ATLANTA – Finally, with 23 seconds left, Tom Crean put his hands up and he pulled back the reigns. Finally, doing the math in his head, he realized there was no point in fouling any more, no point in extending the game any longer. His Indiana Hoosiers had already beaten Kentucky once this year.
There isn’t a team in the country good enough to do it twice.
So as Marquis Teague dribbled out the rest of the game, the roar began to rise from every corner of Georgia Dome. They’d transformed this courtly patch of Georgia into a Heartland border war, Kentucky blue against Indiana red, and for the most part the Hoosiers fans had held up their end and held up their voices.
Now, all you saw was blue.
VIDEO: COACH, PLAYER REACTIONS
Now, all you heard was shouts of “U! K!” and “Let’s go Wildcats!” as a 35th victory in 37 games became real, became official. The final was 102-90, and it was a fun game, as entertaining as any we’d seen so far in this NCAA tournament from a purely basketball standpoint.
For a half, Indiana had helped co-author story. They’d run even with Kentucky for most of the way, even grabbed a four-point lead in the waning minutes, settled for a three-point deficit, 50-47.
But it’s one thing to play with the Wildcats for a half.
It’s something else to do it for 40 minutes, to try and match this talent, this tenacity, this team that starts three freshmen and two sophomores, this basketball factory where the very best now come to play for John Calipari, who may not be the most popular coach in America but sure knows how to collect players, then coach the hell out of them.
“We did a lot of good things but they’re a very good tem and [ital] very [ital] well coached,” Indiana coach Tom Crean said. “It’s one thing to have talent. It’s another thing altogether to get them to play the way they play.”
There was actually a lot going against the Wildcats last night. For one thing, there is a 37-year grudge that Indiana badly wanted to avenge. The 1975 Hoosiers were undefeated when they met Kentucky in the Midwest Regionals that year, and Bob Knight has long insisted that was the better team than the one that went 33-0 and won the title a year later. But Scott May was hurt and the Wildcats won, a loss so bitter many in Indiana still can’t talk about it.
And the Hoosiers were one of only two teams to beat Kentucky this year, by a point in Bloomington back in December. So they [ital] had [ital] done it before.
But what Kentucky is proving, game after game, is that they are more than talent, they’re a team. On a night when Anthony Davis was plagued with early foul trouble they simply passed the baton to Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (24 points, 10 rebounds), Doron Lamb (21 points) and Teague (14 points, seven assists).
And, oh yes. From the line. Thirty-seven attempts. Thirty-five makes.
You want to beat the best team in the nation? You’d better come hard, better play well, better be ready to go for the full 40. Indiana did all of that. And still lost by 12.
“It was a war, and Indiana played great,” Calipari said. “But we played a little bit better.”
Good luck to Baylor tomorrow. And to everyone else next week in New Orleans.