Mark Fox watched what Notre Dame was doing with great interest, seeing as how the Fighting Irish did to Kentucky in the Midwest Regional final as Fox’s Georgia Bulldogs had done. In both cases, a counter-intuitive game plan almost worked. In both cases, it didn’t quite.
On March 3 in Athens, smallish Georgia chose not to shoot over the massive Wildcats — their starting front line is 7-foot, 7-foot and 6-10 — but to bait them into moving. After his team lost to Kentucky 78-39 last week, West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said: “I think Georgia kind of did the best job, kind of got them spread.”
Georgia led the unbeaten Wildcats by nine points inside the final nine minutes. Those who’ve covered Kentucky all season described that game as the Big Blue’s closest call — until Saturday, when Notre Dame led by six inside the final six minutes. In basketball as in life, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Speaking this week, Fox said of facing Kentucky: “One of the things we tried to do was open the basket. They’re so long — and it’s not that they have one player who’s long; they all are — that you just can’t leave guys parked at basket. You have to open up the lane to give yourself opportunities to score.”
Against 7-footers Willie Cauley-Stein and Karl-Anthony Towns, opening the lane isn’t easy. Georgia — and later Notre Dame — managed by having its guards slice off high screens, forcing Kentucky’s big men to switch onto a guard.
Said Fox: “I thought maybe we could get some stuff off ball-screens. I thought Notre Dame did that.”
Georgia has good guards in Charles Mann and Kenny Gaines; Notre Dame had maybe the nation’s best tandem in Jerian Grant and Demetrius Jackson. Kentucky prides itself on having big men agile enough to cover smaller players, but not all big men are created equal.
After the Wildcats’ breathless 68-66 victory, coach John Calipari credited the Irish’s Mike Brey with wrong-footing his team. Said Calipari: “The side pick-and-roll and the empty side pick-and-roll … we never figured it out. We tried doing some different things, and they just kept scoring on that.”
Georgia ran similar pick-and-rolls. Said Fox: “We did, with certain players. It’s a strategic thing. We didn’t run them against Willie Cauley-Stein. Who you put in the ball-screen is important.”
(Meaning: Cauley-Stein, a junior, is swift and seasoned enough to be able to stay with a guard. Freshmen Towns and Trey Lyles are less able.)
College basketball upsets are often a function of 3-point shooting. Noteworthy about both Georgia’s and Notre Dame’s near-misses was how little that mattered. The Bulldogs made 3 of 17 treys; the Irish made 4 of 14. In both cases, the screening and driving wasn’t intended to free shooters for kick-outs but to get layups off backdoor cuts.
More parallels: Georgia and Kentucky were tied at 32-32 at halftime; Notre Dame and Kentucky were tied at 31-31. Georgia and Notre Dame took control midway through the second half, only to unravel at the end. The Bulldogs were outscored 16-2 over the final 4:48; the Irish were outscored 15-7 over the final 5:56.
Said Fox: “That’s where they got us. They wore us down. The last 3 1/2 minutes, we weren’t where we needed to be.”
Said Brey: “The size does get to you. Over 40 minutes it can take its toll on you. As good as Jerian was in getting us there, it kind of swallowed him a little bit a couple of times.”
Looking ahead to the Final Four, Fox believes Kentucky is the best team — “If it’s a series, they’d win,” he said — but believes Wisconsin, the Wildcats’ semifinal opponent, “arguably has the best chance” to beat the unbeaten.
“The chance you have is to spread them out,” Fox said. “With its 3-point shooting and big Frank (Kaminsky), that’s probably what Wisconsin is going to do. I didn’t think (Kentucky’s) defense was as effective against Notre Dame as it has been. They’ve won games against really good teams with defense alone.”
Then: “The real key is (Wisconsin forward Sam) Dekker. When (Kentucky’s Alex) Poythress was healthy, he was the perfect guy to guard Dekker.”
But Poythress was lost to a torn ACL in December, and Kentucky, for all its gifts, doesn’t have a small forward. (It does have very tall guards.)
Asked if any Final Four teams have taken a cue from Huggins and called for advice, Fox laughed. “We’re not going to help anybody against a team in our league.”
The Wildcats won’t be the only familiar faces Fox will see in Indianapolis. Michigan State will be there, the same Spartans who held a three-point lead over the Bulldogs with 21 seconds remaining in the round of 64.
“It’s a funny feeling,” Fox said. “You’re thinking, ‘We could have been that.’”
The Bulldogs weren’t long for this NCAA Tournament, but their memory lingers. If Kentucky does fall, the deed will surely be done by an opponent following Fox’s trail.
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