CLEVELAND -- Friday afternoon, less than 24 hours after his team unleashed the most lopsided victory in Sweet 16 history -- chastising No. 5 seed West Virginia for the unforgivable crime of believing it ever stood a chance -- a reporter told Kentucky Wildcats coach John Calipari that the "theory goes that somebody's going to have to play close to a perfect game to beat you." Calipari disagreed with the premise, pointed to the "five or six" games he felt Kentucky was "lucky" not to lose in 2014-15, and drew a crucial distinction.
"We're not perfect," Calipari said. "We're undefeated."
It was a line the coach, never one to let a clever and insightful soundbite go to waste, would paraphrase again Saturday night. Only this time, Calipari had glaring evidence in hand.
After all, Notre Dame didn't play the perfect game Saturday -- the Irish shot just 4-of-14 from 3, a far cry from the long-range onslaught under which Cleveland search crews are still discovering the debris of Wichita State's defense -- and they were still exactly one play, one bucket or one stop, from ending Kentucky's unbeaten march before the calendar rolled over to April.
The Wildcats survived, as they have all season, by doing things no other team in the country can do. Sure, other teams have big men who can score every time down the floor, a la Karl-Anthony Towns. But who else earns game-winning free throws as innocuously as Andrew Harrison did Saturday? Who else has a 7-footer like Willie Cauley-Stein, whose quickness makes him every bit as disruptive 20 feet from the rim as directly beneath -- an inexplicable monster who can guard Devin Williams on a Thursday and Jerian Grant on a Saturday? The Wildcats have been tested, as Calipari said, but they've always dominated the closing moments of games. They always get easy shots. You don't. It's rarely more complicated than that.
Cleveland's Midwest Regional showcased both types of UK's dominance. The Wildcats are not perfect, but they get the job done late. Unless, as was the case against West Virginia, they are perfect, and the game is over before the first TV timeout. Either way, they'll arrive in Indianapolis not just the favorite but a 38-0 team sitting just two wins away from an unthinkable, immortal accomplishment. Look out below.
Star of the regional: Towns gave Kentucky nothing against the Mountaineers Thursday. (Calipari had a slightly more colloquial term for Towns' invisibility: "ugats." Somewhere, Paulie Gualtieri exclaimed "Ohhh!") His team still won by 39 points. More than once, Towns told reporters he was "blessed" to be able to play for a team that could win so handily in the Sweet 16 on a night when he didn't show up. That's been the problem, so to speak, with understanding Kentucky all season: It's so good, and so deep, that highlighting any one player feels like a mistake.
But Towns was undeniable when the Wildcats needed him most. Against an Irish defense that mostly refused to double-team -- Mike Brey's plan, and it almost worked, was to absorb 2-point buckets like Muhammad Ali absorbed George Foreman's body blows -- Towns brutishly hammered away. On trip after trip in Saturday's second half, Kentucky shoveled the ball inside and Towns muscled his way to bucket after bucket. It got bad enough that Brey flinched. The first time the Irish doubled, they came away with a turnover. The second time, Towns found Tyler Ulis for a wide-open corner 3. Without Towns' guaranteed post production -- he finished with 25 points on 10-of-13 from the field and 5-of-6 from the line -- he and his teammates would be spending this week interviewing wealth management professionals.
Big moment in Cleveland: Two come to mind.
The moment West Virginia guard Daxter Miles Jr. cranked up the dials on an already defiant, prideful prediction -- that Kentucky couldn't handle the Mountaineers' press, and that after Thursday night it would be 36-1: "They don't play hard," Miles told reporters. When the Wildcats were finished ripping Bob Huggins' team limb from limb, UK guard Devin Booker and his teammates said the knock on their effort was the moment they decided to send a message. It came through loud and clear.
Cauley-Stein's block on Grant with 38 seconds left to play Saturday eventually led to the Irish's first turnover in more than 22 minutes, clearing the way for Harrison's game-winning drive and Grant's desperate subsequent heave. There is exactly one player capable of reacting to, and then shutting down, what Grant called his "best step-back" move of the evening. "I had no idea that I was even that close to him to even block it," Cauley-Stein said. "I barely tipped it. It was a crazy step-back. He’s probably one of the fastest step-backs that I’ve guarded." But not fast enough.
What's next: You already know. On Saturday, Kentucky will wage a rematch with a team it knocked out in last year's Final Four, when merely the latest crazy Aaron Harrison game winner sent the brilliant Badgers packing. That loss was the daily fuel powering Wisconsin's own remarkable 2014-15. It's hardly a stretch to call the Badgers obsessed with avenging it. Now, they get their chance, against a team with many of the same players, and exactly zero losses on the season. "Epic" barely scratches the surface here. Games get no bigger.