Kentucky defeated Louisville by a final score of 69-61 to advance to the 2012 NCAA Championship Game on Monday where they will face Kansas.

Anthony Davis led Kentucky with 18 points, 14 rebounds and five blocks, while Darius Miller had a critical 13 points.

Peyton Siva led Louisville with 11 points, while Gorgui Dieng had seven points, 12 rebounds and four blocks.

Kenny Payne, assistant coach of Kentucky, met with Mississippi State on Friday about their head coaching vacancy.

Payne has no head coaching experience and is closely tied to William Wesley.

Wesley helped Payne secure an assistant job at Oregon and then joined John Calipari at Kentucky two years ago.

Alex Oriakhi’s transfer options may be limited by the bylaws of various conferences throughout the country, such as the Southeastern Conference.

Oriakhi completed three years of eligibility at UConn. The SEC requires prospective transfers to have more than one year of eligibility remaining.

SEC schools Florida, Kentucky and Missouri had been mentioned as possible destinations.

Anthony Davis said his injured left knee is at about “90 percent.”

“My knee is better,” Davis said. “I got a lot of treatment and rehab for it. I’ll be fine – just keep icing it, keep getting treatment.”
Davis left Kentucky's South Region final win over Baylor with what the team termed a "contusion."

He averages 14.3 points, 10.1 rebounds and 4.6 blocks a game.

Arizona and UNLV are out of the race to sign basketball star Shabazz Muhammad

"It's at three right now, yeah," Muhammad said. "UCLA, Kentucky and Duke. Right now, those are probably the last three before I make my decision."

Muhammad, Naismith National Player of the Year, said he liked UNLV and Kansas, but wanted to be honest with coaches who kept ringing his phone.

"I just think it was the calls," Muhammad said. "The schools that I took out, I liked them, but I wasn't really interested in going. I didn't want to lead them on. I want them to do the best they can to recruit other players and not recruit me anymore. I just thought that was the mature thing to do."

Muhammad was awarded MVP honors Wednesday in the McDonald's All-American Game, scoring 21 points to lead the West to a 106-102 victory.

"When you come to every event, you want to be known as the best player at the event," he said. "Knowing everybody's talented, this is the elite 24, top 24 guys in the country, and just coming in knowing everybody's competing, competing is a beautiful thing."

Kentucky played together for the first time during summer pickup games with NBA players, with the most extensive visit coming from the Oklahoma City Thunder, which brought most of its roster to Lexington for nearly a week.

The Wildcats struggled early on.

“They came out here and just tried to kill us, really,” Doron Lamb said. “They weren’t taking it easy on us — especially Kevin Durant. Every time he got the ball, he tried to shoot it. And he was talking junk.”

“It think it helped start us off knowing we needed each other,” Terrence Jones said, “because if we did it one by one, we were going to get destroyed by those players. We had to help on defense, had to do something on offense to free each other up or we weren’t going to win.”

By the end of the Thunder's visit, the Wildcats were holding their own and carrying a new confidence that this season might be as special as fans hoped.

“We were pretty excited about that,” Darius Miller said. “That’s when we knew we had a pretty good team.”

“We figured out how good we could be,” Marquis Teague said, “if we were unselfish.”

“We started winning those games and beating some of the best players in the world — just because we were doing it together,” Jones said. “We knew from that point on we were going to have to do it together.”

Shabazz Muhammad seems to have narrowed his college choices.

“I’m considering five but there are three that [stand out],” Muhammad announced.

UCLA, Duke, and Kentucky (in no order) have put themselves in the forefront, with Kansas and UNLV rounding out the top five.

Muhammad is expected to announce his decision on April 11 — the first day of the spring signing period which runs through May 16.

Thomas Robinson, Anthony Davis, Jared Sullinger, Draymond Green and Doug McDermott have been named to the 11-12 AP All-America First Team.

Robinson was a unanimous selection, the first player to receive that distinction since Blake Griffin in 2009.

"It's a blessing to be named even in the same category as Blake Griffin," Robinson said. "For that to happen, I'm glad all the hard work is paying off.

On the Second Team are Isaiah Canaan of Murray State, Marcus Denmon of Missouri, Tyler Zeller of North Carolina, Jae Crowder of Marquette and Kevin Jones of West Virginia.

Chris Walker cut his list of possible college destinations to Kentucky, Florida, Kansas, Ohio State and Baylor.

Walker, a 6-foot-10, 195 pound combo-forward out of Bonifay Holmes County in Florida, is ranked as one of the top 10 prospects in the class of 2013.

He is expected to announce his decision soon.

Anthony Davis has been studying the shot-blocking skills of Serge Ibaka, who leads the NBA in blocks per game (3.3) and block percentage (8.8).

“I started to watch Serge Ibaka from the Thunder,” Davis said. “He’s a great shot-blocker, and I just try to see what he (does) to block shots in the NBA. It’s very hard to guys block shots in the NBA because guys are so talented, and I think he does a great job of doing so.”

Davis leads all NCAA players in blocks per game at 4.5; his 13.8 block percentage is second among players averaging at least 20 minutes.