As I said before, as soon as the pairings were announced, I figured it would be UK vs Iowa State in the Round of 32. I'm not just a diehard UK fan, but also an avid follower and student of college basketball in general, so I knew how dangerous your team was. Now that we've played, my opinion hasn't changed.
I'm sure your game plan was to take away our strength -- the paint -- and allow us to shoot threes, which is our perceived weakness. But those who claim we can't shoot threes know nothing about our team. We don't shoot a lot of threes because we typically dominate inside. Why take threes when you can get dunks and layups? So while we didn't take a lot of threes this year, we hit a good percentage of the threes we took. We shoot 38% as a team. We rank around #250 in the country in 3PT attempts, but we're in the top 50 in 3PT percentage. When we take them, we hit a lot of them.
So, while this wasn't a typical game for us style-wise, I give your team credit for it. You did what you had to do to win. We got nothing from a 2nd team all-american (Gilchrist) and our 2nd leading scorer (Lamb) spent much of the game in foul trouble. I thought the refs sucked. Way too many touch fouls called, both ways. That shouldn't happen in the NCAA tourney.
My last point: Royce White. What a player! The only thing he lacks is a shooting stroke. Inside 15 feet he's a monster. We couldn't handle him for awhile, because no one on our team wanted to take a charge from him to stop his drives to the rim. But that changed when he said he was the best player on the floor. I think it was a 42-42 game when he did that, and it lit a fire in our team. That's just not something you do. Our players don't talk trash or hot dog in any way, so when Royce White did that, I think it changed the game. From that moment, we went on something like a 22-2 run. I think he's a great player, but that was a bad decision by him.
Again, thanks for allowing me to post here. This is a great site.
I'm sure your game plan was to take away our strength -- the paint -- and allow us to shoot threes, which is our perceived weakness. But those who claim we can't shoot threes know nothing about our team. We don't shoot a lot of threes because we typically dominate inside. Why take threes when you can get dunks and layups? So while we didn't take a lot of threes this year, we hit a good percentage of the threes we took. We shoot 38% as a team. We rank around #250 in the country in 3PT attempts, but we're in the top 50 in 3PT percentage. When we take them, we hit a lot of them.
So, while this wasn't a typical game for us style-wise, I give your team credit for it. You did what you had to do to win. We got nothing from a 2nd team all-american (Gilchrist) and our 2nd leading scorer (Lamb) spent much of the game in foul trouble. I thought the refs sucked. Way too many touch fouls called, both ways. That shouldn't happen in the NCAA tourney.
My last point: Royce White. What a player! The only thing he lacks is a shooting stroke. Inside 15 feet he's a monster. We couldn't handle him for awhile, because no one on our team wanted to take a charge from him to stop his drives to the rim. But that changed when he said he was the best player on the floor. I think it was a 42-42 game when he did that, and it lit a fire in our team. That's just not something you do. Our players don't talk trash or hot dog in any way, so when Royce White did that, I think it changed the game. From that moment, we went on something like a 22-2 run. I think he's a great player, but that was a bad decision by him.
Again, thanks for allowing me to post here. This is a great site.
