Defense to Be Decisive in Sweet 16
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MEMPHIS, Tenn. – The college basketball world is collectively salivating at the thought of Kentucky and UCLA facing off in the Sweet 16.
With the way the two teams like to run – and did in a 97-92 UCLA win over UK in the regular season – people are forecasting a fast-paced, high-scoring game that could be one of the best of this NCAA Tournament.
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| Kentucky vs. Wichita State | ||
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Sun., March 24 – 9:39 p.m. ET |
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| Coverage | ||
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TV: CBS |
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| UK | 2016-17 Team Stats | UCLA |
| 31-5 | Record | 31-4 |
| 16-2 | Conference Record | 15-3 |
| 85.2 | PPG | 90.2 |
| 71.3 | Opp PPG | 75.2 |
| .474 | FG% | .521 |
| .420 | Opp FG% | .420 |
| 40.2 | RPG | 38.8 |
| .350 | 3PT FG% | .406 |
| .305 | Opp 3PT FG% | .363 |
| .703 | FT% | .741 |
| 15.3/td> | APG | 21.6 |
| 6.0 | SPG | 6.0 |
| 5.4 | BPG | 5.3 |
The Wildcats are singing a different tune.
“We don’t want it to be a 100-point game,” Malik Monk said. “Let’s just focus on defense. We’re going to get our points; they’re going to get their points. Whoever gets the most stops is going to win. That’s all we’re going to focus on.”
Now, don’t get UK’s high-scoring freshman guard wrong. The second-seeded Wildcats (31-5) love the fact that they’re facing an opponent in third-seeded UCLA (31-4) on Friday at 9:39 p.m. ET in Memphis, Tennessee, that’s not going to shy away from running with them. They’ve grown accustomed to the opposite.
“I know it’s going to be a fun game,” Monk said. “The first game was fun. We just want to compete.”
The first game was fun, all the way up until the buzzer sounded on UK’s defeat. That’s why, as much fun as an up-and-down game will be, there’s something else on the Cats’ minds.
“It’s very unusual, but it’s something we’re going to like doing,” Fox said. “But we know this game is going to come down to our defense.”
Successfully defending UCLA is no small feat.
The Bruins scored more than the 97 they put up on UK 12 times this season en route to averaging 90.2 points per game. UCLA features the nation’s assist leader in Lonzo Ball and six other players averaging double figures, including a 6-foot-10 freshman forward in TJ Leaf who torched UK for 17 points, 13 rebounds and five assists.
All that adds up to the second-ranked offense in America, according to kenpom.com.
“It’s (defense) going to be a challenge, but knowing that, it’s going to be something that’s a key contributor to us winning,” Fox said. “This team leads the nation in assists, they lead the nation in scoring and we just gotta try to slow them down.”
UK didn’t do much of that back in December, allowing UCLA to shoot 53.3 percent from the field. It’s a good thing the Cats aren’t the same team they were back then.
“We play defense a lot, a lot more,” Bam Adebayo said. “I think we’re engaged more on defense this time. At the beginning of the season, we didn’t really care for it because we were beating everybody, outscoring everybody. Now, people are going to take us out of our transition game, so now we gotta lock in on defense because we might not get every shot we want.”
Including the UCLA game, UK allowed an opponent to shoot 50 percent or better five times as of Feb. 18. Over the last nine games, that’s never happened. And in fact, five times UK has forced an opponent to shoot worse than 40 percent during that stretch.
“I feel like we got a lot better,” Adebayo said. “We’re getting stops, we’re taking charges, we’re having fun on defense, we’re talking and just enjoying it.”
UK has grown a lot in the four months since the Cats and Bruins got together in Rupp Arena, but so has UCLA. The Bruins were unbeaten when they took down UK and scoring at an incredible clip, but they committed 18 turnovers in that game and were still coming together as a team with three freshmen (Ball, Leaf and Ike Anigbogu) integrating themselves into an otherwise veteran team.
“I’ve always said it, it’s one thing to play up-tempo, it’s another thing to play up-tempo and yet under control,” UCLA head coach Steve Alford said. “We had nine turnovers in the first two rounds in the NCAA Tournament. That’s unheard of playing as fast as we want to play. And that’s going to be a big key in tomorrow’s game, as well.
I don’t think we’re going to feel very good if we’ve turned it over 18 times like we did in December. So I think we’ve gotten better at taking care of the ball. We’ve gotten better defensively, and I’m sure Cal thinks, and at least on film it looks that way to us, they’ve improved in a lot of areas, as well.”
The Cats agree. A matchup with a team that exposed them is a good way to prove it.
“Defensively as a team, we just weren’t there last time,” Fox said. “This time, we’ve gotten a lot better defensively. On our streak, we’ve been holding teams to less of a margin. This team is averaging like 80-something, 90 points, so we know it’s going to be difficult. It’s easier said than done, but we know to win that we have to.”
