Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickes: End of the NCAA Basketball Season Edition

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the Big Blue Nation, and welcome to the Tuesday Morning Quickies.

Well, the 2018 college basketball season has come to an end, and the Villanova Wildcats are the NCAA Tournament champions. Congratulations to them and to coach Jay Wright, it was a noble victory over a solid Michigan Wolverines team that simply didn’t have the magic they needed to overcome a remarkable and dominant Villanova squad.

Positionless basketball is what we saw on display for Villanova, and that is very much the direction both the NBA and college ball are headed right now. We see evolutions and changes in overall team philosophy every decade or so, and this is just one more in the evolution of James Naismith’s masterpiece.

This year’s Villanova team won every NCAA Tournament game they played convincingly, and finished atop Ken Pomeroy’s rankings for the season. In addition, they finished in the KenPom top five for each of the last four years, and in the top two in the last three. This has been a remarkable run for them.

A few more interesting stats for Villanova: They were #1 in the nation in offensive efficiency at almost 1.3 points/possession, #11 in defensive efficiency at 0.94 points/possession, #1 in effective FG% (59.5), #14 in turnover% (15.0), #11 in 3-pt FG% (40.1), #3 in 2-pt FG% (59), and #11 in free throw percentage (77.9).

Villanova is yet another refutation of the idea that defense wins championships. Powerful offenses more often than not overcome strong defenses. Michigan was #3 in DE, for example, and had a solid offense. But it wasn’t nearly enough. Defense first will win a lot of games, but as we saw back in 2015 versus Wisconsin as well as last night, strong offenses playing well are almost impossible to effectively defend. You have to outscore them.

Tweet of the Morning

Indeed.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Four star receiver Brieon Fuller has parted ways with Miami. Kentucky is on his list.

Kentucky basketball

• Farewell, Tai Wynyard. I think we all had a feeling he was going to leave after the suspension, injuries, and lack of playing time.
• Romeo Langford’s father has harsh comments about John Calipari, primarily related to the USA U-19 team. I think that gig is overrated as a recruiting advantage, and as we see here, can be a disadvantage.
• UK signee Tyler Herro shows off a Devin Booker jersey. Hope he can live up to that.

Other Kentucky sports

• Kentucky, EKU move softball game to Lexington today.

Related: Softball loses starting center fielder to ACL tear.

• No. 9 Bat Cats take on the 22nd ranked Louisville Cardinals in Lexington today.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Tuesday Wildcat Links

College football

• ETSU football coach strikes a player, gets suspended. I suspect he will be fired, and should be. This isn’t the 1970’s, you know.

College basketball

• It’s time to put Jay Wright into the pantheon of elite coaches, says ESPN. I think that time was two years ago, but better late than never.
• Did Donte DiVincenzo’s MOP performance in last night’s NCAA Championship game change any minds in the NBA? NBA scout reviews were mixed. For my money, I’d pass on him if I had a first-round pick. Remember when Grayson Allen had that breakout game back in 2015?
• Villanova rides a beautiful game to the title. I couldn’t agree more, they were much the best.
• Lane Kiffin, the gift that keeps on giving. To be fair, he gives less than he used to.
• Michigan’s Jaren Jackson Jr. headed for the NBA Draft.
• Too-early Top 25 for next season. Kentucky rates fourth, probably about right.
• Gonzaga decides not to move to the Mountain West Conference.

Other sports news

• Does Kawhi Leonard want to be in San Antonio? Nate Robinson doesn’t think so.

Other news

• Physicists trying to ease the uncertainty of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
• Doctors have discovered what they believe to be a previously unrecognized organ in the human body. Life is still a bit of a mystery…
• Most distant star ever detected, a blue supergiant, is roughly 9.3 billion light years away.