Kentucky Wildcats’ great length envy of all opponents

NEW ORLEANS -- Dave Rice sat in the Superdome on Monday evening and saw firsthand what today's elite means in college basketball. Saw the bodies. Saw the disruption. Saw the length.

"It has become obvious where college basketball is going," Rice said.

Yeah. Like what you tell your buddy at the park.

Go long.

Kentucky won this year's national championship because it was better and, more important, longer than anyone it played. This included a Kansas side the Wildcats dismissed 67-59 in the final, one whose coach realized the difference between the winner and everyone else.

"Anthony Davis is long, Terrence Jones is long, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is long, Darius Miller is the longest three-man in the country," Bill Self said. "We hadn't gone against that type of length in our league. That's the longest team we played."

And his team competes in the Big 12, not an ordinary collection of skill.

Rice and Self are among all coaches searching for more length on the recruiting trails, scouring gyms across the country for the type of wingspans that lead to rebounds and blocks and pass deflections and steals.

It's not easy. There was Kentucky length this year, and there was everyone else. Great length allows you to defend ball screens differently than most, especially for teams with a player such as Davis in the middle, who can merely camp inside and block shots and not need weak-side guards to help off their men.

It's not the three or four shots a player such as Davis blocks that influence a game most but rather the 10 or so he alters.

Rice is sure his second UNLV team will offer more length than his first, that transfers such as Bryce Jones and Khem Birch and a freshman in Katin Reinhardt will allow the Rebels to defend at a better rate and junior Mike Moser to play far more small forward than he did this season.

Rice wants to play bigger lineups. Quicker ones. Longer ones.

"The two most important things in guarding is slowing dribble penetration and contesting shots," Rice said moments after Kentucky's win. "Two ways to do that are quickness and length. Neither is more important than the other, but when you can find multiple players on a team that possess both, you have a chance to be special.

"As we move forward with our program, it will be important to find players with both characteristics."

In previewing the championship game Sunday, Kentucky coach John Calipari said he would always prefer a team that blocks shots over one that gets steals, because teams that lead the nation in steals usually allow a ton of layups and that would drive him to do something really crazy, which I assume meant burning his couch back in Lexington with all the other loons.

Teams that block shots force others to think twice about attacking, which most often leads to jump shots, which most often means a high field-goal percentage defense for the longer side.

Did you watch Kansas center Jeff Withey on Monday night?

He went into the lane on offense as a 7-footer and yet played as if he was 6 feet 4 inches. Kentucky's length, or merely the threat of it, bothered him to the point that he was far more passive than in previous tournament games.

Rice is correct. Quickness helps, too. It allows you to defend people before they catch the ball, to get open before you receive the ball, to do a better job rebounding. But length does something else. It gets inside the heads of those trying to execute against it.

It's why NBA scouts look not at a player's height but rather his wingspan, a major factor when gauging athletic potential. It's also one thing you can't improve upon in the weightroom or during drills on a court.

Some guys just have good genes, that's all.

"It's hard to score over length," Self said. "Nobody had the length of Kentucky this year. Nobody in America could simulate that. Most of our misses were probably altered because of it. They just wore us out."

Calipari said after winning his first title that his first chore was to hit the recruiting trail Friday, no doubt to begin chasing more of the nation's best players to restock what soon will be a depleted roster as several of his players enter the NBA Draft.

He will search first for length.

"Kentucky was terrific this entire season, the best team from start to finish," Self said. "One through five, just as explosive as you can be."

A short answer for a long problem everyone had against the Wildcats.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from noon to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday on "Gridlock," ESPN Radio 1100 and 98.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.