Willie Cauley-Stein says hi. (Not that he would have made a whole lot of difference for Kentucky. His biggest role was as a defensive stopper on the inside, and that is something that UK didn't have any trouble at all with against UConn.)
Injuries happen to teams all the time. Winning the NCAA Tournament takes a little bit of luck, and injury luck is something that ISU (Niang), Kentucky (Cauley-Stein), Kansas (Embiid), Arizona (Ashley), Colorado (Dinwiddie), Michigan State (Appling, others), Michigan (McGary), and others didn't have this year. Yeah, ISU's injury happened at one of the worst times possible, but I don't think it's fair to say that Niang's injury was any more significant that some of the others on the list.
