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North Carolina Tarheels expose the Kentucky Wildcat's Achilles heel in 75-73 win

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When it comes to college basketball, you can throw out the records when the Kentucky Wildcats and the North Carolina Tarheels face off.    Last year, Kentucky escaped at Rupp with just a two point win and this year, they faced a hungry North Carolina Tar Heels team badly in need of a signature win.  In a game with the intensity of a regional final, the Tar Heels exposed the Wildcat’s weakness — depth in the front court — and escaped with a 75-73 win over the 10th ranked Wildcats.

Going into the game, it was evident that Kentucky had the stronger guard play and that with John Henson and Tyler Zeller, the Tar Heels had the front court advantage.  We would get to see how accurate these theories were as Kentucky’s Josh Harrellson picked up his second foul barely 3:00 into the game.  And this set the storyline for the first half of the game.  Kentucky would have to stop the Tar Heels inside scoring while taking advantage of North Carolina’s tendencies to turn the ball over.

Early on, the Wildcats offered no resistance to the Carolina inside game.  Eloy Vargas struggled early and Terrence Jones appeared to have met his match defensively with John Henson draping him on every opportunity.  Despite the apparent early North Carolina advantage, Kentucky hung with the Tar Heels and the score was knotted at 14 early.  Kentucky had resorted to their “small lineup” and was using Doron Lamb and Brandon Knight to attack Carolina’s transition defense and force turnovers and it worked as Kentucky started hitting jumpers early into the shot clock.  It worked for a bit as Doron Lamb scored three quick baskets to give Kentucky a 25-17 lead.

Before Kentucky could even relax,  Carolina went on a run of their own keyed by 7 straight points by Harrison Barnes to take a 26-25 lead.  The game continued as scripted with Carolina banging away inside and Kentucky playing scrappy defense and working the ball to Knight and Lamb.  Eloy Vargas got his third foul and Josh Harrellson picked up his less than two minutes later and it looked as if North Carolina was going to pull away, up 39-34 with 2:48 left in the first half.  Kentucky then took advantage of back to back to back UNC turnovers and Terrence Jones and Brandon Knight staked Kentucky to a 42-40 halftime lead.

The second half had the beauty, charm, and intensity of a rugby scrum.  North Carolina would bang away and open up a lead of 53-50, but Doron Lamb would quickly answer and knot the game with a timely three.  Kentucky would open up a 57-53 lead, but the Tar Heels answered to tie the game up at 61 with about 6:00 remaining.  During this time, Brandon Knight had stopped scoring and Doron Lamb emerged as Kentucky’s main consistent scoring threat.  Kentucky also picked up a couple of questionable calls as Eloy Vargas, Josh Harrellson, and Eloy Vargas all had foul fouls and Kentucky clung to a 65-63 lead with just 4:00 remaining in the game.

Tyler Zeller hit a pair of free throws to knot the game, and Kentucky had a horrible turnover on the next possession.  At this point, Kentucky had gone over 6:00 without a FG, yet were still in the game.  Terrence Jones fouled out on the next Carolina possession and John Henson hit one of two free throws to give UNC the lead.  Kentucky had really ramped up the defensive pressure at this point and stopped the next couple of UNC possessions and Lamb nailed two FT’s to put UK back on top.  Tyler Zeller continued the UNC free throw marathon putting the Heels back up.  On the next possession, Josh Harrellson snapped UK’s long FG drought as he out rebounded Tyler Zeller and put back a Knight miss to put UK back up 69-68.

Harrellson fouled out on the next possession and Zeller sank both shots to give UNC the lead again.   Doron Lamb missed a jumper and Eloy Vargas fouled out and Larry Drew sank a pair of free throws.  Down three, Brandon Knight hit a nice jumper that pulled Kentucky back to within one, at 72-71 with :12 remaining.  More UNC FT’s followed and Doron Lamb was fouled with about :06 remaining.  He sank both and Brandon Knight fouled out of the game.  Dexter Strickland hit the first FT and missed the second and Doron Lamb got off a Gordon Haywood-esgue heave that fell just a bit short as UNC came away with the hard fought win.

All in all, I thought it was a very gutsy game by Kentucky.  With virtually no post game the entire game, Kentucky managed to put the pressure on the North Carolina guards to prevent them from getting the ball to the big mean as clean or as timely as they needed to.  And to have a chance to win the game despite just three FG’s in the last 10:00 of the game.  Despite being exposed thoroughly in the front court, Kentucky played well enough to almost win on the road instead of giving up and getting blown out.  Not too many teams will win against players like John Henson and Tyler Zeller scoring virtually at will.

The reason Kentucky stayed close was the play of freshman Doron Lamb.  Lamb finished with 24 points off the bench and hit 3-4 3-pointers.  Brandon Knight played well the first half but disappeared in the second half.  Knight finished with 15 points, but just two of them came after halftime.  Darius Miller had a strong game as well, with 13 points and 7 rebounds.  Miller also went 3-5 from beyond the three point line to keep UK in the game.  Kentucky had 9 treys on the day and this was she sole equalizer that kept them in the game.

As for Kentucky’s front court?  Today was the rare example that it was totally ineffective.  Terrence Jones had some success offensively when paired with Tyler Zeller guarding him, but he finished with just 9 points on 3-17 shooting.  Josh Harrellson and Eloy Vargas are the two headed center for Kentucky this season and they finished with 4 points and 9 rebounds on the game.  And the failure of the post position was the reason Kentucky lost the game.  Had this pair managed a double double combined, Kentucky had won by five.  But the tone of this game was set early on when Harrellson got that pivotal second foul early, but Kentucky did a heck of a job to stay in the game.

I’m not going to beat the Cats up too much for this game.  It was a game that they could have easily lost by 20, but this team is a fighter and scrapper and they found a way to stay in the game and keep it close.  I don’t know how good UNC actually will be this year — they have the talent to be a top 15 squad — and it is going to be tough to win at the Dean Dome when Henson and Zeller play the way they did.

Kentucky has to use this as a learning tool and not dwell on the loss for too long.  They have a tough game on Wednesday night against 8-0 Notre Dame at Louisville.  Let’s hope for a rebound from this game.

For complete game stats, go here

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