Half-time adjustments? Are they legal? Trailing by 16 points at halftime, Kentucky defeated Gonzaga in one of the best neutral/away regular season games (whatever you want to call the “Battle in Seattle”) in history. One of the keys to holding the Zags to 39 percent from the field in the second half (the magic number for success, according to Mark Pope) was the change in the Wildcats’ defense.

Kentucky went into a 1-3-1 zone on several possessions after halftime and the change of pace seemed to rattle the Bulldogs. Gonzaga didn’t get everything it wanted at any point in the first half and struggled to get the ball through the basket. At times they also introduced a fake zone and switched to a man-to-man system after a few passes.

When asked after the game about his decision to switch defenses, Pope said: “It’s easy to switch defenses when you’re down.”

Fair point, coach.

Mark Few, however, was not so quick to attribute the change in defense to his side’s second-half difficulties. Few dismissed the strategy almost entirely, saying, “Ah, they just ran a fake zone…sometimes we run them too.” (Our players) were (still) getting open looks. Open 3. In the second half we were 0-9 from 3.” Few addressed his team’s shooting problems: “We just had a lid on the rim. We had a lot of good looks that we did in the first half of the year, the ones we did throughout the year… and that gave them life.”

Few can downplay the defensive system at will, but there’s no question that it threw Gonzaga out of their rhythm. Praise Pope for a remarkable half-time performance to make things different. Who knew a coach from Kentucky could do this?