ARLINGTON, Texas — Kentucky has followed months of underachieving with a string of NCAA Tournament games that left the season as precarious as possible, but somehow, the nation’s No. 1 team in the preseason is right where everyone thought it would be.
Down to their last life once again, the Wildcats pulled off their fifth comeback of the tournament in an unforgettable win over Wisconsin, 74-73, in the second game of Saturday’s Final Four, as Aaron Harrison retained his title as tournament hero with a game-winning 3-pointer with 5.7 seconds left, in front of a Final Four-record crowd of 79,444 at AT&T Stadium.
With Kentucky trailing by two, Harrison had few options, having been passed the ball far from the basket with the clock sprinting down, but the “Assassin” — the nickname given to him by coach John Calipari — nailed the deep, contested shot from the left wing, mirroring his game-winner against Michigan in the Elite Eight. It was the freshman’s third straight game with a go-ahead 3-pointer in the final 40 seconds.
“When I saw [Aaron] grab it and kind of smile, I figured that he was going to make it,” said James Young, who led Kentucky with 17 points. “I didn’t have any doubt that we were going to [win] at all. That last shot was just amazing.”
Wisconsin’s final shot would have been more memorable, but Traevon Jackson’s pull-up jumper at the buzzer rimmed out, preventing the second-seeded Badgers (30-8) from making their first appearance in the title game in 73 years.
Monday night’s matchup — No. 8 Kentucky (29-10) and No. 7 UConn (31-8) — is the highest-ever combination of seeds in the championship game, and the first since 1966 (Texas Western vs. Kentucky) featuring two squads that did not appear in the previous year’s NCAA Tournament.
After a preseason filled with adulation and a regular season filled with denigration, Calipari’s kids are now one win away from becoming the first team to win a title while starting five freshmen.
“Late in the game, they have an unbelievable will to win, and part of that has come from how they have been treated all season. They have been ridiculed, criticized. … They were absolutely mauled,” said Calipari, who is appearing in the finals for the second time in the past three years. “I think it made them stronger and it made them come together.”
The Wildcats’ season started slipping away as the Badgers jumped out to a nine-point first-half lead, with the teams using possessions as arguments for their contrasting styles — Kentucky from the paint and Wisconsin from the perimeter.
While Wisconsin hit eight 3-pointers and toyed with Kentucky’s inexperienced defenders on shot fakes, the Wildcats used their overwhelming athleticism — highlighted by a string of alley-oops and offensive putbacks — to score 23 second-chance points and plus-22 points in the paint.
“You can look at so much film, but the amount of force they come with and how aggressive they are to the glass, you really can’t emulate that in any other way until you experience it,” Wisconsin’s Duje Dukan said. “I think that was definitely one thing that they killed us on.”
The Badgers — up 40-36 at halftime — wouldn’t back down, shooting 52 percent from the field in the second half and hitting 19-of-20 free throws, to recover from Kentucky’s 15-0 second-half run and take a four-point lead with less than five minutes remaining.
After Frank Kaminsky (8 points, 5 rebounds) awoke from a 30-plus minute slumber with a game-tying putback with 1:16 left, Aaron’s twin brother, Andrew, was nearly engraved in infamy after missing a 3-pointer and then biting on a 3-point pump-fake from Jackson, which sent him to the line with 15.2 seconds remaining.
Jackson missed the first — Wisconsin’s only missed free throw of the game — but gave the Badgers a two-point lead, 73-71, also giving Kentucky an opportunity to make his team wonder what could have been.
“That’s a shot that’s going to stick in our minds for the rest of our lives,” Kaminsky said.