By Jamie H. Vaught
KySportsStyle.com Magazine
LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Kenny Brooks said the Liberty Flames, who earlier in the season lost to Tennessee (109-93) and beat Arkansas (75-61), have given him a hard time over the years even though the UK coach has won most of the battles.
And Liberty coach Carey Green and his team once again gave Brooks a hard time Friday afternoon as the Flames nearly overcame UK's 17-point margin in the late fourth quarter when they got within one point at 74-73, 76-75 and 79-78 at 1:14, :46 and :02 remaining. But the Wildcats -- who got off to a great start and roced to a 23-14 lead at the end of the first quarter on All-American Georgia Amoore's 15 points, including 3 of 4 three-pointers -- withstood a comeback bid by Liberty, and won 79-78 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
The No. 4 seed Kentucky, which improved its overall record to 23-7, advance to Sunday's second round matchup (time TBA), facing No. 5 seed Kansas State, which rolled over No. 12 Fairfield 85-41.
Brooks now has an 11-3 mark against Green-coached Liberty teams. Before coming to UK, Brooks had a 7-2 record against Liberty during his time at James Madison and a 3-1 mark while at Virginia Tech.
"The beauty of this part here is you can say survive and advance. That's what we did today,," said Brooks after the game. "I thought we had a really good showing in the opening half. Played pretty good the third quarter. But I think that's where you need to give credit to Liberty. They did a fantastic job exploiting us in certain areas. They did a really good job. We have to be much better in the post. We elected to go with a one-on-one approach and didn't win a lot of those battles and they took advantage of it. We knew it was going to be a tough battle.
"Carey's teams play hard and very talented and unorthodox. Something we haven't seen in a while because nobody plays like that in the SEC. So took us a little while to adjust, but thank goodness for Georgia's performance. Her and Dazia (Lawrence) really carried us from a mental standpoint and we have to have others step up if we want to continue on."
It didn't help when UK had two tall players -- 6-foot-5 Clara Strack and 6-foot-4 Teonni Key -- fouled out in the fourth quarter.
Amoore, who hit 3 of 4 critical free throws during the last 10 seconds of the game to clinch the win, finished with a game-high 34 points, including 6 of 10 three-pointers, along with a game-high eight assists. Lawrence added 16 points.
Amoore's 34 points tied the most by a UK player in an NCAA Tournament game. A’dia Mathies also had 34 against Dayton in March of 2013.
On Liberty's fourth-quarter comeback, Amoore said, "They definitely turned up the intensity and the pressure. We can't get stagnant. We have to keep moving and creating for each other and just be confident. Move to want to shoot. Move to want to be open. I don't think we had the mindset like we did in the first half."
Kentucky's Clara Strack, who had 15 points and 10 rebounds before fouling out, agreed, saying, “I think just our (lack of ) energy, and I think they seemed to want it more than us. I think we need to have five people on the same page, five people who want the game as much as the other team does.
"I think that shows us we need to lock in, we need to focus more on games like this and it’s March, anything can happen. We are lucky enough that we were able to pull out and play another game, but I think if we play like that again, we’re not going to have that opportunity. I think we need to pull it together and just do better than that.”
Box Score
Jamie H. Vaught, a longtime sports columnist in Kentucky, is the author of six books about UK basketball, including recently-published “Forever Crazy About The Cats: An Improbable Journey of a Kentucky Sportswriter Overcoming Adversity.” Now a retired college professor who taught at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College in Middlesboro., he is the editor and founder of KySportsStyle.com Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter @KySportsStyle or reach him via email at KySportsStyle@gmail.com .
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