Kentucky
While Kentucky is the SEC team people expected to get this far, even the Wildcats were a little surprising on Friday night. It wasn’t that they beat UCLA, it was how they did it.
UCLA is the top scoring team in college basketball, averaging 90.2 points per game. Kentucky held them to 75 points in their 86-75 victory. The Bruins cut the lead to 4 points with 8:55 remaining, but that was as close as the game got. Kentucky pretty much held a 10-to-12 point lead the rest of the game.
Earlier this season we asked if this Kentucky backcourt was Calipari’s the best freshmen backcourt he’s had. Well, they might be the best freshmen backcourt in the history of college basketball.
De’Aaron Fox has been a man on a mission since the calendar turned to March, and he continued that last night with 39 points, the most ever by a Kentucky player in the NCAA Tournament. Fox was 13-for-20 from the field and also went 13-15 from the line.
But the other guy in that duo wasn’t too shabby either. Malik Monk scored 21 points on 8-of-17 shooting and went 4-for-9 from threes. And at one point early in the second half, Monk scored 10 straight Kentucky points.
This team is playing well at the right time, but it doesn’t get any easier in the next round. The Wildcats will face the 1-seed North Carolina in the South regional final on Sunday.