Notebook: Willis Won’t Quit Shooting

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Kentucky senior forward Derek Willis couldn’t seem to catch a break on the offensive end of the floor Friday night against UCLA.

The 6-foot-9 Kentucky native was getting good looks at the rim, but his 3-point looks were going in and out with frustrating regularity. The one constant was freshman Malik Monk continuing to bark and motion to him to keep shooting.

“Yeah, we encourage everybody,” Monk said. “I wasn’t shooting well, (Isaiah Briscoe) encouraged me to keep shooting. They encourage me to keep shooting. That’s what I gotta do for them.”

Willis hit just 3-of-11 shots from the field and only 2-of-7 3-pointers, but both 3s were clutch for the Cats against a UCLA team that had lost just four games prior to Friday’s Sweet 16.

Willis’ first 3-pointer came just over six minutes into the game and gave UK a 14-11 lead, highlighting an 8-1 UK run. His second 3-pointer was with 7:34 left in the game and put UK back up by eight after the Bruins’ had cut the Cats’ lead down to five.

“Derek, that’s what he is,” senior Dominique Hawkins said. “He’s a shooter for us. He spreads out the court and we can’t win too many games without him. We need him to be able to shoot the ball and make shots for us.”

Earlier in Willis’ career, an in-game shooting slump might result in deferrals on open shots. Now, after four years of playing for Coach Cal and putting in countless hours of work, he’s able to maintain his confidence and focus on the next shot and opportunity.

“Coach Cal has instilled it in me,” Willis said. “And then all those hours I’ve spent in the gym shooting and all the work I did with Kenny Payne and all the assistants. It all comes to this point. I always feel comfortable shooting. Like I said, tonight it was rimming out, it wasn’t going in. It happens. But a lot of those shots, I tried to crash. We got a couple of offensive rebounds, I think, on some of them. I’d kick out to Malik and Malik had about three or four possessions where he let it go and everything (went) in. He was just plugging it. You’ll have games like that.”

Prior to Friday’s Sweet 16 game against UCLA and star freshman point guard Lonzo Ball, De’Aaron Fox acknowledged that the matchup between he and his Bruin counterpart was exciting.

He also said it was a team game and one person is not going to win the game.

That’s all true, but after scoring 39 points, the most by a freshman in NCAA Tournament history, it’s easy to see that this game meant a little something extra to Fox.

“I was motivated, honestly, in any game like that,” Fox said. “He’s in contention for the No. 1 pick in the draft. He’s a great player. We all know that. That’s one of my boys off the court, but on the court we’re going to go at each other and today I think I got the best of him. We just came out – I didn’t come out looking at the matchup. I came out doing whatever I had to do to win. Today it was scoring and I did that and we won the game. That’s what I’m most happy about.”

In the two teams’ first matchup, a 97-92 UCLA win on Dec. 3, Fox scored 20 points and dished out nine assists to two turnovers. Ball scored 14 points, grabbed six rebounds and passed out seven assists with six turnovers in that game.

The 6-6 Ball is projected by many NBA Draft analysts to be one of the first two or three players to hear his name called in this summer’s draft, which he said shortly after the game finished that he would be entering. But Fox is believed to be a top-10 pick as well, especially after back-to-back strong performances against Ball and the Bruins.

After Fox opened the scoring with a jumper, Ball immediately answered on the next possession with a long 3-pointer.

“Lonzo’s a great player,” Fox said. “He’s a walking triple-double. He does everything. You saw the first shot. When he hit that first deep 3, I was like, ‘Ah, man, it’s going to be a long night.’ ”

Instead, Kentucky continued to throw varying defenses at him and held him to 10 points, eight assists and four turnovers in 38 minutes. And most importantly, UK got the win.

“He reads defenses easier than 99 percent of the players in the country, so we just tried to keep throwing different things at him and tried to shake him and he was great, but defensively we did what we were supposed to do,” Fox said.

Bam Adebayo is the biggest member of Kentucky’s trio of star freshmen. On Friday, he watched as his smaller classmates combined to score 60 of the Wildcats’ 86 points.

Adebayo, meanwhile, scored his first and only basket with 3:17 left in UK’s Sweet 16 victory.

He could not have cared less.

“They have good games,” Adebayo said. “I had two points. We live to see another day so I’m not tripping.”

Adebayo faced double teams all night, surrounded on almost every touch by some combination of 7-foot Thomas Welsh, 6-10 TJ Leaf, 6-10 Ike Anigbogu and 6-11 Gyorgy Goloman. He was unfazed.

“We’ve had experience with it so we automatically knew what to do,” Adebayo said. “They double-teamed, I kick it out and my teammates make plays.”

Playing a team-high 37 minutes, Adebayo dished a career-best five assists out of those double teams. The space he created was responsible for even more baskets.

“I feel like that’s just kind of what teams have to do, honestly,” Derek Willis said. “One on one I think Bam is going to get whatever he wants. He’s just too quick. He’s too strong. He gets really good position on a lot of players. You got to send two players on him. You just have to. When he does that, it opens the court up for everyone.”

It’s likely Adebayo will have more opportunities to score next time out against North Carolina. He’s not worried about anything on the stat sheet other than the final score at this point though.

“We came out with the W,” Adebayo said. “I’m happy. It’s March now.”