I think Hampton is going to have to try to run on Kentucky. Hampton is one of the 5 fastest teams in the tournament as far as tempo, and Kentucky is in the bottom 100. If Hampton tries to go outside of their style and execute half-court offense, they might get shutout. LSU and Buffalo are both teams that rank highly in pace and both teams gave Kentucky a little trouble (in Buffalo's case, for a half).
I feel like Hampton's at such a size disadvantage they're just gonna have to try like hell to pester the big Kentucky players like gnats or something. I don't know what their style is defensively, and if they're a straight man to man team but I'd like to see them throw out every defense you could possibly draw up. If UK is looking at tape of Hampton and see they do one thing, maybe they'll get surprised when they're switching from 2-3 zone, to man-to-man, to matchup zone, to full court press, to 1-3-1. Just try to give them different looks, I guess. It might confuse your own players more than UK's, but what do you have to lose? Hopefully they've tried different defenses throughout the year?
So if you're coach Ed Joyner of Hampton what's your strategy? What are you telling your team? How does Hampton pull off the upset?