Gonzaga win confirms there is something special about this Kentucky basketball team

I’m telling you, there’s something about this Kentucky men’s basketball team.

There’s a long way to go, of course. It’s not even mid-December. And judging by the SEC’s 14-2 romp over the embarrassed ACC in the SEC/ACC (Non-)Challenge, conference play is going to be a total basketball beast. There’s a lot of dribbling to be done between now and March Madness.

There was also UK’s 70-66 loss last Tuesday at Clemson when Mark Pope’s Cats looked a bit flummoxed against a physical team, and the Cats didn’t shoot 3-pointers well and the first road test of the season ended up with a failing grade.

Still, if we know one thing through nine games of the first edition of the Mark Pope era, we know that this Kentucky basketball team, made up entirely of newcomers, knows how to stick together and fight back.

“This team is resilient,” said Jaxson Robinson on Saturday night.

We saw it last month in Atlanta. Duke was the opponent. The Champions Classic was the setting. Kentucky trailed by nine at the half to the Fighting Cooper Flaggs. No matter. The Wildcats put their nose to the grindstone and squeezed out a 77-72 victory over the dreaded Blue Devils that pumped all kinds of newfound glee into Big Blue Nation.

Saturday night in Seattle, we saw it again. Only better. No. 7-ranked Gonzaga was the opponent. The so-called “Battle in Seattle” was the setting. This time, Kentucky trailed Gonzaga by 16 points at the half. That’s right — 16 points. Here’s another number: 175. Gonzaga was 175-0 in its last 175 games in which it was leading by double digits at halftime.

The Zags are now 175-1. Kentucky 90, Gonzaga 89 in overtime. Andrew Carr made it so. Just as he did in the second half against Duke, the Wake Forest transfer made key play after key play in the final 25 minutes. Action Jaxson made it so. With point guard Lamont Butler in street clothes thanks to an ankle injury and Kerr Kriisa lost to leg cramps in the second half, Robinson took over at point guard and led the Cats to the shocking result.

Actually, UK’s victory owed itself to more than those two individuals. All but down and out after the first 20 minutes, the Cats came out with a fight in the second half that you might not expect from a group consisting entirely of total strangers before they all arrived on the same campus to play for a new coach back in the summer.

And speaking of the new coach, he showed his coaching chops Saturday, as well. We promise we’re not going to spend this season constantly comparing UK’s new basketball coach to UK’s previous basketball coach. We have to make an exception this time, however.

John Calipari made no secret that he hated playing any kind of zone defense. He did so rarely and reluctantly. He was a strict man-to-man man. And a successful one, at that. Pope proved Saturday he is not so dogmatic in his beliefs. After Gonzaga shot 54 percent from the floor and scored 50 points in the first half, Pope ditched the man-to-man defense and employed a second-half scheme that relied on switching defenses, often in the same possession.

“It’s easy to make that decision when you’re getting cooked,” said Pope, who added that having such an experienced team allows him to make those kinds of in-game adjustments. “We got these vet guys who have a super-high IQ, so you can mess around and these guys did an unbelievable job of messing around with the game in the second half.”

The numbers say the “messing around” worked. Gonzaga shot 39 percent over the 20 minutes of the second half (before overtime). They were 0-for-9 from 3-point range during those 20 minutes. And they scored 29 points, while Kentucky scored 45.

True, just as the win over Duke was just one game, the win over Gonzaga was just one game. But both were important games — the Duke victory for the Cats’ confidence; the Gonzaga win for confirmation of the Cats’ confidence.

Said Robinson, “It was a great win.”

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