Reflections on the best basketball season I’ll ever see (in person)
This is supposed to be a travel blog, and this essay is a travelogue of sorts, as it surely chronicles a journey. Plus, I followed the Cats to at least three different states this season (four, if you count Louisville as a different state). But mostly, I wrote it so I needed someplace to put it.
Last October, I finally attended my first Big Blue madness. I was starved for basketball after a long summer, and I wanted to see UK hang its first Final Four banner since my high school days. I had never watched a basketball practice with 24,000 other fans before, and I being there reminded me that UK basketball is like nothing else.
A few weeks later, it was the Blue-White game. I’d been once before, but only because I’d been given a ticket. This time, weeks earlier, I got up at 7:00 on a Saturday morning to buy the best ticket I could, the moment they went on sale. It paid off, with seats in the second row behind the “White” team’s bench. I did it because I’d never been more anxious to see what a new group of players could do, and I wasn’t disappointed, seeing my first Anthony Davis block and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist jam. But most memorably, I was rewarded for my early-morning ticket buying with an up-close view when, with time running out, Jarrod Polson broke free down the court. He looked to be going for a wide-open lay-up, but instead brought down the house by rising up for a two-handed dunk that no one in the arena knew he was capable of.
Real, or at least formal, competition began with the most exciting exhibition game I never got to see. Transylvania’s team walked the four blocks from their campus to Rupp Arena to help UK’s expectation-weighed team tune-up. The erstwhile rivals were playing for the first time in 100 years. Sadly, I watched from a hotel room at the other end of the state, but even on TV, it was easy to hear UK fans cheer every big shot Transy made.
Two weeks later, my whole family drove to Louisville before dawn and boarded a 737 full of Kentucky fans, all flying halfway across the country to see UK’s season really begin. It’s one thing for UK fans to take over a city like Nashville or even Atlanta for an SEC tournament. It’s something else entirely to occupy all of Manhattan – but that’s just what we did, on the same weekend that the police finally cleared the people who had been occupying Wall Street. For three days, there was no place to go in the country’s biggest city without running into other UK fans. But the most were at Jack Demsey’s – so many that they were spilling out into 33rd Street by the hundreds – a legendary gathering place for Kentucky alumni and fans in the Big Apple. We trekked en masse the two blocks to basketball’s biggest stage – figuratively, if not literally, since Rupp Arena seats fans than Madison Square Garden does – to watch four of the marquis programs in the history of college basketball match up. Duke beat Michigan State for Mike Krzyzewski’s record-setting, if maddening, 903rd win. Once Krzyzewski broke free of a disturbingly-long mid-court embrace with Bobby Knight, Kentucky took the floor to battle Kansas in a game that no one would have guessed would be replayed on an even bigger stage four-and-a-half months later. The real harbinger of things to come was on the court. After a close first half, UK’s freshmen, playing just their second official college game, easily dispatched the #2 winningest team in college basketball history, a team led by superstar Thomas Robinson.
Back in Lexington, with that Jarrod Polson dunk still gracing the home screen on my iPhone, it only got better for underdogs. Kentucky hadn’t beaten Tennessee in football since I was four years old, but on November 26, behind the play of a much-maligned wide receiver put in as quarterback for the most hopeless game of his career, Kentucky broke The Streak. Only a few hours after I walked off the field at Commonwealth Stadium (after having jumped over a bleacher wall to get there), I was in Rupp Arena for a ho-hum game against Portland, that promised to be a letdown after the elation of that afternoon. On my way in, I’d posted on Facebook: “If Matt Roark is not the ‘Y’ at tonight's basketball game, it will be a tragedy for the ages.” Well, someone must have been listening, because at the first TV timeout of the second half, as the cheerleaders spelled out K-E-N-T-U-C-K-Y on the floor, in came the unlikeliest hero of the biggest football game in 26 years, to the loudest and longest ovation I’ve ever heard from a Rupp Arena crowd. Afterwards, Roark told the newspaper he didn’t know how the crowd would react, because these were basketball fans. Well, we’re -Kentucky fans and, that day at least, Matt Roark was our leading man.
The riches continued. As December opened, I got to see four of the top eight preseason teams play in a 15-hour span, all right here in Kentucky. At the still-shiny-new YUM! Center, I watched from a luxury suite – that bastion of NBA arenas that threatens to ruin the college game – as my Vanderbilt Commodores – a Vanderbilt team I’d been anticipating for three years – blew a big second-half lead and lost by two in overtime on a Peyton Siva circus shot. Lost to a Louisville team that would go farther than anybody imagined.
The next day, after an early-morning rush back to Lexington, I was in my seat at Rupp before noon for a matchup of #1 vs. #2, North Carolina vs. Kentucky. The game lived up to the hype – and it was one of the most-hyped regular season games of the past decade – when Anthony Davis saved the win for Kentucky by appearing out of nowhere to block what would have been the game-winning shot by John Henson, who had passed up the NBA draft to come back to UNC. Davis gave us our first real glimpse of what he was capable of, by grabbing his own rebound off the block and kicking the ball out to Marquis Teague to clear the lane while the clock ran out on the Kentucky’s signature early-season win.
Most of us in attendance left the arena thinking we may have just seen a preview of the national title game, little knowing that we’d just seen the real preview two weeks earlier in New York. But before leaving, we stopped – 6,000 of us, or so – to hear Coach Calipari’s postgame radio interview. If it’s any indication of the draw of that game, sticking around an additional hour for the radio broadcast was one Congressman two rows in front of me, and another Congressman six rows back. Lurking elsewhere in Rupp during the game was Speaker of the House John Boehner – we weren’t too far from a Congressional quorum, it seemed. Boehner, of Ohio, was captured wearing Kentucky blue and throwing up three goggles in the UK student section – in a picture that nearly came back to haunt him had his native Ohio State Buckeyes advanced past the national semifinals to play Kentucky in the title game.
New Years’ Eve came and went, with a now-routine whipping of Louisville, in a game where “whipping” is an understatement for the physical beating the players endured in a fight-to-the-end physical brawl. When the end came, though, Calipari notched his third straight win over our archrival, securing for UK fans in-state bragging rights for another year, or so we thought.
January was quiet, which led perfectly into my own most-anticipated game of the year: Kentucky at Vanderbilt, complete with ESPN College GameDay’s first-ever visit to Nashville. I’d circled the date on my calendar in September and secured a hotel room for the weekend soon after. On a cold morning, we got to Memorial Gym in time for the early broadcast. As my UK-fan companions were absurdly banished to the third level by Vanderbilt, and Digger Phelps needlessly lectured the Kentucky crowd, my Vanderbilt-fan friend and I made our way to the student section, just behind the anchor desk. For part of the show, Vanderbilt’s chancellor stood on the bleacher just in front of me, and for two hours the energy never let up. Twelve hours later, the game lived up to its preseason billing as a battle between the SEC’s two best squads. UK came out on top by six, in a well-played game on both sides that was actually much closer than the score indicates.
Back in Kentucky, the end of the regular season was in view. Along the way to Senior Night (yes, this is the last we’ll see of Eloy Vargas, a kid who frustrated fans but gave Kentucky his all), I grew to love not just this team, but these players. Marquis Teague, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Anthony Davis, Kyle Wiltjer, Doron Lamb, and Terrence Jones were all superstars who played a selfless, team-first game of basketball we may not see again in college basketball for many years. We may not see it again, period. Anywhere. And that selfless team was held together by the most solid of seniors, Darius Miller. A Kentucky boy who I had watched, with great anticipation, lead his team to a state championship on the same Rupp Arena Floor in 2008. Kentucky’s Mr. Basketball, who endured a disastrous year under Billy Gillispie, who would, thankfully, see his fortunes reverse as he played in two Final Fours. A future NBA player who, after starting for three years, didn’t bat an eye at coming off the bench when Kentucky had more starters than NCAA rules would allow a team to play at once. If there’s ever been a senior I’ll miss, it’s Darius. But like Darius, nearly every player on this team did nearly everything well. And that’s why this team was so good.
Kentucky swept the SEC regular season, with no other team coming close. Vanderbilt, thankfully, held on for second place in a closely-packed field.
Then it was off to New Orleans, on another plane – through another airport – full of Kentucky fans. I’ve been to seven SEC tournaments. I’ve seen Kentucky fans make every arena into a home arena. But I’ve never seen UK fans outnumber all of the other fanbases as completely as we did in New Orleans during our coronation march through Louisiana. From the streets of the French Quarter – broadcast to the world through the now-famous Bourbon Street webcam – to the sports bar near the arena where UK fans circled the block twice for a pep rally even after the building was at capacity, to tucked away restaurants in the far reaches of the city, fans turned New Orleans to Blue Orleans. In fact, Saturday night I thought I’d found the one place in the city without other Kentucky fans – a late-night rock show in the warehouse district, packed with hipsters – only to return home to learn an entire group of my friends had been across the room. All of this took place under the watchful eye of Anthony Davis – arms spread 40 feet wide on a billboard overlooking the Superdome – wisely bought by UK to last through the Final Four.
But a funny thing happened. Vandy took the SEC championship in front of Kentucky’s “home crowd.” In the third game of the season against a team very few UK fans wanted to play a third time, Vanderbilt played harder, bothered Kentucky, and made plays down the stretch to beat the Cats by nine. I was devastated; I was ecstatic. Calipari’s perfect record in a tournament he’d professed not to care about was broken. My Commodores won their first conference title since 1951 – a year they also beat Kentucky as Kentucky was en route to a national championship. The results treated everyone well. Kentucky refocused. A great group of Vanderbilt players known mostly for underachieving scored a signature accomplishment that will be talked about for a generation. The only real losers were the t-shirt hawkers, who surely had lots of unsellable stock to ship to the third world.
The pressure to win the conference championship had been off though, because Syracuse, the only other team to be talked about in the same breath as Kentucky, had lost even earlier in its tournament. (The surprise winner out of the Big East? Louisville.) Kentucky had the number one seed in the NCAA tournament locked up. And how was the number one team rewarded? With a tournament draw that started with a friend (Western Kentucky or Sean Woods’ Mississippi Valley State), and looked to continue through a who’s-who of mortal enemies (UConn, Indiana, Duke). But Kentucky got to start its run in Louisville. On Saturday, for the Iowa State game, Kentucky fans turned the YUM! Center into a sea of blue. But the real draw that day was the undercard: I finally got to see Murray State play in person. The hometown favorite had become a national sensation this year: one-loss OVC champions led by point guard and player of the year candidate Isaiah Canaan. Murray State fought valiantly, but sadly fell to Marquette, an old tournament enemy of UK, in the round of 32, putting a decided damper on the season’s great run.
I watched the rest of Kentucky’s season on TV. There was no letdown. Kentucky avenged its only loss of the regular season in run-and-gun shootout with Indiana, 102-90, though at halftime I was so nervous I found myself pacing around my neighborhood. Next came Baylor; the team that was supposed to match up with UK better than anybody. We led by 20 at the half, and it should have been more.
Beating Baylor in the regional finals set up the unlikeliest of rematches. Louisville edged out Florida to advance the semi-finals, and meet Kentucky in the Final Four for the first time in the history of the programs. Leading up to it was a week like no other the state of Kentucky had experienced. Lines were drawn. Articles were written from every angle, then written again. Kentucky had nothing to gain other than advancing to the next round, and everything to lose; Louisville, on the other hand, wasn’t supposed to be there and had nothing to lose. Kentucky fans had probably never experienced more collective anxiety over a single game. Saturday came, and the streets, restaurants, and bars in Lexington were packed with fans. The game was ugly, but Kentucky survived. And now, Kentucky fans are assured of bragging rights for another year.
After playing Louisville, the championship game almost seemed anticlimactic. Almost. Except it was the first-ever championship game between perhaps the two bluest of the blue-blood programs. This Kentucky team seemed predestined to win, and for the most part, the game played out as expected. It was UK’s first championship game of my adult life, yet as the clock wound down through the final minute and it became increasingly apparent that Kentucky was going to win its eighth national championship, I found myself standing in front of the TV hopping up and down like I was 15. And it felt great. After many ho-hum years with Tubby Smith and two disastrous years with Billy Gillispie, John Calipari’s Wildcats had immediately reversed course and risen near the top quickly, but now, three years in, the restoration was complete, and UK was once again the championship team we expect.
When the brackets were announced three weeks earlier, the media raconteurs wanted Kentucky’s tournament run to be about revenge: defending champion UConn, who eliminated UK last year; Indiana, the only regular-season loss; Duke, on the 20th anniversary of the most-discussed defeat in the history of Kentucky basketball. But the stars don’t always align as the sportswriters envision. This tournament did turn out to be about revenge. But, other than the Indiana game, it was about UK’s enemies getting their own shot. UConn and Duke fizzled. Instead came a Final Four filled with good teams that UK had beaten. Louisville. Kansas. Florida had been on deck. These were teams with something to prove. Teams that wanted to prove they were the equal of Kentucky, that wanted their revenge for regular-season losses. But it wouldn’t be.
These Cats held strong. They played together in a way that is almost unimaginable for a collection of superstars. Yet, on a team that wasn’t about personal glory, there was plenty of it. Anthony Davis is the consensus national player of the year. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist may be the #2 pick in the draft. Fittingly, the championship game brought more individual accomplishments. Doron Lamb joined the 1,000-point club. Darius Miller recorded his 99th career block. Anthony Davis set the national freshman block record. And they never quit playing as a team.
After the buzzer sounded and the record books closed on the 2012 season, the celebration started. All week I had despaired that after following this team so closely, and with such touted games being played in the Final Four, I wouldn’t be in New Orleans for the biggest games of my adult life. But something funny happened Saturday afternoon as I rode my bike up Euclid, basking in the sun, past front yards full of students wearing blue and white and gathered around cornhole sets and charcoal grills, drinking beer on their front porches, behind sheets hung from the roofs with clever slogans and piercing insults. I realized that this weekend, for these games, there was no place in the world I’d rather be than Lexington. And I wasn’t alone. That’s why so many of my friends who have long since scattered from home came back from across the country to be in Lexington for this weekend.
The post-game celebrations were the things legends are made from. I’ll never forget the 1996 championship – the first of my life. I was 15 and sat on my bedroom floor, up far past my bed time, mesmerized by the throngs of people who invaded Champions Corner, the intersection of Woodland and Euclid. Now, 16 years later, I live a short walk from that same corner. Lexington has changed and the celebration has changed, but people still spilled into the streets by the thousands. Yes, the crowds were dispersed. Other areas of campus have grown, and the celebration wasn’t limited to a single spot. Yes, a few people on the other side of campus went out of their minds and out of control, and sadly that was the face of Lexington the world saw. But the face of Lexington I saw – in my own neighborhood – was a face of pure jubilation. Twice in the same weekend. More championships will surely come, but there may not be another that is as long-anticipated, from a team that is as well liked as the 2012 championship team – the Unbelievables.
The celebration finished as only Kentucky could finish it. Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of the work week, with barely more than 12 hours’ notice, 20,000 fans gathered in Rupp Arena to welcome the team home and watch as the 2012 National Championship banner was unfurled. I was in the fifth row when the team bus arrived in the middle of the arena, still under police escort. Out came the players to game-like introductions, one by one, making their way to the stage. Last off the bus was the stalwart of the team, the lone four-year senior, the most recent of a long line of hometown favorites – Darius Miller, wielding the championship trophy. He lifted it over his head to the loudest – and last – ovation of his career, a career that had seen many Rupp Arena ovations, since he won his first championship as a high schooler, in the same building. But it won’t really be his last, because Darius will be back. He’ll never again put on the jersey and hit clutch jumpers when his team needs him the most, but he’ll be back to Rupp Arena, and will always command an ovation.
Looking back, I was blessed to see great basketball this season – more great basketball in one year than anyone deserves to watch in a lifetime. Not only did I see this team play 22 times, but I saw even more of the greatest basketball teams in the country. When the brackets were announced, I’d watched five of the top eight teams in person. Add Louisville, who I saw play twice, and I saw three of the Final Four teams play. Plus, while its final record wasn’t what I’d expected, I saw an unforgettable Vanderbilt team play nine times. And I got to do it all in some of the best arenas and best atmospheres in the country.
Part of me wishes I could just freeze time. Stop it right here and relish this season forever. I don’t know if there will ever be a better one for UK fans, but I do know that even if there is, I probably won’t be as up close as for it as I was for this one. But this is Kentucky, and basketball never stops. 192 days until Big Blue Madness!
Last October, I finally attended my first Big Blue madness. I was starved for basketball after a long summer, and I wanted to see UK hang its first Final Four banner since my high school days. I had never watched a basketball practice with 24,000 other fans before, and I being there reminded me that UK basketball is like nothing else.
A few weeks later, it was the Blue-White game. I’d been once before, but only because I’d been given a ticket. This time, weeks earlier, I got up at 7:00 on a Saturday morning to buy the best ticket I could, the moment they went on sale. It paid off, with seats in the second row behind the “White” team’s bench. I did it because I’d never been more anxious to see what a new group of players could do, and I wasn’t disappointed, seeing my first Anthony Davis block and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist jam. But most memorably, I was rewarded for my early-morning ticket buying with an up-close view when, with time running out, Jarrod Polson broke free down the court. He looked to be going for a wide-open lay-up, but instead brought down the house by rising up for a two-handed dunk that no one in the arena knew he was capable of.
Real, or at least formal, competition began with the most exciting exhibition game I never got to see. Transylvania’s team walked the four blocks from their campus to Rupp Arena to help UK’s expectation-weighed team tune-up. The erstwhile rivals were playing for the first time in 100 years. Sadly, I watched from a hotel room at the other end of the state, but even on TV, it was easy to hear UK fans cheer every big shot Transy made.
Two weeks later, my whole family drove to Louisville before dawn and boarded a 737 full of Kentucky fans, all flying halfway across the country to see UK’s season really begin. It’s one thing for UK fans to take over a city like Nashville or even Atlanta for an SEC tournament. It’s something else entirely to occupy all of Manhattan – but that’s just what we did, on the same weekend that the police finally cleared the people who had been occupying Wall Street. For three days, there was no place to go in the country’s biggest city without running into other UK fans. But the most were at Jack Demsey’s – so many that they were spilling out into 33rd Street by the hundreds – a legendary gathering place for Kentucky alumni and fans in the Big Apple. We trekked en masse the two blocks to basketball’s biggest stage – figuratively, if not literally, since Rupp Arena seats fans than Madison Square Garden does – to watch four of the marquis programs in the history of college basketball match up. Duke beat Michigan State for Mike Krzyzewski’s record-setting, if maddening, 903rd win. Once Krzyzewski broke free of a disturbingly-long mid-court embrace with Bobby Knight, Kentucky took the floor to battle Kansas in a game that no one would have guessed would be replayed on an even bigger stage four-and-a-half months later. The real harbinger of things to come was on the court. After a close first half, UK’s freshmen, playing just their second official college game, easily dispatched the #2 winningest team in college basketball history, a team led by superstar Thomas Robinson.Back in Lexington, with that Jarrod Polson dunk still gracing the home screen on my iPhone, it only got better for underdogs. Kentucky hadn’t beaten Tennessee in football since I was four years old, but on November 26, behind the play of a much-maligned wide receiver put in as quarterback for the most hopeless game of his career, Kentucky broke The Streak. Only a few hours after I walked off the field at Commonwealth Stadium (after having jumped over a bleacher wall to get there), I was in Rupp Arena for a ho-hum game against Portland, that promised to be a letdown after the elation of that afternoon. On my way in, I’d posted on Facebook: “If Matt Roark is not the ‘Y’ at tonight's basketball game, it will be a tragedy for the ages.” Well, someone must have been listening, because at the first TV timeout of the second half, as the cheerleaders spelled out K-E-N-T-U-C-K-Y on the floor, in came the unlikeliest hero of the biggest football game in 26 years, to the loudest and longest ovation I’ve ever heard from a Rupp Arena crowd. Afterwards, Roark told the newspaper he didn’t know how the crowd would react, because these were basketball fans. Well, we’re -Kentucky fans and, that day at least, Matt Roark was our leading man.
The riches continued. As December opened, I got to see four of the top eight preseason teams play in a 15-hour span, all right here in Kentucky. At the still-shiny-new YUM! Center, I watched from a luxury suite – that bastion of NBA arenas that threatens to ruin the college game – as my Vanderbilt Commodores – a Vanderbilt team I’d been anticipating for three years – blew a big second-half lead and lost by two in overtime on a Peyton Siva circus shot. Lost to a Louisville team that would go farther than anybody imagined.
The next day, after an early-morning rush back to Lexington, I was in my seat at Rupp before noon for a matchup of #1 vs. #2, North Carolina vs. Kentucky. The game lived up to the hype – and it was one of the most-hyped regular season games of the past decade – when Anthony Davis saved the win for Kentucky by appearing out of nowhere to block what would have been the game-winning shot by John Henson, who had passed up the NBA draft to come back to UNC. Davis gave us our first real glimpse of what he was capable of, by grabbing his own rebound off the block and kicking the ball out to Marquis Teague to clear the lane while the clock ran out on the Kentucky’s signature early-season win.
Most of us in attendance left the arena thinking we may have just seen a preview of the national title game, little knowing that we’d just seen the real preview two weeks earlier in New York. But before leaving, we stopped – 6,000 of us, or so – to hear Coach Calipari’s postgame radio interview. If it’s any indication of the draw of that game, sticking around an additional hour for the radio broadcast was one Congressman two rows in front of me, and another Congressman six rows back. Lurking elsewhere in Rupp during the game was Speaker of the House John Boehner – we weren’t too far from a Congressional quorum, it seemed. Boehner, of Ohio, was captured wearing Kentucky blue and throwing up three goggles in the UK student section – in a picture that nearly came back to haunt him had his native Ohio State Buckeyes advanced past the national semifinals to play Kentucky in the title game.
New Years’ Eve came and went, with a now-routine whipping of Louisville, in a game where “whipping” is an understatement for the physical beating the players endured in a fight-to-the-end physical brawl. When the end came, though, Calipari notched his third straight win over our archrival, securing for UK fans in-state bragging rights for another year, or so we thought.
January was quiet, which led perfectly into my own most-anticipated game of the year: Kentucky at Vanderbilt, complete with ESPN College GameDay’s first-ever visit to Nashville. I’d circled the date on my calendar in September and secured a hotel room for the weekend soon after. On a cold morning, we got to Memorial Gym in time for the early broadcast. As my UK-fan companions were absurdly banished to the third level by Vanderbilt, and Digger Phelps needlessly lectured the Kentucky crowd, my Vanderbilt-fan friend and I made our way to the student section, just behind the anchor desk. For part of the show, Vanderbilt’s chancellor stood on the bleacher just in front of me, and for two hours the energy never let up. Twelve hours later, the game lived up to its preseason billing as a battle between the SEC’s two best squads. UK came out on top by six, in a well-played game on both sides that was actually much closer than the score indicates.Back in Kentucky, the end of the regular season was in view. Along the way to Senior Night (yes, this is the last we’ll see of Eloy Vargas, a kid who frustrated fans but gave Kentucky his all), I grew to love not just this team, but these players. Marquis Teague, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Anthony Davis, Kyle Wiltjer, Doron Lamb, and Terrence Jones were all superstars who played a selfless, team-first game of basketball we may not see again in college basketball for many years. We may not see it again, period. Anywhere. And that selfless team was held together by the most solid of seniors, Darius Miller. A Kentucky boy who I had watched, with great anticipation, lead his team to a state championship on the same Rupp Arena Floor in 2008. Kentucky’s Mr. Basketball, who endured a disastrous year under Billy Gillispie, who would, thankfully, see his fortunes reverse as he played in two Final Fours. A future NBA player who, after starting for three years, didn’t bat an eye at coming off the bench when Kentucky had more starters than NCAA rules would allow a team to play at once. If there’s ever been a senior I’ll miss, it’s Darius. But like Darius, nearly every player on this team did nearly everything well. And that’s why this team was so good.
Kentucky swept the SEC regular season, with no other team coming close. Vanderbilt, thankfully, held on for second place in a closely-packed field.
Then it was off to New Orleans, on another plane – through another airport – full of Kentucky fans. I’ve been to seven SEC tournaments. I’ve seen Kentucky fans make every arena into a home arena. But I’ve never seen UK fans outnumber all of the other fanbases as completely as we did in New Orleans during our coronation march through Louisiana. From the streets of the French Quarter – broadcast to the world through the now-famous Bourbon Street webcam – to the sports bar near the arena where UK fans circled the block twice for a pep rally even after the building was at capacity, to tucked away restaurants in the far reaches of the city, fans turned New Orleans to Blue Orleans. In fact, Saturday night I thought I’d found the one place in the city without other Kentucky fans – a late-night rock show in the warehouse district, packed with hipsters – only to return home to learn an entire group of my friends had been across the room. All of this took place under the watchful eye of Anthony Davis – arms spread 40 feet wide on a billboard overlooking the Superdome – wisely bought by UK to last through the Final Four.But a funny thing happened. Vandy took the SEC championship in front of Kentucky’s “home crowd.” In the third game of the season against a team very few UK fans wanted to play a third time, Vanderbilt played harder, bothered Kentucky, and made plays down the stretch to beat the Cats by nine. I was devastated; I was ecstatic. Calipari’s perfect record in a tournament he’d professed not to care about was broken. My Commodores won their first conference title since 1951 – a year they also beat Kentucky as Kentucky was en route to a national championship. The results treated everyone well. Kentucky refocused. A great group of Vanderbilt players known mostly for underachieving scored a signature accomplishment that will be talked about for a generation. The only real losers were the t-shirt hawkers, who surely had lots of unsellable stock to ship to the third world.
The pressure to win the conference championship had been off though, because Syracuse, the only other team to be talked about in the same breath as Kentucky, had lost even earlier in its tournament. (The surprise winner out of the Big East? Louisville.) Kentucky had the number one seed in the NCAA tournament locked up. And how was the number one team rewarded? With a tournament draw that started with a friend (Western Kentucky or Sean Woods’ Mississippi Valley State), and looked to continue through a who’s-who of mortal enemies (UConn, Indiana, Duke). But Kentucky got to start its run in Louisville. On Saturday, for the Iowa State game, Kentucky fans turned the YUM! Center into a sea of blue. But the real draw that day was the undercard: I finally got to see Murray State play in person. The hometown favorite had become a national sensation this year: one-loss OVC champions led by point guard and player of the year candidate Isaiah Canaan. Murray State fought valiantly, but sadly fell to Marquette, an old tournament enemy of UK, in the round of 32, putting a decided damper on the season’s great run.I watched the rest of Kentucky’s season on TV. There was no letdown. Kentucky avenged its only loss of the regular season in run-and-gun shootout with Indiana, 102-90, though at halftime I was so nervous I found myself pacing around my neighborhood. Next came Baylor; the team that was supposed to match up with UK better than anybody. We led by 20 at the half, and it should have been more.
Beating Baylor in the regional finals set up the unlikeliest of rematches. Louisville edged out Florida to advance the semi-finals, and meet Kentucky in the Final Four for the first time in the history of the programs. Leading up to it was a week like no other the state of Kentucky had experienced. Lines were drawn. Articles were written from every angle, then written again. Kentucky had nothing to gain other than advancing to the next round, and everything to lose; Louisville, on the other hand, wasn’t supposed to be there and had nothing to lose. Kentucky fans had probably never experienced more collective anxiety over a single game. Saturday came, and the streets, restaurants, and bars in Lexington were packed with fans. The game was ugly, but Kentucky survived. And now, Kentucky fans are assured of bragging rights for another year.
After playing Louisville, the championship game almost seemed anticlimactic. Almost. Except it was the first-ever championship game between perhaps the two bluest of the blue-blood programs. This Kentucky team seemed predestined to win, and for the most part, the game played out as expected. It was UK’s first championship game of my adult life, yet as the clock wound down through the final minute and it became increasingly apparent that Kentucky was going to win its eighth national championship, I found myself standing in front of the TV hopping up and down like I was 15. And it felt great. After many ho-hum years with Tubby Smith and two disastrous years with Billy Gillispie, John Calipari’s Wildcats had immediately reversed course and risen near the top quickly, but now, three years in, the restoration was complete, and UK was once again the championship team we expect.
When the brackets were announced three weeks earlier, the media raconteurs wanted Kentucky’s tournament run to be about revenge: defending champion UConn, who eliminated UK last year; Indiana, the only regular-season loss; Duke, on the 20th anniversary of the most-discussed defeat in the history of Kentucky basketball. But the stars don’t always align as the sportswriters envision. This tournament did turn out to be about revenge. But, other than the Indiana game, it was about UK’s enemies getting their own shot. UConn and Duke fizzled. Instead came a Final Four filled with good teams that UK had beaten. Louisville. Kansas. Florida had been on deck. These were teams with something to prove. Teams that wanted to prove they were the equal of Kentucky, that wanted their revenge for regular-season losses. But it wouldn’t be.
These Cats held strong. They played together in a way that is almost unimaginable for a collection of superstars. Yet, on a team that wasn’t about personal glory, there was plenty of it. Anthony Davis is the consensus national player of the year. Michael Kidd-Gilchrist may be the #2 pick in the draft. Fittingly, the championship game brought more individual accomplishments. Doron Lamb joined the 1,000-point club. Darius Miller recorded his 99th career block. Anthony Davis set the national freshman block record. And they never quit playing as a team.
After the buzzer sounded and the record books closed on the 2012 season, the celebration started. All week I had despaired that after following this team so closely, and with such touted games being played in the Final Four, I wouldn’t be in New Orleans for the biggest games of my adult life. But something funny happened Saturday afternoon as I rode my bike up Euclid, basking in the sun, past front yards full of students wearing blue and white and gathered around cornhole sets and charcoal grills, drinking beer on their front porches, behind sheets hung from the roofs with clever slogans and piercing insults. I realized that this weekend, for these games, there was no place in the world I’d rather be than Lexington. And I wasn’t alone. That’s why so many of my friends who have long since scattered from home came back from across the country to be in Lexington for this weekend.The post-game celebrations were the things legends are made from. I’ll never forget the 1996 championship – the first of my life. I was 15 and sat on my bedroom floor, up far past my bed time, mesmerized by the throngs of people who invaded Champions Corner, the intersection of Woodland and Euclid. Now, 16 years later, I live a short walk from that same corner. Lexington has changed and the celebration has changed, but people still spilled into the streets by the thousands. Yes, the crowds were dispersed. Other areas of campus have grown, and the celebration wasn’t limited to a single spot. Yes, a few people on the other side of campus went out of their minds and out of control, and sadly that was the face of Lexington the world saw. But the face of Lexington I saw – in my own neighborhood – was a face of pure jubilation. Twice in the same weekend. More championships will surely come, but there may not be another that is as long-anticipated, from a team that is as well liked as the 2012 championship team – the Unbelievables.
The celebration finished as only Kentucky could finish it. Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of the work week, with barely more than 12 hours’ notice, 20,000 fans gathered in Rupp Arena to welcome the team home and watch as the 2012 National Championship banner was unfurled. I was in the fifth row when the team bus arrived in the middle of the arena, still under police escort. Out came the players to game-like introductions, one by one, making their way to the stage. Last off the bus was the stalwart of the team, the lone four-year senior, the most recent of a long line of hometown favorites – Darius Miller, wielding the championship trophy. He lifted it over his head to the loudest – and last – ovation of his career, a career that had seen many Rupp Arena ovations, since he won his first championship as a high schooler, in the same building. But it won’t really be his last, because Darius will be back. He’ll never again put on the jersey and hit clutch jumpers when his team needs him the most, but he’ll be back to Rupp Arena, and will always command an ovation.
Looking back, I was blessed to see great basketball this season – more great basketball in one year than anyone deserves to watch in a lifetime. Not only did I see this team play 22 times, but I saw even more of the greatest basketball teams in the country. When the brackets were announced, I’d watched five of the top eight teams in person. Add Louisville, who I saw play twice, and I saw three of the Final Four teams play. Plus, while its final record wasn’t what I’d expected, I saw an unforgettable Vanderbilt team play nine times. And I got to do it all in some of the best arenas and best atmospheres in the country.
Part of me wishes I could just freeze time. Stop it right here and relish this season forever. I don’t know if there will ever be a better one for UK fans, but I do know that even if there is, I probably won’t be as up close as for it as I was for this one. But this is Kentucky, and basketball never stops. 192 days until Big Blue Madness!Labels: Kentucky basketball
posted by Jay at 11:30 PM
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