Kentucky has built a fortress

Sporting News, The, Feb 24, 2003 by Mike DeCourcy

It takes only l0 seconds for Georgia's Jarvis Hayes to launch the first shot after halftime. He misses, and Kentucky center Marquis Estill collects the rebound. There seems nothing special about this transaction, and that turns out to be true, as it is repeated in some fashion nine times in the next five minutes.

The Bulldogs fail to score until the 15:05 mark of the second half, by which time they've already fallen 23 points behind. What had been a comfortable lead at the break for Tubby Smith's Wildcats gradually turns into a laughably easy victory.

As much as they appreciate and applaud the effort required, the fans at Rupp Arena have seen it before. Florida, Notre Dame and Auburn encountered the same calamity. It seems everybody Kentucky plays suddenly plunges into a slump.

"Coach Smith did a great job, I guess, with their commitment to defense," Hayes says. "They get up in you, bother your shot, alter your dribble. It's very hard to get anything going with their defense playing like it is."

What started this attention to defensive detail is Kentucky's little secret, although it is apparent the players accepted some responsibility for the torrent of criticism Smith confronted following an 81-63 loss to Louisville (and former UK coach Rick Pitino). Five uninspiring victories followed, and the Wildcats trailed Vanderbilt by eight at halftime on January 14. In the second half, they gave up only 16 points, and a trend was born.

Explaining the impact of Kentucky's defense during the past nine games is as simple as reciting the statistics: an average of 59.1 points allowed; only 10.7 offensive rebounds per game surrendered; opponents making 38.7 percent of their shots.

Explaining what makes the UK defense so troublesome is more involved:

1. You go where they tell you. The Wildcats use their athletic ability to extend their defense on the wings. But unlike Duke, they use this approach less to create deflections and turnovers than to manipulate opponents.

"At some points in the game, they ran our offense," Hayes says. "They made us go to spots where we could go but necessarily didn't want to go."

A player can drive to the middle against Kentucky, but only if moving laterally, which leaves him inclined to be off-balance when he stops to shoot or pass. The Wildcats give up baseline drives in order to set traps beneath the backboard.

2. You can't handle their ball pressure, Sometimes, Kentucky's hunger for the basketball generates opponents' turnovers, as when Notre Dame star Chris Thomas gave up the ball a season-high nine times. Sometimes, it paralyzes the offensive team, as when Georgia called timeout twice in a 3-minute span because players were stuck in double-teams.

3. You can't fool them. The Kentucky staff always has done a sound job of scouting opponents, but now the players absorb every report. Against Georgia, the plan was to meet each Bulldog on the perimeter and force him to dribble rather than shoot off the catch. Senior shooting guard Keith Bogans spent so much time cozying up to Georgia's Ezra Williams that Williams made only two of nine shots.

In every defense the Wildcats use, whether it is a press, a zone or man-to-man, they communicate like teenagers with unlimited cell minutes. When a breakdown occurred against Georgia because one UK player failed to sound the alarm regarding a pending screen, Bogans flapped his hand at his teammates in the universal signal for "talk."

"They're making adjustment--not just from game to game, but from half to half, from timeout to timeout," Smith says. "Their basketball IQ, their understanding of the defense, is really good."

4. You can't rely on your stars. In Kentucky's past seven games, the opposing team's leading scorer averaged 10 points against the Wildcats and shot 37.5 percent. That includes such gifted players as Hayes, Auburn's Marquis Daniels and Alabama's Erwin Dudley. Smith attributes that to his players operating selflessly on defense and covering when a screen picks off the principal defender on a big-time scorer.

"We've been doing a good job on teams' top scorers, making them have to work to get their shots," he says. "We talk all the time about the way to be unselfish is to switch out and help your teammate."

5. You can't stop them. One of the primary ingredients to UK's defensive success is its offensive efficiency. The Wildcats so rarely three shots they perpetually are in position to guard against a fast break.

When Bogans tries a 3-pointer, Gerald Fitch breaks immediately toward the mid-court line to provide the first line of transition defense. That's the most important component of the team's emphasis on transition defense. Because most shots develop from the offensive flow, the Wildcats are more accurate than their opponents--48.7 percent since the Vandy victory--and provide fewer rebounding opportunities for them.

That last element could become the difference between Kentucky reaching its 14th Final Four and watching the event on television, as it has since 1998. Though it may be true that defense wins championships in the NFL, teams don't advance in the NCAA Tournament if they can't score.