By Mechelle Voepel
Special To Big12Sports.com
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The perfect record ended here in Kansas City for Nebraska. It turned out that dream season would end here, too.
Top-seeded Nebraska, the Big 12 regular-season champion, saw its Final Four hopes go down with a 76-67 loss to No. 4 Kentucky in the regional semifinals on Sunday at the Sprint Center. It was a difficult finish to a five-month joy ride that Nebraska had provided to its fans.
The Huskers went 30-0 in the regular season and beat Kansas State in the Big 12 tournament opener before being stopped by Texas A&M, which went on to win the event.
But the No. 2 seed Aggies found the NCAA tournament to be treacherous, falling to No. 7 Gonzaga in the second round. While that was a “game that got away,” for the Aggies, Sunday’s contest was really never that close for the Huskers after halftime.
Still, Nebraska kept fighting back from deficits only to have the Wildcats, who were runners-up in the SEC, keep the Huskers at arm’s length.
“We had to change our defensive philosophy,” Nebraska’s Kelsey Griffin said. “We’re a pressure, denial team and we had to make adjustments because of their quickness. We had to sag off more, and never got in our offensive flow. A lot of times our defense creates our offense, but they were knocking down shots.”
In fact, the Wildcats hit 50 percent of them (31 of 62) and largely kept the Huskers off balance all night. Kentucky coach Matt Mitchell said everything went almost perfectly for the Wildcats’ game plan.
He also added that he’d looked to a lot of the things Texas A&M coach Gary Blair had done in the past with smaller, quicker teams and applied that to Kentucky this season.
“I have a lot respect for what Gary does at Texas A&M, and they were one of the inspirations for our style of play,” Mitchell said. “So I certainly watched that (Big 12 semifinal) game and thought we could get something out of pressure against OU tonight.”
The Wildcats forced 16 turnovers and won the rebounding battle 36-25. That in particular pained Nebraska coach Connie Yori, who felt that her Huskers just didn’t do enough on the boards Sunday.
Griffin, who had 15 points, also had 12 rebounds. But none of her teammates had more than two rebounds.
“It’s hard to win a lot of games if you don’t win the battle of possession,” Griffin said.
Victoria Dunlap and A’dia Mathies were named the SEC’s player and rookie of the year, respectively, and they combined for 39 points against the Huskers. Nebraska trailed by 19 in the second half. And while the Huskers made a couple of surges late, it wasn’t enough.
Like Griffin, Cory Montgomery had a pretty solid performance, hitting 6 of 9 shots for 14 points. Their fellow senior, Vonnie Turner, had a rough night, going 1 of 8 from the field. Junior Dominique Kelley led the way with 22 points.
So it wasn’t the happy ending that any of the Huskers were hoping for. But they also needed some time to reflect on what how much they did do this season, in which they had just two losses.
“It does really hurt right now,” Montgomery said. “But if you look at our season, we accomplished many different things for the Nebraska program. We had a really successful season. It just didn’t end the way we wanted it to.”