Undergraduates should have goals. While other college students are off on spring break seeing how many beers they can chug before they pass out, the boys from Syracuse had another purpose.
“To shock the world,” said guard Jason Cipolla.
Nice try, Syracuse.
That’s a hard thing to do these days, shock the world, and more difficult still in short pants and sneakers, even when you are Dennis Rodman.
Nor is Kentucky the world, no matter how inflated their own opinion, and college basketball was no more than just this month’s sports carnival, an amateur attraction at that.
The stakes for Kentucky were more modest, to do the expected, to achieve, in the words of senior guard Tony Delk, “what we’ve been waiting a lifetime to do.” And Delk’s lifetime has already lasted 21 years.
This Delk and Kentucky did with sporadic adequacy, withstanding the bothersome Syracusers, their own poor shooting and a leaky arena roof to win 76-67. Hardly a classic, but indelible, nonetheless.
This is Kentucky’s sixth national title, second only to UCLA, the first for Pitino and the second time in Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim’s tenure that Syracuse has lost the title game.
Pitino had called the semifinal game against Massachusetts Ali-Frazier. This one was more like Ali-Bonavena, to stay in the same generation as Pitino, or Tyson-Bruno, to be more contemporary, except Syracuse could take and throw a better punch.
“Win or lose,” Kentucky forward Antoine Walker had said, “you don’t get too many chances to play for the national championship.”
Athletic teams seem not able to function these days without working from spite. Without a grudge,
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“No one believes in the Orangemen but the Orangemen,” Syracuse center Otis Hill had said. “Even some of our own fans don’t believe.”
The truth is, of course, Syracuse fans fill the Carrier Dome every game and they had been dancing in the streets since Syracuse’s regional win over Georgia.
“There’s not much to do in Syracuse,” Boeheim said.
Even Kentucky had to find a way to deflect almost universal applause for its talent and success. Like being favored to win it all.
“The media and coaches who are picking us are just trying to fatten us up,” Kentucky forward Walter McCarty said, “trying to get us fat so we can’t perform well.”
Somebody ought to teach athletes how to take a compliment. Coaches, too.
Pitino told a story of Kentucky fan devotion that was amusing but also an illustration of how self-absorbed coaches and players get with their own priorities.
Pitino said he got an urgent envelope from a Kentucky doctor that demanded to be opened before the Final Four.
“And it listed six things we had to do to win the national title,” Pitino said. The doctor urged shooting more threes, setting more screens, passing earlier on the break, other things.
“I answer every letter,” Pitino said, “so I wrote back and said there are six things I would like to help you with. First, you’re making too large an incision in surgery, you’re giving too much anesthesia, you’re charging too much, your nurses are not using the right procedures and I listed six things.
“I said when I get back I’d like to meet you and help you with your surgery because I think you’re way off the mark and I signed it Rick Pitino.”
He might have just said thanks for caring, but, after all, brain surgery is not basketball.