Somewhere the term, “styles make fights” was applied to anticipated boxing matches, but it can be applied to pretty much all sports. Anytime you have a great team, the best way to beat them is to play the opposite style, because playing their style but worse is only going to lead to a blowout. Kentucky is the great team in this year’s NCAA Tournament. Before their Sweet 16 game against West Virginia I thought the Mountaineers had a chance of giving Kentucky a fight because of their pressing style. In hindsight, I may have been off.

So let’s start pregame on Saturday, Notre Dame is by far the best team Kentucky will have played all year, they had 2 wins against Duke and North Carolina, they had also beaten Michigan State, Louisville and NC State. Notre Dame plays a 4 guard lineup most times, and only go 7 players deep on their bench. They have 4 guys that can shoot it from deep, that is the good.

The Irish’s 2nd best player is a pitcher, they are very small, starting only 1 player over 6’5 and none over 6’10. When the Irish have struggled this year it is because they don’t rebound great, and like most teams that rely on the outside shot, it can go cold. That is the bad.

I thought it became pretty clear within the first 5 minutes that while Notre Dame might be undersized, they were still plenty good enough athletically. They would continually get into the lane, some shots would get blocked, some shots would go in, and most importantly it would collapse the defense to leave a shooter open. The shooters however were only sort of open with a 7 footer racing at them to alter the shot. The Irish would only shoot 4-14 from 3.

Part of the reason Kentucky is so good is because they have so much depth and players never seem to get tired, they can easily replace the starters with 4-5 other McDonald’s All-Americans that can come off the bench. This is good and bad, good because they have quality guys off the bench, bad because all that really means is the starters aren’t really good enough to separate themselves from their replacements.

They may have a ton of future lottery picks on the roster, but outside of maybe Karl-Anthony Towns and Devin Booker, they are ALL pretty limited offensively. The guards were not able to create their own shots, and their big men, with a massive height advantage, could not really do much outside of Towns.

However in the end, call it fatigue or just playing a better team, Notre Dame was its own worst enemy. There were the 3 missed free throws by 3 different players, the shot clock violation, the leaning the wrong way on a blocking foul or a mismanagement of time outs. The Irish lost to a better team, but not by much.