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Guys, Wisconsin was really, really good

EvilMD

EvilMD

All-SEC
Dec 29, 2003
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We have a lot of fans on here who seem to think we were entitled to this championship. We were not. Wisconsin lost one player off the team that we beat in a coin flip in 2014. Yes we added more parts than they did but we also lost three players, including the three who played the best against them last year.

They beat UNC when UNC was playing its best this season, they beat Arizona again, and then they beat us, (almost) fair and square. Kaminsky and Dekker were the two best players on the floor that day. Two of ours (Willie and Aaron) played terrible.

I tip my hat to them. They should be national champions. Up nine on Duke until the referees took it from them. And yes, the referees took it from them.
 
The refs took it from UK...so no pity for Wisconsin against Duke from me.

And Aaron played terrible? Did you watch the game?
 
almost lol. well they blew their load against us and lost to an inferior defensive team, scoring a whopping 63 pts. they'll be remembered way less than uk, because our guys were breaking ncaa records. wisconsin made it one step closer than the year before and that's where it ends. it was a tough ending for them. they felt the shaft and really there's nothing they could do. if wisconsin was a blue blood program they would capitalize on being so close, and break through and win a title. i don't see that happening at all. bo ryan will make his typical sweet 16 elite run here and there but not a serious threat at all imo. we should have beat them and i'm sure bbn knows that. wasn't our night and they got the breaks. watched it three times now and that's just how it looked imo.

we came off 10, 11, and won in 12, maybe we can next year in the same fashion. skal and isaiah have up front about their goals. the drive and momentum is still surrounding the program and you just know we'll be back on another surge. wisconsin, i doubt it. they got us that one night and that is their greatest achievement. still it's more about us losing in that position than them winning. vegas and everyone knew we we're the better team. and because they couldn't finish the deal in the title game, there is even more debate imo to how good they actually were, even though their matchup compared to duke was light years more difficult. they had several good players and we're well coached. that's pretty much the compliment i have for them.
 
Yes, Wisconsin was good. But, it doesn't change the fact they were gifted 4 points on black and white, obviously wrong calls. I've had awhile to come to my senses and I still think UK was intentionally farked over.
 
We lost that game.. They didnt just take it. Our guys played soft imo. Regardless, the game came down to the end. The refs screwed us. Without those horrible calls, we wouldnt have lost imo. Wisconsin was good but that loss was on our guys not theirs imo.
 
There were so many factors that played a part in our loss and Duke winning it all. Revenge and confidence was sky high for Wisconsin. I don't think a single player on their team had one doubt that they would beat us. It was basically their title game. They also got several very crucial calls that put at least 6 pts on the board that they shouldn't have had. We played the last few mins all wrong.

Duke had the advantage of playing nobody basically until the title game, and they matched up perfectly against Wisconsin. Way too quick, they had already beaten them, and Wisconsin had the expected let down after expending all their emotional energy in the game against us. And Dekker couldn't throw it in the ocean from a boat against them. So predictable that.
 
Yeah. Friggin' Dekker can go do naughty things to himself as far as I'm concerned. He killed it against UNC, Arizona and us, though. Wish those nerves would have shown up one game earlier.

I'm not asking people to say Wisconsin was better than us. Just that there was no shame in losing to them. Yes, we were deeper. But that depth let us down. Or Cal didn't use it correctly, however you want to look at it. They had five really good players and two that were good enough coming off the bench.

They got two points in the first half off of Koenig jumping in bounds and catching it and two on the shot clock violation in the second half. But don't forget that was a pretty obvious flagrant one on Trey the refs let slide. Instead of two shots and the ball for Wisconsin it was our ball. The way they shoot free throws you gotta figure we got at least a free two points on that call plus an extra possession.
 
Originally posted by TubbysTabbys:

But don't forget that was a pretty obvious flagrant one on Trey the refs let slide. Instead of two shots and the ball for Wisconsin it was our ball. The way they shoot free throws you gotta figure we got at least a free two points on that call plus an extra possession.
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I view that as a make up call for the horrible flop by The Tank that earned a tech against Dakari the prior Final Four.

Years of wussified flopping taught by Bo Ryan finally didn't pay off for them for once. I refused to watch that horsecrap of a final game, but if Duke had to win then I'm glad they won it by screwing them over on shoddy officiating.

This post was edited on 4/18 1:56 PM by Brando Mac
 
They were good enough that if it was a best of seven format the typical result would be 4-2 Kentucky but maybe a third of the time it would go to 7 if you re-rolled it say a hundred times and win maybe 4 of those.

They played near their best, we gave an average effort realities to our ability which gave them a puncher's chance which they with fortune and assistance were able to barely take advantage of but did. Played their hearts out, gave it their all, got some timely whistles, no calls, and baskets so good on them. It is what it is.
 
Not sure that we didn't really lose the game in the first half. 6 offensive rebounds led to 11 points for Wisconsin. UK could have been up by 11 at halftime if they rebound. That's where we missed Poythress.

Also Andrew had two good looks at around 8-10 feet away during two of the possessions at the end of the game where normally he converted or went to the line. And why didn't someone just rebound the shot Willie blocked that instead we let go out of bounds. That led to their inbounds pass and score by Nigel Hayes with the shot clock expired?

That said the OP is correct. They did have two possible lottery picks themselves declare this year, and Hayes could have that potential in 2016 as well. It isn't like they weren't very talented in their own right.
 
Wisconsin was pretty good, but UK shot themselves in the foot with poor rebounding, automatic switches on pick and rolls until it was too late, and horrible offense after going up 4 and having multiple opportunities to extend the lead.
 
Wisconsin had a goal...to beat Kentucky. Kaminsky said so before tournament. Duke had a goal to win the title. They both accomplished their goal.

This post was edited on 4/18 3:35 PM by the nail at the foul line
 
Originally posted by king of cali:
Wisconsin was pretty good, but UK shot themselves in the foot with poor rebounding, automatic switches on pick and rolls until it was too late, and horrible offense after going up 4 and having multiple opportunities to extend the lead.
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If you get a chance go back and watch the 2014 game. It was very similar. They'd miss and get long rebounds against us. They scored a lot of points against us just by being smarter.
 
Yes, very good, and very experienced. According to ESPN, Wisconsin was the 3rd best team of the last 4 years, since they started the BPI thing. As I keep saying, it's not just that they were good, and very experienced - the more important thing is they were built to beat us, to counter our strengths. Everyone always says March is about matchups, and that was not only the worst team we could've drawn, but the worst team of the last few years for this particular UK team. Duke was really good too, the only other team I was worried about - but with Duke, the worry was merely that they were pretty god, not that they were necessarily a bad matchup for us. Our length I think would've bothered them, like it did or would have 350 of the 351 D1 teams. Wisconsin being the lone exception.....
 
Originally posted by kats23:
Yes, but UK was better and should of won. That's why everyone is upset. Play this team 5 times, I think UK wins 4 of them.
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I think it's more like 3/4, but I agree, and, that's why the one game elimination format for 6 games in a row is so maddening/exciting. It has disproportionately high ratings for a CBB event because of the crazy outcomes.




They had the 3rd highest rating in the history of BPI after '15 and '12 UK. It was a badass team - and that just happened to be the game we lost instead of one of the 3 we won.
 
Yeah, Wisconsin was good but they didn't earn that win. That was given to them by the officials. Granted, we didn't bring our A game and put ourselves in position to where crooked officials could take it from us but Wisconsin needed the guys in stripes to get that win.

Let's not even look at the fact the ridiculous amount of fouls and flops they did and got away with.

-The player coming from out of bounds WHICH WAS ABSOLUTELY MADDENING TO SEE UNCALLED- 2 pts
-The shot clock violation which changed the game completely- 2 pts instead of us up 2 with the ball and clock to kill
- The flop where Towns gets called for a charge. Instead of being down 1, we are now down 3 and Wisconsin makes it a 2 possession game. Those two plays in a row changed everything.


Eff Wisconsin and eff Bo Ryan. After that game, I could not root for them to win it all. I hate Duke too but at least there was some element of the fact that maybe Duke could have beaten us but seeing Wisconsin win it all would have pissed me off even more due to the fact that we would know 100% that the refs took #9 from us. With Duke winning, its just speculation, really.
 
Originally posted by kats23:
Yes, but UK was better and should of won. That's why everyone is upset. Play this team 5 times, I think UK wins 4 of them.
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For that to happen Cal has to do a much better job in several aspects, including the sub patterns and schemingl. I've never seen a team so easy to prepare for in any final our than UK in '15. We weren't prepared, and it showed all night. Theres no way anyone could say with a straight face that UK team coached that way is beating Wisconsin 4 out of 5.

Unless of course Andrew commands the ball, and we play through him. The way we were playing offensively was completely embarrassing and chicken little.
 
Originally posted by HeismanWildcat85:
Yeah, Wisconsin was good but they didn't earn that win. That was given to them by the officials. Granted, we didn't bring our A game and put ourselves in position to where crooked officials could take it from us but Wisconsin needed the guys in stripes to get that win.

Let's not even look at the fact the ridiculous amount of fouls and flops they did and got away with.

-The player coming from out of bounds WHICH WAS ABSOLUTELY MADDENING TO SEE UNCALLED- 2 pts
-The shot clock violation which changed the game completely- 2 pts instead of us up 2 with the ball and clock to kill
- The flop where Towns gets called for a charge. Instead of being down 1, we are now down 3 and Wisconsin makes it a 2 possession game. Those two plays in a row changed everything.


Eff Wisconsin and eff Bo Ryan. After that game, I could not root for them to win it all. I hate Duke too but at least there was some element of the fact that maybe Duke could have beaten us but seeing Wisconsin win it all would have pissed me off even more due to the fact that we would know 100% that the refs took #9 from us. With Duke winning, its just speculation, really.
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This is true and man it was bad.

But this is always going to be the case with UK. Thats why I believed pounding the ball inside was never going t result in the correct amount of free throw trips needed. We win the game playing through our guards and letting it ride. We played with fear.
 
Wis. was hot, they played a super game and the Cats did not play that good, but when you get to the final foul you got to have some luck and that night Wis. had it..
 
Originally posted by HeismanWildcat85:
Eff Wisconsin and eff Bo Ryan. After that game, I could not root for them to win it all. I hate Duke too but at least there was some element of the fact that maybe Duke could have beaten us but seeing Wisconsin win it all would have pissed me off even more due to the fact that we would know 100% that the refs took #9 from us. With Duke winning, its just speculation, really.
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Agreed. I pulled for Duke and WANTED to see Wisconsin get screwed, which is exactly what happened. My worst fear all year long was playing Duke and losing everything on a game called the way the championship game was called. THAT would have hurt 10 times worse than the Wisconsin loss. When Wisconsin was up nine I started feeling like "oh my God we blew it big time" but when the refs took over and gave it to Duke I felt like my hunch was proven correct. No way they were going to let Calipari beat K in a final. K ending our perfect season was the perfect scenario for Emmert and Co.
 
Originally posted by TubbysTabbys:

We have a lot of fans on here who seem to think we were entitled to this championship. We were not. Wisconsin lost one player off the team that we beat in a coin flip in 2014. Yes we added more parts than they did but we also lost three players, including the three who played the best against them last year.

They beat UNC when UNC was playing its best this season, they beat Arizona again, and then they beat us, (almost) fair and square. Kaminsky and Dekker were the two best players on the floor that day. Two of ours (Willie and Aaron) played terrible.

I tip my hat to them. They should be national champions. Up nine on Duke until the referees took it from them. And yes, the referees took it from them.
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Yes they were good but we were a lot better team and I give credit to Bo outcoached Cal on this one. He knew how to get our smaller players on their big guy and we didn't have an answer how to stop it. Surely Cal should have expected this and had a plan to avoid this mismatch.
.
 
So good that duke beat them twice.

We blew that game. Our AA didnt show up at all, our interior D let the Tank go off, no one seemed to care about guarding Dekker, and our best 3 point shooter got cold feet and didnt even take a shot.
 
Why does tubby want me to admit that Wisconsin was good? Weird?
 
UK Wildcats# 8...yes sir damn those referees for calling that stall ball and causing those three shot clock violations
and a turnover when we were up four... they should all be fired...
 
Originally posted by Poetax:
Why does tubby want me to admit that Wisconsin was good? Weird?
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You don't have to if you don't want to. It's just that I've seen a lot of people on here saying they will never get over this loss and Cal won't win another title because he's too this or too that. Remember when the Patriots lost to the Giants? Guess what. That was a pretty damn good Giants team that beat them. First team to win three straight road games in the playoffs to get there. You look at the Patriots 18-1 record and the Giants 14-6 slate (or whatever it was) and you want to say "no way they should have lost that game." But that same Giants team played the Patriots tough in the last game of the regular season.

Well, Wisconsin beat UNC when Paige was hitting, they beat Arizona by seven, and they had two eight point leads against us. I tip my hat to them. This wasn't the Gerald Fitch team losing to UAB or the Joe B. preseason top three teams losing three NCAA games in a row. This was two of the top three teams in the country going at it.
 
First of all, of course Wisconsin was good. Every UK fan going into the tourney thought that Duke and Wisconsin were the two teams that would have a shot to take us out.


BUT..
3 officials ALL missing an obvious shot clock violation..is the remaining annoyance. Slow motion was not needed to make that call. And for all 3 to have missed it is just a shocking thing as a fan to endure.

I am in the camp that believes if that shot clock is called correctly, we win the game (or it goes down to a last second shot either way similar to last year). It was that important in a tightly contested game. It just sucked.
 
Certainly Wisconsin was a very, very good basketball team.

My major concern about our team's participation in that Final Four game is this: Kaminsky and Dekker are great players, but all of Kaminsky's offensive moves, to a great degree, and all of Dekker's offensive moves, to a lesser degree, were very much predictable. We saw the same offensive moves from them, over and over and over again. For that reason, I am particularly pained every time I recall Cal's multiple statements that he wasn't reviewing film of Wisconsin's games himself, and -- more distressingly -- that he wasn't requiring the players to look at film on Wisconsin. IMHO, if the 'Cats had looked extensively at film of Wisconsin, the players ... and particularly WCS, KAT, and Trey Lyles ... would have been able to see those very predictable offensive moves coming from Kaminsky and Dekker and would have been much, much more effective in defending against them.

I must say that Cal's position on not looking at firm troubles me. It's as if every other successful college basketball coach in the last 50 years has been wrong about the value of looking at the opponent's game films. Hmmm.
 
How long are we going to whine about the officials? There were bad calls both ways. This is why I'm called a troll because I can't understand how people continue to complain about how everything was stolen from us when our "all american" was a no show. The referees did not cost us the game. Our soft play and stall ball cost us the game. I think Cal is a great coach and our team was the most talented, but we got beat, fair and square. Quit whining and go cheer on former cats in the NBA.
 
If you go back and watch a tape of that game, you will see the same bad calls that were made two weeks ago.

You will see that we got jobbed.

People can complain about the officials until they die. It will be justified.
 
Wisconsin was a great team...we had the wrong line up in the last 5 minutes IMO. Coaches pet (37%) shooter was allowed to take game over.
That and a All American center with no offensive skills what so ever remained in the game while our late game glue point guard and most likely 1st round 2 guard set the bench. It's like Cal didn't watch the last 4 minutes of last year's game when #5 almost cost us that one. His brother bailed him out and all was forgotten.

Ulis was in the whole season late with the twins and we were effective. Why getaway from that? With 3 time outs left subbing at least once to get Ulis & possibly Booker in just made sense.

Cal went defense over offense...best offensive teams win in Final Fours.

For comparison Lamb 47% Teaque 41% shooters..Got to be able to score from all 5 spots to win title or at least have guards who can get & make a wide variety of shots.
 
We had them backpedalling. We had a big run, had them on the ropes and then pulled the air and momentum - no simpler than that. Couple that with the shot-clock blunder and it sealed our fate.
 
Originally posted by BBBLazing:
How long are we going to whine about the officials? There were bad calls both ways. This is why I'm called a troll because I can't understand how people continue to complain about how everything was stolen from us when our "all american" was a no show. The referees did not cost us the game. Our soft play and stall ball cost us the game. I think Cal is a great coach and our team was the most talented, but we got beat, fair and square. Quit whining and go cheer on former cats in the NBA.
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I hate this concept that if you play poorly, it doesn't matter how bad the officiating is, you can't say it "cost" you the game. No amount of bad calls is sufficient it appears as long as you don't play really well.

The fact is Wisconsin in the first half got 2 pts that absolutely should not have counted. It was beyond obvious a UW player had not established himself inbounds before getting the ball and laying it in. Then, down the stretch there was the shot clock violation that wasn't called. Another 2 pts they shouldn't have had.

Finally, in a game where they were letting tons of contact go in the lane, they call Aaron for a foul on Dekker when there was ZERO contact. Forget if that was an And-1 or just 2 FTs. Regardless, it was 6 or 7 pts Wisconsin did not earn. Of course we got some calls as well, but none that directly led to pts like their's did. The possible Flagrant-1 on Lyles is the only one I remember that stood out as a possible screw job.

Officiating can be the difference, and sometimes is. See the 1972 USA vs USSR Olympics game.

This post was edited on 4/18 10:48 PM by SilentsAreGolden
 
Originally posted by SilentsAreGolden:

Originally posted by BBBLazing:
How long are we going to whine about the officials? There were bad calls both ways. This is why I'm called a troll because I can't understand how people continue to complain about how everything was stolen from us when our "all american" was a no show. The referees did not cost us the game. Our soft play and stall ball cost us the game. I think Cal is a great coach and our team was the most talented, but we got beat, fair and square. Quit whining and go cheer on former cats in the NBA.
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I hate this concept that if you play poorly, it doesn't matter how bad the officiating is, you can't say it "cost" you the game. No amount of bad calls is sufficient it appears as long as you don't play really well.

The fact is Wisconsin in the first half got 2 pts that absolutely should not have counted. It was beyond obvious a UW player had not established himself inbounds before getting the ball and laying it in. Then, down the stretch there was the shot clock violation that wasn't called. Another 2 pts they shouldn't have had.

Finally, in a game where they were letting tons of contact go in the lane, they call Aaron for a foul on Dekker when there was ZERO contact. Forget if that was an And-1 or just 2 FTs. Regardless, it was 6 or 7 pts Wisconsin did not earn. Of course we got some calls as well, but none that directly led to pts like their's did. The possible Flagrant-1 on Lyles is the only one I remember that stood out as a possible screw job.

Officiating can be the difference, and sometimes is. See the 1972 USA vs USSR Olympics game.

This post was edited on 4/18 10:48 PM by SilentsAreGolden
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You are not really comparing the two are you? Kentucky got no calls that game? Come on Mr. Simpson.
 
JMO, but we slowed the game down in the last five minutes. We should've attacked, attacked, attacked! Instead we get three shot clock violations. Basically, we choked.
 
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