Kentucky Wilts as Arizona Takes Heat

Arizona won the Kentucky derby Monday night, with faster ponies and a full-speed burst from the moment the gates opened and the big blue wave sloshed and lulled.

When did you know Arizona could pull this off, could devour the devourer, could make that last great hurdle into history?

You knew it a minute and a half into this thing, when Kentucky’s Wayne Turner made a short jumper, Arizona had to inbound the ball 94 feet away from its basket, and the RCA Dome waited for the first sight of pressure pandemonium.

When Kentucky had its first chance to grab ahold of this game with its raging full-court press and . . . it deferred. It sat back. It bided its time. It said, “No thanks, not for now.”

Maybe later.

“I felt pressing tonight was not the way to go,” Kentucky Coach Rick Pitino said after the game. “We didn’t press the first five minutes of the game, and if not for [the need to increase] the pace, I wouldn’t have pressed at all.”

Said Arizona’s nonpareil Miles Simon: “They were trying to fake us out or something, not pressing us early. But we knew it was coming.”

The press--even then, adjusted and toned down to take account of Arizona’s great guards, Pitino said-- eventually showed up, and Arizona did commit 18 turnovers and needed overtime to fling Kentucky away and win its first national title, 84-79.

But when Pitino set loose the pressure, Mike Bibby was able to jitter his way through it, or Simon grabbed a pass and knifed to the basket, or even galoots like Bennett Davison or Donnell Harris calmly caught, pivoted and passed, just like everybody is taught--and nobody is usually able to under the Kentucky siege.

Monday, from the start, Kentucky was the one backpedaling and Arizona was the one that knew it was tougher and that the end game was their game.

“One thing, they were not getting turnovers and easy baskets off of it,” Simon said. “We were able to break it and break it. And eventually, running 94 feet the whole game, they were going to get tired.”

Arizona, which committed only two or three turnovers that you could say were directly related to the press, never reached the panic stage Kentucky lives to create, and never coughed up the backcourt turnovers that usually turn into those crushing Kentucky 11-0 or 14-2 runs.

Kentucky’s biggest run in this game? A 7-0 tally in the first half that turned a 19-13 Arizona lead into a 20-19 Kentucky lead. The next best was that 6-0 flash at the end of regulation, on two flying three-point shots, that sent the game into overtime.

That was it.

“Before the game they said they could do it,” said Kentucky forward Scott Padgett, “and they did.”

Said Bibby: “Our team is just so quick out there, I don’t even know what to say.”

Simon was the primary threat, and as he kept charging toward the basket, he kept getting fouled. Kentucky committed 29 fouls (to Arizona’s 16), and Simon himself made 14 of 17 free-throw attempts, making three less than Kentucky’s entire team.

“We kept coming to the ball,” Simon said. “We never floated away from Mike if he was in trouble. And we saw one thing when we watched the tapes--we could break the press down off the dribble.”

Said Padgett: “Obviously, they really worked on handling our pressure, and they went out there and they kept their cool. They didn’t rush things, and that’s why they handled our press so well.”

As Simon said, Kentucky had to play the whole floor this time--not just the 47 feet from under its own basket to halfcourt--and there’s a whole lot of bad things that can happen on that other side of the court.

Kentucky’s defense usually wipes out about 30 possessions a game, just takes them right off the map. Monday, from the opening tip, Arizona never let itself get wiped away.

Those first five minutes were the first, radiant sign that Kentucky knew that Arizona could kill its press--and that is a terrible thing to tell Bibby, Simon and Jason Terry.

Ask Minnesota, ask Utah, ask anybody the Wildcats have played (except South Carolina, which beat Kentucky twice), Kentucky doesn’t just win games with its full-court press, it defines itself by demolishing its opponents’ will with pressure, it wins titles with pressure.

Arizona won a title Monday night by never once feeling any.