TAMPA, Fla. — Except for the final two seconds, the Kentucky freshman Brandon Knight would rather forget his N.C.A.A. tournament debut. Knight missed all seven shots he took until making the game-winning layup just before the buzzer in Kentucky’s victory against Princeton on Thursday.
Knight came into Saturday’s game against West Virginia with a much different approach. It showed.
Knight scored a career-high 30 points to lead the fourth-seeded Wildcats past No. 5 seed West Virginia, 71-63, in the Round of 32 in the East Region.
“I felt confident,” Knight said. “My teammates continued to have faith in me even though I didn’t play such a great game. They still had faith in me and they really helped me out today, finding me and stuff like that.
“And they really stepped their level of play up, which got me more shots.”
Knight made his first shot — a 3-pointer — in the opening minutes and never let up. He had 16 of Kentucky’s 33 first-half points.
“He is a terrific player and an unbelievable person who I’ve never seen — all the players I’ve coached and I had guys that would live in the practice facility, literally — I’ve never seen a guy with this kid’s work ethic,” Kentucky Coach John Calipari said.
“Any time you spend that kind of time, you expect good things to happen. If you’re trying to get over, if you’re trying to fool around in practice, the minute it goes wrong in the game, you expect it to continue. If you’re a hard worker and you spend the time, you expect good things to happen.”
While Knight’s offense carried Kentucky, it was the Wildcats’ second-half defense that proved to be the difference. After allowing West Virginia to score 41 points in the first half, Kentucky held the Mountaineers to 22 points in the second half on 33.3 percent shooting. West Virginia made only two field goals in the final 7 minutes 36 seconds.
“The truth of the matter is we had a couple wide-open looks from guys that — we don’t have a lot of guys that normally make them, but we have a couple — and they didn’t go down for us,” West Virginia Coach Bob Huggins said.
Kentucky (27-8) advanced to Friday’s regional semifinals in Newark against the winner of Sunday’s game between No. 1 Ohio State and No. 8 George Mason.
Playing in his second career N.C.A.A. tournament game, Knight initially said he felt “a lot more anxiety.”
“Just playing these types of games where you know if you lose your season is done, I think guys really come out and they fight a lot harder,” Knight said. “They go after rebounds a lot tougher. It kind of changes the game. Guys play tough throughout the season, but I think they step it up a notch in the tournament.”
Last year, West Virginia (21-12) ended the Wildcats’ season with a 73-66 victory in the Round of 8. This time, Kentucky returned the favor. Besides advancing to the Round of 16 for a second straight season, Calipari also picked up a rare victory against Huggins.
Calipari won for only the second time in 10 meetings against teams coached by Huggins. Calipari’s last victory against Huggins came March 1, 2003, when Memphis defeated Cincinnati. Calipari and Huggins are such close friends that Calipari was among the first people not related to him to visit Huggins in the hospital after Huggins had a heart attack in 2002.
“You know, we got them a little bit this game, but it’s one of the things I want to tell you in this profession: you hate to play against friends because I know what it feels like to get beat,” Calipari said. “And you don’t want to play against friends. You want to play against people you don’t like.”
The senior guard Joe Mazzulla paced West Virginia with a career-high 20 points, but only 5 came after halftime.
Kentucky forward Josh Harrellson had 15 points and 8 rebounds despite leaving to get four stitches above his eye after an inadvertent elbow. Harrellson is the lone senior on a team that features five freshmen.
“I never thought I’d be the type of player I am,” Harrellson said. “I just worked hard and did a lot of conditioning and changed my body and changed my mind-set and it helped me out in the long run.”
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