Kentucky falls: Mountaineers dispose of top-seeded Wildcats, reach Final Four

From left, Mountaineers' Kevin Jones and De'Sean Butler led their team past Kentucky to reach the Final Four.

No matter how much success he has had, everywhere John Calipari goes, something bad tends to happen. In 2008, he took the Memphis Tigers to the championship game and watched his porous free-throw shooting team miss four of their last five free-throws, allowing Kansas Jayhawks guard Mario Chalmers to hit a game-tying three-pointer for the eventual champion.

A year after that heartbreaking loss, Calipari left a winning program set to take in a fantastic recruiting class headlined by guard John Wall and center DeMarcus Cousins for the Kentucky Wildcats. Bitter were the Memphis fans, and bitter was this impartial college basketball fan. Now, both the Tigers fans, myself, and other who despise Calipari can laugh at little thing called Karma catching up with him.

While the Tigers missed free-throws to doom their hopes of securing the program’s first national title, missed free-throws and three-pointers doomed the Wildcats in their Elite Eight matchup against the West Virginia Mountaineers, my final four pick out of the East Region. Kentucky is far from the best three-point shooting team, but they have many capable long-range shooters. You wouldn’t know it by tonight’s performance.

The Wildcats missed all seven attempts from deep in the first half. Meanwhile, West Virginia did something I thought inconceivable. They made nothing but three-pointers in the first half, canning eight of 15 attempts while missing all 15 shots from inside the arc. It was incredible, but they would need to develop an inside game if they were going to take down the number-one seed.

The Mountaineers scored two points over an eleven minute span in the first half yet were only down 16-9 at the seven-minute mark. Their defense flustered the Wildcats and forced them to play on the perimeter. Because they could keep them cold while they were cold, a closing three-point barrage put West Virginia ahead at intermission. De’Sean Butler, their star, hit four three-pointers in the closing seven minutes and scored 15 points total in the opening half.

West Virginia did find a way to score inside in the second half, which made their attack that much more difficult to stop. Kentucky finally played like I expected them too; like team full of inexperienced underclassmen. And the Mountaineers took advantage, spacing the floor superbly and either finding cutters for layups or shooters for threes.

Joe Mazzulla, their junior guard who averaged just two points per game during the regular season, stepped in for the injured Darryl Bryant admirably, anchoring their second half attack on his way to tying a career-high point total. Four straight points stretched the Mountaineers lead to 47-36, and another spurt of four-straight–again two free-throws and a layup–kept West Virginia’s advantage in double-figures at ten with eight minutes remaining.

It appeared when he went out with his fourth foul 45 seconds later that the Mountaineers would struggle. They had no true ballhandlers in the game. This presumably spelled doom, as Kentucky would go to a full-court press soon, but West Virginia somehow managed fine.

With him out of the game, they scored eight straight points, four coming from one of their many lanky athletes, Devin Ebanks, who sliced through the lane for a tough off-balance deuce then made two free-throws on a drive into the middle to lengthen their advantage to a convincing 16. While they were going on this run, Kentucky missed four free-throws, a layup, and a three-pointer.

With such a lead, all West Virginia would have to do to pull off the upset and reach the Final Four was inbound the ball safely, break traps, and make free-throws upon being fouled. They struggled some without Mazzulla in the game, and failed to execute some, but more often than not they did what was asked of them. Butler was the primary ballhandler and made two free-throws with just under four minutes left, and then, after Mazzulla entered and exited upon picking up his fifth foul, two porous shooters from the charity stripe, Wellington Smith and John Flowers, came up big in putting away the Wildcats. The duo made five of nine free-throws down the stretch, which doesn’t sound that great, but the final make stretched the margin to eight, 71-64, with a smidge over a minute left.

Wildcats immensely-talented point guard John Wall fouled out after Flowers missed a pair in what was most likely the final game of his college career. Calipari has pressured Wall, who is presumed to be the top pick in June’s NBA Draft, to turn pro. The coach may want to rethink his demand, as, with the loss to the Mountaineers, he will probably lose at least three more of Wall’s teammates.

Leave it to a superb West Virginia team to end multiple players collegiate careers and start sarcastic (or maybe not so sarcastic) speculation whether Calipari will be back with Kentucky next year. ‘Could he be one and done like his players?’, I ask half-jokingly.

While most of the early press has surrounded the future of Kentucky, one thing is clear: the Mountaineers did everything necessary to win, making threes when the Wildcats could not, making free-throws when the Wildcats could not, making the most of their tremendous talent when the Wildcats could not, and staying poised when the Wildcats could not to join the Butler Bulldogs in the Final Four.

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