I have been reading all morning about how Kentucky is in a shooting slump and better start making shots if they want to run the table to a championship.
I have also heard seven different blueprints, everything from spreading the floor and hitting 3s to being rough and getting the Young Wildcats flustered.
So far, nothing has worked and one of the reasons that nothing will ever work is Willie Cauley-Stein.
And then Willie Cauley-Stein took flight, and descended upon Quadri Moore like an eagle on a field mouse.
Per the official play-by-play, it was a most unfortunate nine-second sequence for Moore. The freshman from Linden, N.J., a 29-percent 3-point shooter, launched an unwise 3 that was about as close to landing in the Ohio River as it was to landing in the net. And that ignited Kentucky’s fearsome fast break.
Devin Booker grabbed the rebound and advanced the ball before passing it to point guard Tyler Ulis on the wing. Ulis then saw the trailing Cauley-Stein heading to the basket at a high rate of speed. Ulis hit the lithe 7-footer in stride, and Quadri Moore was about to become famous for all the wrong reasons.
Give the kid credit for hustling back and getting in the path of a certain slam, however futile it might have been. Moore arose, but Cauley-Stein rose a foot higher. Having the competitive gumption to step in and challenge Cauley-Stein as he was flying in for a massive dunk assured Moore’s virtual destruction and eternal posterization.
Cauley-Stein crushed the ball with two hands, drew the foul, blew off the roof, made the free throw … and the game was irreversibly changed at that point. UK (36-0) never trailed again, pushed the lead to seven at the half and steadily pulled away for a 64-51 victory.
The colorful Kentucky junior was asked where that mauling of Moore ranked in his lengthening series of emasculating dunks.
“It might be worse than ol’ dude from Florida (Devin Robinson, who was put on a poster in Gainesville on Feb. 7),” Cauley-Stein said. “I don’t think they put the kid back in the game. It was nasty.”
You can try to find a way to beat this team, but there is no stopping defense and the will to win.
Willie Cauley-Stein photo credit
