A TALL ORDER: Kentucky center Anthony davis, dunking on Louisville’s Kyle Kuric, was too much for the Cardinals, as he scored 18 points and collected 14 rebounds last night. (
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NEW ORLEANS — All around the Superdome, all those not rooting for Kentucky had banded together and started screaming for a miracle, hoping the volume in their voices could nudge Louisville to the finish line. Louisville fans. Ohio State fans. Kansas fans. All of them shouting. All of them baying. Some of them praying.
The Cardinals shouldn’t have been here, within spitting range of the greatest upset of the college basketball season. They had fallen behind by a dozen early in the second half, had stormed back, tied the game at 49-49 thanks to a gutty 3-pointer by Peyton Siva with 9:11 left in the game.
“Close enough to dream,” Louisville coach Rick Pitino said.
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Kentucky kept coming after them. Kept getting after them. The Wildcats took the lead back, but still it felt tenuous, still felt like the crowd at the Superdome, all those folks not wearing Kentucky blue, could will this out of hope and out of belief. Still. It was 63-58. There were 90 seconds left.
All that was at stake was the season.
“Great stuff,” Kentucky coach John Calipari said. “Great game.”
Then, a moment — the kind that, if things work out for Kentucky tomorrow, they will talk about for years, for decades, forever. One Kentucky freshman, a Jersey kid named Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, lofted a ball in the general direction of the rim.
Another Kentucky freshman named Anthony Davis grabbed it with one hand, seemed to freeze in midair and dunked it, all in the same motion, and it felt as if time stood still, sounded like someone had hushed the voiceboxes of all of those Louisville, Ohio State and Kansas fans.
And all you could hear were the Kentucky fans.
It was a seven-point lead, and there was no heart left in the miracle seekers. It would end 69-61. The best team will play for the national championship tomorrow night against Kansas. The second-best team in Kentucky goes home.
“It was like preparing for the Olympics, you just work so hard every single day, gave some extraordinary effort, then at the end you’re on the podium and they’re playing somebody else’s national anthem,” Pitino said.
“And you have a bronze medal around your neck.”
For Louisville, who spoke all week of being the team with nothing to lose, of playing this game with the house’s money, it was a hard lesson that once you get here, once you take such a grand stage, once it’s 49-all with 9-and-change to go, it stings just as badly when you walk off on the wrong side of the hyphen, even if you weren’t supposed to be here.
“Everybody thought we were going to win the whole game, we had confidence,” Louisville guard Chris Smith said. “If we could go back, I would say maybe change a couple plays.”
One play: At 49-49, Davis missed his only field goal attempt of the game, the Dome went berserk, but then Davis swiped his own rebound, went frosh-to-frosh, and Kidd-Gilchrist made the layup, 51-49.
Another: Russ Smith got careless 20 seconds later.
Another: Kidd-Gilchrist, invisible for the game’s first 30 minutes thanks to foul trouble, makes a dunk.
It was 53-49. Kentucky had survived the worst of it, would survive Louisville’s death rattle later on, Davis cashing in Kidd-Gilchrist’s lob, the Wildcats taking a shot to the jaw, shaking it off, all the way to tomorrow night.
“To tell you the truth, I haven’t always liked some of the Kentucky teams,” Pitino, vanquished and gracious, said. “But I really like this team a lot because of their attitude and the way they play.”
It had been everything we expected. Kentucky was brilliant most of the night, Louisville gritty, and gritty nearly was enough, might have been enough, except Davis, the best player in America, scored 18 points and grabbed 14 rebounds, and when his team needed him to make a play most, he did. One they’ll be talking about until the bluegrass turns green.
He made a forever play. Sent his team toward tomorrow night. Sent Louisville home to Kentucky. Emphatically.
“When you’re playing against Bill Russell at the pro level, you realize why the Celtics won 11 World Championships,” Pitino said. “When you see this young man at the collegiate level, you realize why they’re so good.”
And why even playing with house money, losing stings.