ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) -- No conference
wanted them. Several teammates and their coach left them. The NCAA
wouldn't have them.
UConn won it all anyway.
Shabazz Napier turned in another
all-court masterpiece Monday night to lift the Huskies to a 60-54 win
over Kentucky's freshmen and a national title hardly anyone saw coming.
Napier had 22 points, six rebounds and
three assists, and his partner in defensive lock-down, Ryan Boatright,
finished with 14 points.
UConn (32-8) never trailed. The Huskies
led by as many as 15 in the first half and watched the Wildcats (29-11)
trim the deficit to one with 8:13 left. But Aaron Harrison, Kentucky's
big-moment shooter in the last three games, missed a 3-pointer from the
left corner that would've given the `Cats the lead. Kentucky never got
closer.
One key difference in a six-point loss:
Kentucky's 11 missed free throws -- a flashback of sorts for coach John
Calipari, whose Memphis team blew a late lead against Kansas after
missing multiple free throws in the 2008 final. The Wildcats went 13 for
24. UConn went 10 for 10, and when Lasan Kromah made his last two with
25.1 seconds left for a six-point margin, the celebration was on.
In all, Calipari's One and Doners got
outdone by a more fundamentally sound, more-seasoned group that came
into this tournament a seventh-seeded afterthought but walked away with
the program's fourth national title since 1999. They were the highest
seed to win it all since Rollie Massimino's eighth-seeded Villanova
squad in 1985.
Napier and Boatright now go down with
Kemba Walker, Emeka Okafor and all those other UConn champs of years
past. This adds to the school's titles in 1999, 2004 and 2011.
This one was, by far, the most unexpected.
A short year ago, UConn was playing its
first season in the new American Athletic Conference after being booted
from the Big East and not welcomed by any of the so-called power
conferences. Longtime coach Jim Calhoun left because of health problems.
And most damaging -- the NCAA made the Huskies sit out of last year's
March Madness because of grade problems, which triggered an exodus of
five key players to the NBA or other schools.
Napier stuck around. So did Boatright.
And Calhoun's replacement, Kevin Ollie, figured out how to get the most
out of their grit and court sense.
They were one step ahead of Kentucky all night, holding off furious rally after furious rally.
Kentucky's biggest push started when
James Young (20 points, seven rebounds) posterized Amida Brimah with a
monster dunk to start a three-point play and trigger an 8-0 run.
In the middle of that, Boatright, who
shut down Harrison's twin brother, Andrew, most of the night, twisted
his left ankle while receiving an innocuous-looking pass from Napier. He
called a timeout. Got it worked on and came back out.
Napier and Niels Giffey made 3s on
UConn's next two possessions, and suddenly, that one-point lead was back
up to five -- comfortable by this tournament's standards.
