A team that's behind has one commodity that should be valued above all else: the time left in the game.

If you are down, you need to extend the game. Every second counts. But teams never do this. Up until the very end, they'll continue to play normal defense and hope for a missed shot. I don't get it. Kentucky was down by two point with the shot clock turned off. I understand they were hoping that the ball would go to someone who is bad at shooting freethrows, but you have to do a cost benefit analysis. They let the clock run down to 10 seconds before they finally fouled the guy. And, it turned out to be the best free throw shooter on the team!

They got the ball back down 4, drove to the basket and scored with 7 seconds left. Imagine if it was 27 seconds left instead. Perhaps they could have gone back and forth until MS finally missed a free throw. But no, with 7 seconds, MS only had to make one more set of free throws to effectivly end the game.

Pathetic.

And, can someone please explain to me the logic behind sitting a guy in foul trouble. "dang jethro, we better take this guy out of the game, b/c if he gets another foul, he's going to have to leave the game". "but wait, isn't it illogical to remove someone from a game b/c you don't want him to leave the game."

Apparently this guy on kentucky was pretty good. He got his 4th foul late in the 2nd half. they pulled him, just like CW tells you, and were hoping that the game would still be close when they brought him back in with 2:30 left. Now, riddle me this. If Kentucky lost by a basket, and this guy didn't foul out, wouldn't it stand to reason that they could have used this guy for at least one more possesion. Two? What if he played the whole 2nd half and never got that 5th foul.

They pulled this guy during the 2nd half, the beginning of OT, and the beginning of the 2nd OT. Maybe if he was in there, Kentucky could have ended it at any of those points.

If the guy fouls out, at least you know you played him as much as possible. When a guy ends the game with 4 fouls, any time he sat protecting against that 5th foul was wasted.