THE CATALYST : Kentucky Used ’95 Regional Loss to North Carolina as a Springboard to Success This Season

Dean Smith called it the greatest Kentucky team he had ever seen.

No one could match the Wildcats in talent and depth, the famed North Carolina coach said.

This season’s team?

Well, no. Smith made his observation before last year’s Southeastern Regional Final at Birmingham, Ala., only hours before his Tar Heels pulled off one of the great con jobs in NCAA tournament history.

Kentucky’s 74-61 defeat by North Carolina remains one of the most distasteful in Bluegrass lore. Smith exposed the Wildcats’ greed by playing mind games with Kentucky’s stars, daring them to take open outside shots.

The Wildcats went like flies into Smith’s tangled web. They abandoned their selfless style and turned into jump-shot junkies. Kentucky shot 28% from the field, making seven of 36 three-point shots.

Kentucky Coach Rick Pitino said he was dumbfounded and wouldn’t soon forget Smith’s wry victory smile.

The next day, Pitino gathered his team and showed them the grisly game film, then issued the campaign slogan for 1995-96.

“I said, ‘Let’s be the direct opposite of this night,’ ” Pitino said.

The North Carolina defeat became a rallying cry, a defining moment, and the driving force behind Kentucky’s Final Four run this weekend in East Rutherford, N.J.

“When we lost [before last year], the point was, we left feeling good,” Pitino said. “We had a great season and we accomplished certain things. Last year when we lost, it left a bitter taste in our mouth because we didn’t distribute the basketball correctly. We didn’t think before we shot it.”

Last Saturday, a year after that loss at Birmingham, Kentucky dismantled Wake Forest in the Midwest Regional final at Minneapolis.

It only partially eased the pain.

“Still, when I think of it, it almost makes me sick,” senior center Mark Pope said in the locker room after beating Wake Forest.

Tony Delk remembered too. He was a goat in the game, making only seven of 21 shots.

“I felt we should have won it last year,” Delk said. “We were good enough, but we played as individuals.”

Delk, a senior guard, had Carolina on his mind Saturday when he scored a game-high 25 points and was named the regional’s outstanding player.

Delk took 13 shots in this year’s regional final and made nine, including four of six three-pointers.

Kentucky players took 22 fewer shots, 53, than they had against North Carolina, but made 28, compared to only 21 last year.

Lesson learned.

Saturday’s victory had another tie to North Carolina.

With its 1,648th victory, Kentucky became the winningest school in NCAA history, moving ahead of North Carolina, which finished the season at 1,647.

“I had a big [contract] bonus for that,” Pitino quipped.

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The burning question as bandwagons pull into the Meadowlands:

Can any team beat Kentucky?

Well, yes. Two of the teams in the Final Four, Massachusetts and Mississippi State, have done so this year.

Pitino is shocked that his team is favored against UMass, considering that the Wildcats were defeated by the Minutemen in late November, 92-82.

“If UMass is not favored, something’s wrong,” Pitino said.

But there are reasons the Wildcats are favored and probably will win their sixth national championship.

Kentucky won its four regional games by an average margin of 28.3 points. Since the tournament was expanded to 64 teams in 1985, only the 1993 Kentucky team had a more impressive march to the Final Four. That team won four games by an average margin of 31 points before losing to Michigan’s Fab Five in the national semifinals.

Kentucky also seemed to learn as much from its losses as it did victories.

The North Carolina defeat last year taught the Wildcats what can happen when egos get in the way of team goals.

Wake Forest Coach Dave Odom has noticed a difference.

“This team appears to be at peace with itself,” he said of the 1996 Wildcats.

How do losses help?

The UMass defeat revealed to Pitino that he was using the wrong lineup. Kentucky started the season with Delk at point guard, not his natural position.

After the loss, Delk was moved back to shooting guard, Anthony Epps moved to the point, and the Wildcats won 27 games in a row.

After Kentucky’s 110-72 first-round victory against San Jose State, Spartan Coach Stan Morrison remarked, “Epps may not be their best player, but I think he’s their most important player.”

The UMass defeat also exposed Kentucky’s weakness in the low post. UMass center Marcus Camby scored 32 points and generally had his way inside.

The Wildcats double-teamed Camby in that game, but without much conviction.

It was a different story last Saturday when Kentucky faced Wake Forest’s Tim Duncan, the nation’s other premier center. The Wildcats suffocated Duncan with double-team traps. Duncan was held without a basket for the first 28 minutes and made only two of seven shots.

If Kentucky has similar success in Saturday’s rematch against Camby, UMass will be hard-pressed to repeat November’s victory.

The rap against Kentucky last season was that the Wildcats depended too heavily on the three-point shot and couldn’t stop anyone inside.

“That’s a lot of malarkey,” Virginia Tech Coach Bill Foster said. “They don’t have a stiff that goes and posts up, but they have a great inside game.”

Even Pitino admits much of his team’s high-octane label is myth.

“Ninety percent of our game is pumping it inside and getting fouled,” he said.

How do losses help?

The 84-73 Mississippi State defeat in New Orleans, in the Southeastern Conference tournament championship game, was also interesting. Pitino was almost gleeful in defeat, convinced that his team needed the wake-up call before the NCAA tournament.

The Wildcats went 16-0 in the SEC, winning by an average of 24.2 points. Kentucky had already defeated Mississippi State at Starkville, Miss., during the SEC season, 74-56.

Pitino thought winning had become too easy.

“I didn’t think we’d get there [the Final Four] if we won that game,” Pitino said of the SEC tournament game.

The Wildcats have been unstoppable since, and have adapted to all styles. They crushed slow-tempo teams Virginia Tech and Wake Forest by 24 and 20 points, respectfully, and hammered a Utah team that dared to run with Kentucky.

“If I was a coach, I wouldn’t have any idea how to stop Kentucky,” Wildcat center Walter McCarty said.

And this year, Dean Smith and the Tar Heels aren’t even around to try.