As if they needed it, Northern Iowa’s upset over #1 seed Kansas was a wakeup call to what can happen to heavily favored teams in the NCAA Tournament. After a few close early minutes, the Wildcats answered the call and delivered a thumping over #9 seed Wake Forest.
Not that this game started out so easily for the Wildcats. Wake Forest took an early 6-0 and 8-2 lead over UK and seemed determined to put up a fight. The biggest plays happened just four minutes into the game whem Al-Farouq Aminu picked up his first two fouls of the game just twenty seconds apart. The knockout blow for this game came at the 11:40 mark when Aminu picked up his third fould and a seat on the bench for the rest of the half. At the time, the score was knotted at 19.
So rarely has the course of a NCAA game been decided so early. Kentucky went on a 7-0 run while not playing especially well offensively but all the heart seemed to be sucked out of the Wake Forest team early. Darius Miller became the latest UK player of the game to step up as he tied a career high with 16 points in the first half and UK went in at half up exactly that, at 44-28. UK went on a 25-9 run after Aminu’s foul and the Demon Deacs shot just 4-19 for the rest of the half.
To make sure there would be no drama, UK nailed the first 11 shots of the second half and had a 68-38 lead at the 12:03 mark. It was about this time that the CBS Network decided that no one outside of Lexington or North Carolina needed to see the carnage anymore and pulled the plug. Kentucky kept up their new found killer instinct and won 90-60 to advance to their first sweet 16 in five years.
For the second straight game, someone not named John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, or Patrick Patterson stepped up and ignited the charge. You have to love the talent on this team as Darius Miller had a career night with 20 points and 9 boards on 7-9 shooting. DeMarcus Cousins had a huge night as well with 19 points on 9-10 shooting. John Wall added 14 points and 7 assists and Eric Bledsoe pitched in 13. And that is what is impressive on this team. Very few teams in the country could withstand a four point performance from one of their stars, yet Kentucky won by 30.
Kansas and Villanova were two of the teams that could boast that level of depth to be able to keep up with Kentucky and they were sent packing today. There are really only a couple of teams right now that can match UK player for player in this tournament and Kentucky has to feel that a tremendous obstacle to a title was removed today.
And for the historical buffs, Corey Price has a couple of nuggets that he just texted to me:
Our 59 combined point margin of victory is the most for us in the first two rounds since 1996 when we won the first two rounds by a combined 62 points.
It’s the 6th time that we’ve won our first two games of the tournament by at least 50 points. Every other time it happened, we made at least the Elite 8.
It’s our third largest margin of victory against a single digit seed ever. We beat 5 seed Wake Forest by 34 in the 1993 regional semifinals and we beat number 4 seed Utah by 31 in the 1996 regional semifinals.
It’s good to have a stats guru like Corey on the “payroll”. For complete game stats, go here.
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