Let me summarize it in non-gibberish form: I watched UK play this evening (second half) I was impressed. Uk is good. Syracuse is the only team I can see beating y'all because they have good size to bang down low, and y'all don't shoot well enough to go bombs away on their zone. What jumps out at me about Kentucky is that they play really damn hard. Oftentimes blue-chip recruits don't play with that kind of tenacity (See: Hopson, Scotty). Anthony Davis and Kidd-Gilchrist are really really damn good at the game of basketball. And they impress me most on the defensive end. Anthony Davis still isn't as good as Never Nervous Pervis Ellison, but who is? (this is just me giving you a punch you in the [penis], is all) The one critique I have is that Teague still doesn't appear to be able to smoothly quarterback the halfcourt offense. Lamb was playing PG when Teague was on the bench with three fouls, and I thought -- yes, this is a limited sample size that I saw, but I'm just relaying my observations -- that he did a better job quarterbacking the halfcourt offense than did Teague. The practical effect of Teague's lack of mastery of halfcourt PG skills, though, is substantially ameliorated by the percentage of possessions where y'all push the ball up the court and straight to the rack -- thus circumventing pesky halfcourt sets.
I saw where you were coming from. You had the right idea as far as the narrative of the season and where an upset was likely to fit into that narrative. I wasn't buying it just because Kentucky is reaching that level where they can impose their will. For them to get beat, a team is going to have to do basically everything right, or a team is going to have Syracuse written on the front of their jerseys.
Kentucky's best lineup is the one on the floor down the stretch last night. Teague needs to get used to cheerleading from the bench in winning time.
Doron Lamb and Darius Miller would beat their eyes shut. Syracuse is an even bigger paper tiger than UNC and Duke. Everyone is going to be on their bandwagon come March. Everyone will be diving off when the get blown out in the Round of 16.
They're long and athletic. They'll extend on shooters. UK may very well win, but it's not a good matchup for them.
Extending on shooters would mean they'd spend all night watching Fatass Melo get dunked on by Anthony Davis and Kris Joseph getting brutalized by Terrence Jones.
Davis won't be dunking it on Melo by getting the ball on the block. He'll be taking short jumpers or just hitting the offensive glass. And, Terrence Jones is quite possibly the most one dimensional player in D-1. Make him go right, and he panics. What could be the demise of Cuse is their lack of rebounding.
I like Miller, Lamb, and Wiltjer against the Cuse zone. Gilchrist and Teague can hit them when set, enough to keep the zone honest. Jones and Davis should have a good day getting the ball in the middle of the zone, if shooters are knocking them down. (Gilchrist as well) I'm not as worried about Cuse as I am a few other squads. MSU showed in the first half a game plan for UK, and though it sounds stupid, you have to shoot the lights outs from the perimeter with a ton of screens. I want to say more but I have to go get some shit done in the yard.
Doesn't sound stupid. Sounds about right. But a team of 5 sharp shooters is going to get their asses handed to them by UK to the extent they don't match up athletically to some reasonable degree. Indiana happened once, but it was early in the season and I don't see that happening again.
Syracuse doesn't have a single guy who is a meaningful NBA prospect. I've had not one, but two, NBA scouts tell me that all this talk about how athletic they are is pure fantasy. Having seen them fail to physically dominate teams as athletically limited as West Virginia makes me agree with that assessment. The Big East doesn't possess another legitimate Top 10 team. North Carolina and Duke each have players who are true elite talents. Syracuse's best player is a dimestore knockoff of Wesley Johnson.
