2014 NCAA Tournament National Championship Game: Kentucky vs. UConn Preview and Prediction
By Jack Crosby
Monday night, the two best teams that are left in the game of Division I Men’s College Basketball will take the floor in Arlington, Texas and battle it out for the right to call themselves “National Champions,” as the Kentucky Wildcats and UConn Huskies will go head-to-head in the final game of the year.
Both teams weren’t given much of a chance coming into March Madness, but they’re two teams that were able to put it all together at the right time with big-time playmakers stepping up, and with their superior coaching.
UConn battled their way through a rather up-and-down regular season, which at one-point included a blowout loss to the Louisville Cardinals. On that night, it didn’t seem as if there was much hope for this team, but head coach Kevin Ollie and star guard Shabazz Napier made sure this team would not waver.
Throughout this NCAA Tournament, the Huskies have showed just about more fight than any team that we’ve seen this year. Whether it was coming back in their opener against St. Joe’s to win in overtime, or their near dominating performance against Florida in the Final Four, this team just knows when to turn it on, and when they do, it’s lights out.
Kentucky was probably given less of a chance coming in to this one to be in this position right now than the Huskies were. All regular season, the five freshmen comprised of high school stars such as Julius Randle and Aaron and Andrew Harrison just couldn’t seem to come together.
This team lost to Arkansas in the regular season…twice!
But, when the lights have shined the brightest, these freshmen are playing the way everyone had expected them to play coming into the season. The road hasn’t been easy. They had to defeat three of last year’s Final Four participants to get here, plus a very good Wisconsin team on Saturday night, once again behind the clutch shooting efforts of Aaron Harrison.
Date: April 7
Start Time: 9:10 PM ET
Location: Arlington, TX
Arena: AT&T Stadium
TV Info: CBS
Live Stream: March Madness Live
Prediction: There is going to be a lot of talent on that court Monday night. Forget the seedings, these might be the two most overall talented teams in college basketball.
Once again, against Florida on Saturday, UConn proved that if they can speed the game up on you and win in transition, that can beat anyone in the country. If they can do that against this young Kentucky team, then the magical run of the five freshmen will end on the biggest stage.
And, if Florida couldn’t stop Shabazz Napier, DeAndre Daniels and the rest of the Huskies when the game sped up, neither will Kentucky.
UConn 75, Kentucky 65