Never mind the run and gun. Kentucky showed Virginia Tech it can win in a half-court game, too.
Top seed Kentucky pounded the ball inside to Antoine Walker and Walter McCarty, who scored 21 and 19 points in leading the Wildcats to an 84-60 victory Saturday in the second round of the NCAA Midwest Regional.Kentucky's press wasn't able to rattle the veteran Hokies, but it didn't matter. Virginia Tech shot just 39 percent as Kentucky advanced to the round of 16.
"It didn't give us a lot as far as points," coach Rick Pitino said of the press. "But it gave us a lot in preventing them from being as fresh running their half-court offense, and we played superb half-court defense."
Kentucky (30-2) will play Thursday in Minneapolis against No. 4 seed Utah, which beat Iowa State 73-67 earlier Saturday.
The Wildcats had their share of highlight-film plays. They broke the game open with a series of dunks midway through the second half.
But Virginia Tech coach Bill Foster wasn't as impressed by that as he was the rest of Kentucky's game.
"They're a great full-court team defensively, they really run the ball well, and you get caught up with watching them shoot 3s," he said. "But I'm going to tell you, in the half-court offensive they really execute. They put a clinic on us in their half-court offense.
"I remember the dunks and I remember the transition, but that's not where we got beat. We got beat because we couldn't stop their half-court game."
The ninth-seeded Hokies (23-6) did a good job against the pressure, but were undone by poor shooting. Ace Custis scored eight points, five below his team-leading average, and Shawn Good had five on 2-of-9 shooting. Good scored 25 in a first-round victory over Wisconsin-Green Bay.
"They weren't able to run their half-court offense like they wanted to," said Walker, who also had 11 rebounds. "We forced them to do things they didn't want to do."
Kentucky only led 45-38 after Tech's Shawn Smith converted a three-point play with 15:18 remaining. But then the Wildcats held the Hokies without a field goal for nearly seven minutes.
Meanwhile, Walker, McCarty and Ron Mercer took turns scoring inside, including four acrobatic dunks. McCarty also added a 3-pointer during the 17-6 run that gave the Wildcats a 62-44 lead.
Good finally stopped the Hokies' field-goal drought with his first basket, at the 8:37 mark, but by then the outcome was clear.
Virginia Tech committed 15 turnovers, only three more than its average, and most of those were in the half-court.
Pitino said he was a bit concerned after a first-round victory over San Jose State because the Wildcats didn't pressure the ball enough in the half-court, and because of Virginia Tech's ability to protect the ball.
"We were going on about seven or eight hours of film work. That's how much we respected this basketball team," he said.
"This was a half-court game, except for the few spurts," he said. "I really think we did a spectacular job of executing our half-court offense and our half-court defense, and the press took its toll."