1.Congrats to Anthony Davis on becoming only the second freshman to ever win the Naismith Award. When you can be the best player in the country with a raging Uni-Brow you know your something special. Davis has provided fans with countless highlight reels dunks and alley oops, while providing the Wildcats with the best interior defense in recent college hoops memory this year.
2. The Jayhawks are going to have to get over their first half shooting woes, to have any shot at a chance tonight. So far in the tourney they've posted first half shooting percentages of 26%, 35%, and 36%, with their only good first half performance coming against UNC, when they shot 57%.
3. When a team is as good as Kentucky is this year they are usually easy to dislike, (i.e your typical Duke team, Hansborough led UNC), but thats not the case with the Wildcats. This years team is just straight up fun to watch, they share the basketball, they play unselfishly, and most of all they all just know how to play together. They also lack distractions that some of Calipari's previous squads have had such as DeMarcus Cousins, and Joey Dorsey at Memphis.
4. Tyshawn Taylor has got to be one of the most enigmatic, erratic players to ever step on a court. Taylor has come country miles from where he was four years ago, but he is still the cause of hundreds of Bill Self headaches and sleepless nights. Every time he makes a couple great plays, he finds a way to erase them with an ill advised shot or a forced pass. The perfect example of this came when he stole the ball with under five seconds left against Ohio State, and then proceeded to throw it straight out of bounds to give the Buckeyes another chance. All that aside, Taylor will need to have a big scoring night tonight, while keeping Marquis Teague in check for the Jayhawks to keep up.
5. To highlight the talent discrepancy between the two squads I took a look at the DraftExpress and NbaDraft.net mock drafts. Draft Express had five Kentucky players getting drafted: Anthony Davis #1, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist #3, Terrence Jones #11, Doron Lamb #33, and Darius Miller #36. This is without including Marquis Teague who they have going #16 in the 2013 Mock Draft. On the other hand, they only had: Thomas Robinson #3, and Tyshawn Taylor #28 getting drafted for the Jayhawks.
NbaDraft.net had: Anthony Davis #1, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist #2, Terrence Jones #18, Doron Lamb #23, Marquis Teague #28, and Darius Miller #33. For Kansas they had: Thomas Robinson #3, and Tyshawn Taylor #55. So in conclusion, Kentucky has pretty much five sure fire first round draft picks on their roster, while Kansas has only one. Thats a pretty glaring talent difference between a #1 and #2 seed.
Prediction: The young guns shine, and the Wildcats are too much for Kansas to handle. Calipari gets his long awaited first title. Kentucky by 10.
No comments:
Post a Comment