Kentucky and Kansas—the two winningest programs of all-time—prevailed in a memorable Saturday double-header at the Final Four and now meet with the championship on the line.
Kentucky took everything a motivated-Louisville could throw at them and more and still came away with a comfortable victory.
In the later game, Kansas and its now-customary slow start gave its fans their usual first-half heart attack before finding a way to come back and eke out a win in the final seconds—but not until squandering three different chances to seal it in the final minute.
The two wins bring us to the title game preview:
Final Game, Monday at 9:23 P.M.: Kentucky (37-2) versus Kansas (32-6).
Prediction: Kentucky tops Kansas 73–66 to cut the nets down for the eighth time in their storied history. Though it’s not shocking to predict the number-one ranked team to win (they were an early 6.5-point favorite) Kentucky should finalize its romp through the NCAA tournament with a win over surprising-Kansas: here is why:
1. Kentucky has shown no problem in dealing with the pressure that comes with being the favorites.
Head coach John Calipari had his Wildcats in a seemingly no-win, high-pressure situation Saturday playing in-state rival and major-underdog Louisville and the team passed with flying colors. The fourth-seeded Cardinals were not expected to win their regional, had revenge on their minds from the 69–62 New Year’s Eve loss in Lexington, and are coached by someone (Rick Pitino) who has a long-running rivalry with John Calipari and would have like nothing more than to ruin his best team ever.
Yet the Wildcats, who only got 23 foul-plagued minutes from second-leading rebounder Michael Kidd-Gilchrist showed little signs of jitter, hitting 57.1% of their shots and held steady even as Louisville tied the game at 49 with just over nine minutes remaining.
Second-seeded Kansas may not be quite the underdog that Louisville was but they’re not the equally motivated rival that the in-state Cardinals were either. The Wildcats handled their most-motivated opponent yet with relative ease.
2. Kansas center Jeff Withey’s shot-blocking will be negated by Kentucky center Anthony Davis’ even-better shot-blocking.
The biggest reason Kansas beat Ohio State was the fact that Withey negated the Buckeyes anchor on offense, power forward Jared Sullinger. Withey had roughly three inches on Sullinger and because Ohio State had no center for Withey to match up against he was on Sullinger all night, finishing with seven blocks (at least three were Sullinger shots) and altering several other shots.
Previously, the seven-foot Withey had three blocks against North Carolina, of which at least two led to fast-break opportunities and he had 10 blocks against North Carolina State prior to that game to will his team to a win.
But with Kentucky...
But with Kentucky on the floor Withey (averages 3.3 blocks per game) becomes the second-best shot-blocker on the court to Davis (averages 4.6 blocks per game), the national Player of the Year.
Davis is taller, (listed at 6‘10“) quicker, and more mobile than the 6’9” 265-pound Sullinger and both will have trouble blocking each others’ shots. But while Kentucky is able to win handily (12.6 point average margin of win in the tournament) with their advantage of having probably the nation’s best defensive player, Kansas has barely made it this far (7.2 point average margin) with their similar advantage in the lane.
In their first meeting, way back on November 15, it was Kansas who had trouble getting any points in the lane with Davis blocking seven shots and holding the All-American power forward Thomas Robinson to just 11 points. If it weren’t for guard Tyshawn Taylor’s ability to draw fouls (he hit 15 of 17 free throws) the final score would have been much uglier than the 75–65 final.
Kentucky could choose to guard Robinson with Davis and negate KU’s best offensive weapon, while taking their chances with the 6'9” 250-pound Terrence Jones guarding Withey who averages just 9.3 points per game. The pressure would then be on Kansas’ second-leading scorer Tyshawn Taylor, who’s missed all 20 of his three-point attempts in the tournament, to shoulder the scoring for Kansas.
On the flip side, should the Jayhawks guard Davis with Withey, the balanced-Wildcats can look for their scoring through a number of different players, including Jones and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist as Kentucky has six players that averages between 9.9 and 14.4 points per game.
3. Calipari has more personal motivation for 2008 than Kansas does for 2011.
In the 2008 Final Four, the only Final Four ever to feature four number-one seeds since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, Kansas topped the NCAA-record, 38-win, Calipari-coached Memphis Tigers in the final for the title. And they did it in heart-breaking fashion, erasing a nine-point deficit in the last two minutes and change with the help of four missed free throws by the Tigers and a miracle three-pointer at the buzzer by Jayhawk guard Mario Chalmers to force overtime.
The sting surely still resides for Calipari who is widely regarded as the best coach without a title in the NCAA.
Meanwhile, the loss for Kansas in their second game of the season was really before the Jayhawks hit their groove this season. They weren’t favored to win the game as they returned only one starter from the previous year (Taylor) and were just learning to play together.
4. Kentucky is the better team overall.
The Wildcats have a better record than Kansas by four and a half games and are one victory away from equaling the NCAA record for most wins in a season with 38 (if you count Memphis’ 38 wins in 2008 that were later disallowed due to the later-determined ineligibility of star guard Derrick Rose).
Kentucky’s two losses were by a total of eight points and one was courtesy of a last-second three-pointer by Indiana’s Christian Watford, at Indiana. Meanwhile one of the Jayhawks six losses was to unranked Davidson, 80–74, in nearby Kansas City.
The Wildcats have shown the ability in this tournament to win a fast-paced game (beating Indiana 102–90) or a slower-paced game (Saturday’s 69–61 win against Louisville). And none of their five tournament victories have come down to the last minute.
Conversely, the Jayhawks led second-round foe Purdue for a total of 47 seconds before squeezing out a win, needed a last-second defensive stand to hold off both N.C. State and Ohio State, and only played their faster-paced tempo (which was also North Carolina’s tempo) in an 80–67 win over the Tar Heels in the Elite Eight.
The game is Kentucky’s to lose and they won’t.
