It was not a perfect night for Connecticut star guard Shabazz Napier. It was a perfect ending to a career that started perfectly. Could he have asked for a whole lot more?
None of the spectacular players in UConn’s impressive recent history achieved what Napier did Monday night at AT&T Stadium. Not Ray Allen or Rip Hamilton, who were seated just behind the media table: Hamilton in a chair next to Hall of Fame coach Jim Calhoun, Allen too wired to stay in his seat. Not Kemba Walker, who was Napier’s teammate when the Huskies won the NCAA Championship three years ago.
Only Napier is a two-time title-winning All-American, a pinnacle he reached with the Huskies’ 60-54 victory over Kentucky, Napier scoring 22 points and grabbing six rebounds to offset the four turnovers that slightly marred his brilliant performance.
The Huskies won their surprising championship, the fourth in their history and first as a member of the new American Athletic Conference, by jumping to an early lead against the wobbly Wildcats and then never surrendering that advance once Kentucky found its footing.
Kentucky fought from a 48-39 deficit with 11:02 left to trail by only a point less than three minutes later, an 8-0 surge that was fueled by a monstrous driving dunk by Young. That was as close as it would get however, as Kentucky struggled terribly from the foul line and UConn made just enough shots to remain in front.
When Randle missed one of his driving lefty runners with 2:20 left, rolling it off the rim instead of knocking it down as he usually would, it became apparent this championship would belong to UConn, which ended the regular season with an 81-48 loss at Louisville but conquered Kentucky’s other team in the last game anyone would play in the 2013-14 season.
Kentucky chose in its pregame planning to deal with the problem presented by Connecticut’s ball-screen game by switching defenders each time one was set. That often left a big man such as Dakari Johnson or Julius Randle guarding Napier or Ryan Boatright. Napier chose to test this by pulling on deep threes rather than going by the big man in front of him. It didn’t work the first time. It did the second. And, you know, 50 percent shooting on 3-pointers is pretty good.
Kentucky’s issues early on were not limited to tactical choices. There was the same sense evident early in the Louisville Sweet 16 game, when the Wildcats looked as though they wanted to be anywhere else than at the center of this vast stage.
The Wildcats were outrun – not because UConn was necessarily faster, but because its players were running harder. Randle in particular seemed frozen more than usual. He scored only 10 points and grabbed a mere 6 rebounds, ball-watching instead of crashing the boards in his customary manner.
The Wildcats were outgunned – in part because Napier is terrific, but also because UK’s shooters were feeling the pressure brought on by an inability to find or create gaps in the UConn defense.
The Wildcats were outexecuted – and it appeared to be a matter of the nervous reaction engendered by playing with title-game pressure. Several of UConn’s key players, most notably Napier, appeared in a title game three years earlier and won it. The closest UK’s guys had come to the championship game was the semifinal they played two days earlier.
Before the game even began, Randle was spotted being stretched out and clearly uncomfortable as the teams warmed up on the court. He sat for xxx minutes in the first half, when he was playing, was not his normal glass-chewing self.
Randle was a step slow on an early defensive switch that allowed a baseline drive by guard Ryan Boatright, and he was late getting to the offensive boards when center Dakari Johnson started into one of his slow-developing moves in the low-post. Down nine at the time, UK watched as Napier turned that possession into a pull-up 3-pointer and a 24-12 UConn lead.
A couple of developments settled the Wildcats a bit. Boatright picked up his second personal foul with 4:20 left, and given that his imprint on this game was going to be made first with his tenacious brand of on-ball defense, his remaining fouls had to be preserved for the second half.
As well, UK tried out a 2-3 zone defense against the Huskies. Napier punished it with a quick-trigger 3-pointer just inside the 5-minute mark to make the score 33-20, but they scored only once more against the zone before the break. Randle, who had scored only two points in the first 19 minutes, stormed inside for a couple of muscular baskets in the final 60 seconds that cut the halftime edge to 35-31.
This was about where Kentucky had been in each of the four ginormous NCAA Tournament wins that advanced the Wildcats to this game: down six vs. Wichita State, three against Louisville, tied with Michigan and behind Wisconsin’s Badgers by four.
Instead of charging out of halftime, however, Kentucky seemed even more lethargic as the final 20 minutes progressed. Their defense was remarkably improved, but the opportunities that resulted mostly went nowhere. The Cats started just 2-of-8 from the field, and when Boatright followed up an overdue Niels Giffey 3-pointer by stealing a too-soft Aaron Harrison pass intended for his brother, the two free throws UConn earned turned into a 46-39 lead.
Randle then threw a skip pass out of a triple-team off the elevated court and into the fourth row, suggesting that the problem for the Wildcats was not that the stage was too big for them, but rather not nearly big enough.