By Ashley Scoby
Special to NKyTribune
What’s the old saying about what not to do around a sleeping wild animal?
A team called the Mountaineers theoretically should have known not to poke the bear that is now a 37-0 Kentucky team. But previous to the teams’ Sweet 16 matchup Thursday night in Cleveland, West Virginia’s Daxter Miles said that the Wildcats didn’t “play hard” and that they would be 36-1 at the end of the night.
Really, though: Don’t poke this bear. It woke up, yawned, decided this poking animal was an annoyance that needed to be dealt with, and promptly thrashed fifth-seeded West Virginia, 78-39, to move into the Elite Eight, opposite No. 3 seed Notre Dame.
“That’s all we wanted to do was kill their spirit,” said Tyler Ulis. “Come out and beat them by 30, beat them by 50 actually. We just felt like they disrespected us so we had to come show them something.”
Kentucky rumbled out of the gate like its locker room was on fire, and a perfect game would initiate the fire extinguisher. The Wildcats hit 60.9 percent of their field goals in the first half, including 4-of-7 three-pointers. The Mountaineers shot 19.2 percent and only managed five field goals in the opening 20 minutes.
After nailing his first two three-point attempts, Aaron Harrison flipped a pass over West Virginia’s infamous full-court press to Devin Booker for an easy layup and a 14-2 lead. It soon swelled to 18-2.
“We was up, what? 18-2?” Willie Cauley-Stein said. “When the first wave came in and you looked at the score and it was 18-2, you look at each other, like, ‘Dude, just run it. Come on, keep it going.’ It just got bigger and bigger. That’s part of it. You look at your teammates and they’re juiced too, and they’re feeling the same way you’re feeling. It’s over.”
Trey Lyles scored seven straight points (he led Kentucky with 14) to put UK up 27-10. Andrew Harrison (13 points) flat-out stole the ball from Jevon Carter’s hands. Booker nailed a three – 30-10 – and then another (33-11).
If you’re still keeping track, UK went up 36-13, then 38-15 and finally 40-15, thanks to six straight Andrew Harrison free throws. Then with 39 seconds until halftime, he sliced between two Mountaineer defenders like a bread knife, and popped a perfect lob up to the Cauley-Stein zone, where the 7-footer threw it down for the 44-18 halftime margin.
West Virginia’s belief that they would win deescalated quickly into embarrassment. Kentucky couldn’t have cared less.
“You can’t feel sorry for anybody,” Cauley-Stein said. “It’s part of the game, especially with this group – how much talent we have. We thrive off some stuff like that.”
It showed. The margin briefly extended to 41 points, and ended up in one of the most lopsided tournament games in recent memory. West Virginia didn’t score a field goal in the second half until 11:42 remained. The Mountaineers shot 24.1 percent from the field (13-54), including 2-of-15 from behind the arc. Their 39 points were the fewest points scored by a Sweet 16 team since the tournament expanded to 32 teams in 1975.
And thanks to Kentucky’s 78 points – off 48 percent shooting – it became only the second time in history that a team had doubled up its opponent in a regional semifinal or later.
“Our mentality was to kill them,” Ulis said. “And that’s what we did.”
Ashley Scoby is a senior journalism major at the University of Kentucky and a KyForward sports writer. She has reported on the Wildcats for wildcathoops.com, vaughtsviews.com andkysportsreport.com as well as for newspapers in Danville and Glasgow. She will begin a summer internship with Sports Illustrated magazine in New York in June.