Extremely Late Takeaways While I Try To Stay Awake

For the late crowd, or probably the morning crowd, let's do a couple of takeaways from the game before my body falls over. It was a 15-hour shift for Team KSR at Bankers Life Fieldhouse today and my body is refusing to take any more coffee. I'm seeing two computer screens right now and, from what I've heard, everyone outside the arena is seeing two or three of everything too. Happy St. Patrick's Day and all that. Let's go...   De'Aaron Fox scored at will. Fox led Kentucky in scoring for a fourth consecutive game with 19 points in this one. Now that he is driving the ball and playing through the contact to get to the rim, he has become the biggest scoring threat in the Cats' offense. He's averaging 21 per game over the last five and it's a beauty to watch him attack. Isaiah Briscoe also scored when he wanted. Briscoe chipped in a second-best 17 points on 7-for-11 shooting from the field, all at the rim. Like Fox, he had very little trouble getting inside and finishing in huge mismatches. And on top of the scoring, he had eight rebounds, two assists and only one turnover for a complete game. I think John Calipari will take that from him every single time. Bam Adebayo is peaking. As I wrote a little earlier in the evening (or morning), Adebayo's 18 rebounds were the most in an NCAA tournament game since the 1950s. The combination of the boards and 15 points marked his fourth double-double in eight games, which tells me he is hitting his stride as the season winds down. For a little perspective, he had zero double-doubles from the Valparaiso game on Dec. 7 until the Missouri game on Feb. 21. Malik Monk couldn't buy one. Hopefully Monk got the bad one out of his system now because he can't go 0-for-6 on three-pointers again and expect Kentucky to win. In the locker room after the game he insisted that he is still confident and they'll soon drop, but it was tough to watch them rattle out against Northern Kentucky. However, it wasn't nearly as tough as watching him answer the same question over and over and over again. I don't know how these kids do it. I literally heard at least 10 different reporters approach him to ask what's wrong with his shot. Can Hawkins and Willis stay forever? Please? Big shout-out to Northern Kentucky. Let's be honest here: Northern Kentucky was never going to win that game. So keeping it in single digits was a great showing by the Norse and I hope those guys are holding their heads high. They put the program on the map Friday night and it's only uphill from here. Big things coming for NKU basketball. Jeff Ruby doesn't have to buy steaks for the entire student body. But he may still have something in store for everyone... https://twitter.com/TheRealJeffRuby/status/842953711852965888 That 10 pm start time can kiss my ass. Like Cal said when it was over, there's no reason college kids should be finishing up a basketball game of this magnitude at midnight. Figure it out, NCAA. And then they're the second game on Sunday? And on that note, I'm about to fall asleep. Plenty more to come throughout the morning and on through the weekend. Go Cats.