Stakes Higher, Teams Better in This UK-UNC Game

Now, with a Final Four berth on the line, the Wildcats and Tar Heels will come together once more.

“It’s going to be an exciting game,” Isaiah Briscoe said. “Hopefully the score isn’t in the 100s. We’re going to try to slow them down in transition and things like that. But our defense has been great. Everybody has been talking. Everybody’s been locked in and focused on defense. It’s been showing.”

The first time around against top-seeded North Carolina (30-7), the No. 2 Wildcats (32-5) eked out a 103-100 victory behind Malik Monk’s 47 points. That matchup was one of the marquee games of the regular season, but the stakes pale in comparison to the fourth Elite Eight matchup between the two programs. This one will be played at 5:05 p.m. ET on Sunday in FedExForum.

“I don’t think it could be on any better stage,” UNC’s Justin Jackson said. “Obviously we played them already once and Malik went crazy. But it’s a different team, different time of the year. I think we’ve gotten better, they’ve gotten better, so we’ve got to pay attention to our scout and know personnel, but then we’ve just got to come out and play as hard as possible.”

UK, meanwhile, will be working for the same outcome as that Dec. 17 game in Las Vegas, but a slightly different means to get there. The win the Cats picked up on Saturday, an 86-75 defeat of UCLA, is a blueprint of sorts.

“That December game, it was no defense in that game,” said De’Aaron Fox, who poured in 39 points against UCLA. “You’re playing a 40-minute game and it’s a 100 to 103. Both teams have gotten better, but like I said, even with the UCLA game, that could have been in the 100s. Yesterday, we showed that we can defend. That team has so many shooters, so many ways to beat you. We didn’t shut it down because that’s impossible to shut a good team like that down. Just try to contain them. We know we’re going to have to do the same thing against North Carolina.”

Defense has been the primary area of improvement for both squads since their last meeting and certainly the driving force behind a 14-game winning streak that has seen UK go unbeaten for seven weeks. Gone are the days when the Cats are able to light up the scoreboard at will. Opponents have done everything to make the Cats beat them in the half-court. They’ve figured out how to do it by playing smothering defense.

“We’re not scoring 90 points like we were at the beginning of the season because people just didn’t know how to stop us,” Fox said. “Guys have tried to take us out of transition and we know if we’re not going to score 30 transition points a game we know we gotta play defense. That’s what it comes down at this point.”

In somewhat of an interesting turn, UK now faces the task of having to do to UNC what other teams have done to the Cats: eliminate the transition game.

“It’s extremely difficult,” Fox said. “We watched film and they scored 34 points in the first seven seconds of the shot clock against us. That’s huge. Then when we watched the way Virginia guarded them and they held them to less than 50. Virginia’s probably the best defensive team in the country, but we gotta take things from them and things that they did and try to slow Carolina down.”

UNC will also be looking to prevent easy opportunities for UK, one of the few teams boasting open-floor speed similar to the Heels. It’s one of many similarities between the two teams. Both squads are big, athletic and playing their best basketball of the season, but there is one major difference between them: experience.

This time last year, the Tar Heels were in the middle of a run to the national championship game. UNC’s five starters and first man off the bench often talk about the motivation they glean from losing on Kris Jenkins’ buzzer-beating 3 in the game, which Fox, Monk and Bam Adebayo all watched at home as high school seniors.

“We understand what we’re trying to do, get back to the Final Four, have another chance at the national title game,” Theo Pinson said. “But we’ve got to take care of tomorrow’s game first. Those guys, they’re young, but they’re still hungry. They want to be there, too. It’s going to be an all-out dogfight.”

All that talk of youth vs. experience and seniors vs. one-and-dones is nice for the papers and pundits, but it’s of little consequence to the Cats. They just want to keep doing what’s gotten them to this point.

“I don’t think we’re freshmen anymore,” Monk said. “You can’t use that term anymore because it’s in the tournament now. Nobody looks at that. But they’re a veteran team. We’ve played them before. But we’ve just got to prepare and listen to Coach and just focus in on defense.”