ATLANTA — Kentucky was not bothered by Baylor’s height or its players’ wingspans, and it was not bothered by the Bears’ 1-3-1 zone defense. Nor were the Wildcats unnerved by their ragged play in the second half, which enabled Baylor to make a brief challenge in the N.C.A.A. tournament’s South Region championship game on Sunday. Kentucky also handled a scary fall by its all-American center, Anthony Davis, and the strain of second-half foul trouble on its seven-man rotation.
So when Kentucky Coach John Calipari was asked after his team’s 82-70 victory over Baylor if his Wildcats might be distracted this week by a national semifinal matchup with its archrival Louisville at the Final Four in New Orleans, he just shrugged.
It was an easy answer for him.
“I’m not worried about who we’re playing,” Calipari said.
No. 1 Kentucky (36-2) dunked over Baylor’s height, shot over its defense and blitzed the Bears with transition in front of 24,035 fans, most of them wearing Kentucky blue, at the Georgia Dome. When the Wildcats play as well as they did in the first half while building a 42-22 lead, it really does not matter what team they play. And that includes Louisville, which lost at Kentucky, 69-62, on Dec. 31.
Kentucky is considered to have the best collection of talent in college basketball, and very little of it is from its home state, so the players are not predisposed to feel the pressure of the fierce Red versus Blue rivalry with Louisville. Among the Wildcats’ top seven players, only the senior wing Darius Miller is a Kentuckian. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, a versatile 6-foot-7 player who led the Wildcats with 19 points against Baylor, is from New Jersey. Davis, a 6-10 freshman who had 18 points and 11 rebounds, is from Chicago.
Louisville and Kentucky have split their four matchups in the N.C.A.A. tournament, but this will be their first meeting in the Final Four.
“We’re playing a basketball game,” Calipari said. “Believe me, we will not change. The drama of the game will be on the staff, but I don’t have many Kentucky players on my team. They don’t know all that stuff. I’ll tell them, get off the message boards, don’t worry about the Twitter and the Facebook. Don’t buy into it.”
Davis said: “We think of it as Kentucky against the next team. Louisville is a great team. So we’ve got to come out and play hard. We’re just worried about the next win.”
There appeared to be little doubt that Kentucky would beat Baylor on Sunday until Davis fell to the floor on the baseline holding his left knee and grimacing in pain with 18 minutes 38 seconds left. He was driving to the basket when he collided with Baylor’s Perry Jones III.
Kentucky led by 44-24 when Jones hobbled off the court, but he was back on the floor quickly after his knee was treated on the bench.
“Knee is doing fine,” Davis said. “I just bumped knees with Perry Jones, and it started hurting real bad. But I knew my team needed me to play. I wasn’t going to sit out.”
Davis played 14 minutes in the second half because of the knee and foul trouble. That and furious defense helped the Bears battle back.
Kentucky could have put Baylor away with the same kind of foul shooting it exhibited in its region semifinal win over Indiana (35 of 37), but the Wildcats made only 30 of 44 free throws against Baylor, including 23 of 34 in the second half.
Kentucky maximizes its talent advantage with the kind of basketball savvy that point guard Marquis Teague showed in the first half, which helped the Wildcats build an early lead.
When Baylor went to a three-guard lineup to try to get more speed on the court against Kentucky’s transition game, Teague went to the bench and told Calipari that the Wildcats should get the ball to Kidd-Gilchrist, who would be matched against a smaller player.
The Wildcats went to a play they call “slice,” in which Kidd-Gilchrist comes across the lane with the help of a screen to post up and takes a pass from Davis, who is at the top of the key. Kidd-Gilchrist, who was named the region’s most outstanding player, made 6 of 7 field-goal attempts in the first half as Kentucky built a 42-22 lead by shooting 55 percent from the field.
“I just saw the mismatch and took advantage of it,” Kidd-Gilchrist said.
Before the post-ups to Kidd-Gilchrist, Baylor’s other challenge was dealing with Kentucky’s fast break. The Bears could not get back quickly enough and were behind by as many as 22 points before halftime.
“The goal is no dunks, and I think that was out the window four seconds into the game, it seemed like,” Baylor Coach Scott Drew said. “I think first half we rushed and took some shots that we shouldn’t have taken. I mean, when you shoot 32 percent, you’re giving a lot of chances for fast breaks.”
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