”Calipari said they don’t rely on the 3, calling it fool’s gold, but if the saying is true and you really do live and die by the 3, boy, are the Cats living by it. “That’s one of the reasons we struggled early in the year,” Calipari said. “I was trying to figure out how exactly does this team play. We lost a lot of close games. I put that more on me than these young people. But now we’re doing what works for us.”And this isn’t a team that built its numbers on meaningless games. Over the course of the NCAA Tournament, UK is hitting 42.6 percent from long range. It seems like every make has been at a critical juncture.Just about every time Ohio State or North Carolina made a run in last week’s East Regional, Kentucky answered with a 3-ball. Knight provided a lot of them, but it was Liggins, who has gained his reputation as a lockdown defender, who hit the most important 3-ball against North Carolina, a dagger from the right corner with 37 seconds remaining. “We’ve got a bunch of guys that I’m really comfortable late in the game that if you try to take away Brandon, he can get it to somebody else and he can knock it down,” Calipari said.Big stakes and big shots. Shooting is a lost art, but this team sure has perfected it.