Kentucky’s Cauley-Stein stays in the game on the sideline

Kentucky forward Willie Cauley-Stein was waylaid with an ankle injury Friday night against Louisville. And conscious of it or not, that left the Olathe Northwest graduate at a substantial emotional crossroads.

He could sulk and crumple. Or he could stay invested, maybe even more so.

Cauley-Stein began to answer the question that night, beseeching the team at halftime to, well, win for him, forward Dakari Johnson said. Then he was “absolutely going bonkers” in the locker room during the second half of the game, coach John Calipari was told.

“They had to hold him down,” he said.

They couldn’t on Sunday. Just because Cauley-Stein sat out with his left ankle in a boot and was clad in spectacles instead of the familiar headband didn’t mean he wasn’t as one with the team.

So he hobble-hopped into the dog pile on the court after the Wildcats beat Michigan 75-72 in the Midwest Regional final at Lucas Oil Stadium.

“I just had to improvise,” he said on the court moments later. “I felt like a pogo stick.”

This was no place for the meek, not after Aaron Harrison’s three-pointer with 2.6 seconds left catapulted the eighth-seeded Wildcats into the Final Four.

Guard Jarrod Polson was yelling, “Get off, get off,” trying to peel people off the pile as he worried that Harrison at the bottom “was getting choked or something.” Guard Jon Hood was alarmed to see Cauley-Stein coming.

“I went, ‘Oh, oh, wait a second, wait a second, calm down, calm down.’ Just to kind of slow him down,” he said. “There was no pushing him back.”

It’s unclear whether Cauley-Stein will be able to return for Saturday’s game against Wisconsin or for the national title game Monday if the Wildcats should advance.

But the sophomore, one of Kentucky’s best defenders but inconsistent offensively, had an invisible hand in their berth there on Sunday.

Many of the minutes that would have gone his way went to forgotten freshman Marcus Lee, who had four baskets in his 39 minutes of play in the entire Southeastern Conference season.

On Sunday, Lee had four dunks in the first half and finished with 10 points and eight rebounds — seven on offense.

Yes, the game will be best-remembered for Harrison’s heroics down the stretch, especially the winning three-pointer that forward Julius Randle called “ridiculous.”

“That stage, that atmosphere, that game,” he said, “to make that shot to send us to the Final Four, it was just amazing.”

But Lee had salvaged the possibility in the first half when Michigan led by 10 and threatened to romp.

“Without him,” Johnson said, “I don’t think we would have won the game.”

And without Cauley-Stein, Lee suggested, he might not have played the game he did. He felt Cauley-Stein “on his shoulder,” he said, all game.

“I mean, everything he knew, he tried to teach me in the span of two days,” Lee said. “Even as the game was going on, you guys could see me going down to him for pointers.”

The utterly unforeseen performance by Lee underscores this unpredictable season at Kentucky, the one-and-done symbol of college basketball.

It’s been a journey of absurd expectations (40-0?), followed by overreaction to predictable growing pains and clashes between Calipari and his players, all leading to this late-season surge that seems to say the ends justify the means.

“I think we proved a lot to the world,” Harrison said, though adding, “even (to) ourselves.”

Now, it seems, those hard times probably were instrumental in this.

Had the team actually entered the tournament undefeated, Harrison suggested it couldn’t have been “mentally tough enough” to prevail through the last three down-to-the-buzzer finishes: against Wichita State, Louisville and Michigan — three teams that were in the Final Four last season and were seeded 1, 4 and 2, respectively this season.

“I don’t know if this was another ‘classic’ kind of game,” Calipari said, “but I’ll tell you this: They weren’t going to go away, and neither were we.”

And, so, neither was Cauley-Stein.

“He was coaching tonight; he put his coaching hat on,” Hood said, later adding, “He told Marcus how to play. He told Marcus what to do. He was encouraging. He was amazing. That’s Willie. That’s what he does. That’s who he is.”

Sure, it’s sad that he’s hurt, forward Alex Poythress said.

But Cauley-Stein has made sure he’s no less part of the team.

“We’re not going to leave him out, no; if he wants to jump on the dog pile, he can,” Poythress said. “If he wants to run sprints with us this week, he can hop in, too.”

Even if it’s via pogo stick, he might.

“This feels like a dream come true,” Cauley-Stein said, “and it’s not even over yet.”

This story was originally published March 30, 2014 at 10:23 PM with the headline "Kentucky’s Cauley-Stein stays in the game on the sideline."