by Paul Jordan
Much was made this week about the battle of “brains versus brawn” in tonight’s Cornell/Kentucky matchup. It was billed as the classic “jocks versus nerds” battle since the “Revenge of the Nerds” movie series, and this was being fought in the home den of the brainy Cornell Big Red. In the end, Kentucky’s equation for victory was fairly simply: W=DmC. When in doubt, get the ball to DeMarcus Cousins and he will take care of the bookworms. It was the right equation for the Cats as UK ended Cornell’s storybook season and advanced to the Elite 8 with a 62-45 win over the Big Red.
Cornell started the game in Disney movie fashion jumping to a quick 10-2 lead behind three pointers from Ryan Wittman and Louis Dale just four minutes into the game. Then the horror movie that is reality started for the Big Red as Kentucky pushed the ball inside to DeMarcus Cousins who Cornell had no answer for. Cousins scored the first six points of the game for the Cats, and in doing so, helped ignite a 12-0 UK run which gave UK a 14-10 lead with 11:52 left in the first half.
Inspired by that success, Kentucky kept forcing the ball into the paint and getting high percentage shots. On defense, UK stifled the Big Red three point attack and never let them get a shot off without a hand in their face. On the boards, UK kept Cornell to one and done shots and the result was a gradual domination in the first half which saw UK go in a halftime with a 32-16 lead. For those counting, that was a 30-6 run by UK.
The first half stats pretty much back up the score. UK shot 50% for the half, compared to Cornell’s 38.9%. The big stat difference was in the turnover numbers. We were led to believe that this Cornell team would never turn the ball over and that would be the key to their tremendous upset over Kentucky. In the first half, the Big red had 12 turnovers against just 5 assists and UK reversed those numbers with 11 assists versus just 6 TO’s.
Both teams came out in the second half cold and seemingly disinterested in scoring. The only real drama was when Cornell cut the score to 40-34 with 5:42 remaining. Yes, Kentucky scored 8 points in nearly 15 minutes and Cornell could get no closer than six. At this point, UK woke back up, started getting the ball inside again, and Eric Bledsoe hit 8 straight FT’s down the stretch and normalcy was restored with UK getting the 17 point win.
The star of the game? UK’s defense. This team does not get nearly enough credit for the defense it plays and tonight was a showcase. For the game, Cornell shot just 33.3% for the game and was held to just 23.8% on treys — some 20 points below their average. Darius Miller gets my star of the game. He had 9 points on offense, but on the night, he held Ryan Wittman to just 10 points and harrassed him into a 3-10 shooting night.
DeMarcus Cousins was a beast and was the one that UK looked to whenever they needed a basket, scoring 16 points on 7-8 shooting and pulling down 7 boards. Patrick Patterson had 9 points and 12 rebounds. John Wall finished with 8 points and 8 assists and 7 rebounds.
Our own Corey Price weighs in and lets us know that the 45 points that UK allowed is the least that UK has allowed in the NCAA’s since 3/19/1999 when they held Miami (Ohio) to just 43 points in the Midwest Regional Semifinals.
All in all, another dominating performance by UK in the NCAA as this team has stormed through the first three rounds with barely a hiccup. Most teams would have panicked down 10-2 in front of a hostile crowd, but UK regrouped systematically and went to their strength to get back into the game and then went on a run that demoralized the team and sucked the life out of the crowd. Not a lot to complain about and UK is just 40 minutes from the promised land. Kentucky faces West Virginia Saturday at 7 PM.
For compete game stats, click here.
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