The bottom line is Kentucky found a way to win Saturday night because it recognized when it was Winning Time against a fearless, throwback Notre Dame team that believed. That Red Holzman would have loved.
And maybe, just maybe, it will prove to be the kind of test the Wildcats needed to pass, when they are asked to dig down deep into their reservoir of will and get off the deck and wipe the blood off their brow and fight back with an indomitable will and refuse to lose.
Or maybe it is the first sign that the pressure of chasing perfection and a national championship will ruin them.
No one, from the start of the season until now, will be surprised if Kentucky closes the deal and is cutting down the nets inside Lucas Oil Stadium on the last Monday night of the college basketball season.
And no one should be surprised if they are not.
Kentucky is still the team to beat, make no mistake about that.
It’s just that Kentucky can be beaten, make no mistake about that, either.
And Wisconsin is the team that can beat them.
It has never been about 40-0 for John Calipari. It is about winning the national championship. The closer Kentucky gets, the more the pressure builds.
Which means that perfect storm lies in ambush for Kentucky at the Final Four: suffocating expectations and a grizzled Wisconsin team that appears built to give the Wildcats 40 more minutes of hell.
The recipe for an upset is Kentucky failing to show up scared straight and Wisconsin, out to avenge last year’s Final Four loss to the ‘Cats, soaring on the wings of confidence after dispatching Arizona in the West Region final.
The Badgers own the same senior leadership and basketball I.Q. as Notre Dame and can spread the floor and knock down 3s at a dizzying pace. And you better believe Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan, hungry for his first NCAA One Shining Moment, will go to school on the Irish blueprint.
Calipari, however, is certain to trot out every motivational and psychological trick in the book to both inspire his players and relieve them of the burgeoning stress. The last thing he needs is them thinking of the season as a failure if they fail to close the deal. Which, by the way, it would be … one year after losing in the championship game to UConn.
In the state that still reveres Bob Knight’s 32-0 Indiana Hoosiers, the last team to fashion a perfect season, it won’t be difficult for Calipari to play the Us-Against-The-World card.
In Frank Kaminsky, Wisconsin has the kind of inside-outside star who can take over a game, although it is difficult to envision him doing much damage inside against the Kentucky skyscrapers. And therein lies the rub: Kaminsky and Sam Dekker will need to bring their laser-guided smart bombs.
Wisconsin figures to frustrate Kentucky with its deliberate swing offense, but there is now an elephant in the halfcourt room: a 6-foot-11 elephant named Karl Anthony-Towns. If Calipari finds himself needing to feed the beast again, the Badgers will likely struggle to stop him, and Wisconsin sophomore Nigel Hayes may be overheard whispering, “God, he’s a beautiful big man.”
The Badgers’ singular intangible badge of honor is their resiliency. They have showed an unflappability and mental toughness in times of duress. They play big in the big moments.
It will be incumbent upon Calipari to help his players block out the noise, because there will be plenty of it, and keep their eyes on the prize.
The ’76 Hoosiers rose to the occasion at the Final Four in Philadelphia, whipping UCLA, 65-51, in the semifinal before waxing Michigan, 86-68, in the title game. They had survived sterner tests in the Mideast Regional in Baton Rouge against Alabama (74-69) and Al McGuire’s Marquette (65-56) that steeled them.
“I’ve never seen a college team so positive,” McGuire once told the Indy Star. “You could just see it, feel their assurance. It seemed like they won most of their games during warm-ups. If you ever get one team watching the other during warm-ups, they’ve got the game won.”
Georgetown had that aura and mystique in 1985. But not to Villanova. UNLV had it in 1991. But not to Duke. There will be no such intimidation factor at work with Wisconsin. Kentucky is no Frankenstein monster after all. Kentucky bleeds, just like everybody else. Wisconsin will expect to win, just as Notre Dame did.
This 2015 Kentucky team has more overall talent than the ’76 Hoosiers. But the ‘76 Hoosiers were the better team in the good old days when players weren’t jumping to the NBA. And in the Greatest Of All Time conversation with Lew Alcindor’s 1968 UCLA Bruins and Rick Pitino’s 1996 Kentucky Wildcats.
Kentucky will have a chance to be remembered as the greatest One And Done team of all time. It would be better than the alternative — not being remembered at all. That would be a terrible burden to bear, which will either fuel their magnificent obsession, or make their young knees knock and turn their legs to jelly at the worst possible time.