Without Kansas, the best college team, without Tim Duncan, the best college player, without the best college coach, ol’ Dean Smith, college basketball nevertheless sparkled to a close Monday night, offering for final consideration an upstart and a snoot.
The upstart wins in overtime. Give Arizona its first trophy.
The snoot loses. Give Kentucky a hand and a ride home.
After all this time, 41 years of washing a loser’s whistle, it would have been nice if Arizona coach Lute Olson had been a bit more gracious. Winning may never get to be a habit with him, not like whining is.
“For those who thought we shouldn’t even have been a fourth seed,” said Olson, “maybe they ought to look at our schedule again.
“All week people were saying our players were too loose, coaches who have never even been here. We shouldn’t do this. We shouldn’t do that.
“It wasn’t us with our hands on our hips and our hands on our heads.”
True. Tactless, but true. Kentucky not only presses but folds and sorts. Yet, on this night, Arizona welcomed pressure like a kiss.
“Our kids believe no one can press us,” Olson said, “Truthfully, Kentucky is one of the few teams able to stay with us a whole game.”
Arizona and Kentucky had nothing in common but a nickname, Wildcats, causing surprisingly little confusion since Kentucky’s mascot looks like a hedgehog, but making friends of early-edition headline writers everywhere.
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Wildcats win. Wildcats lose.
This one had to be taken on faith. This was not your father’s Final Four, or even your older brother’s.
The basketball was inferior, the talent was marginal and the result was extraneous. Such is the state of college basketball.
These were two teams with only one starting senior, with no senior at all on Arizona, the result of anxious and bloated self-estimates of players ready for the pros before they are ready to cut their own meat.
College basketball is left to the raw and the flawed. It is a game of screens, threes and the possession arrow.
And now Arizona is the champion of all that.
“I’m very, very happy for Lute Olson,” said Kentucky coach Rick Pitino. “I hope John Chaney gets a title and Roy Williams. I like to see the peers I respect reach their dreams.”
A little more gracious in losing than Olson in winning? Sure, but Pitino already has his title.
Arizona won because a junior guard named Miles Simon had the game of his life, and because freshman guard Mike Bibby is too young and too innocent to recognize pressure.
“I wanted to get coach Olson a championship while I was here,” Bibby said. “I’m glad it happened my first year. We’ll just have to see if we can do it again next year.”
Inquiries were made of Bibby and Simon of whether they, like Kentucky sophomore Ron Mercer, would be turning pro after the final game.
Both took the questions seriously and pledged their loyalty to Arizona for another year, when what they should have been doing was blushing at the question.
This is like asking a kid with a kite if he plans on landing a DC-10.
But even Bibby referred to Arizona’s past, and to an 18-year-old, the past is like last Thursday.
Has Arizona finally, now, expunged the three first-round losses by winning it all?
“There are guys here with a national championship in hand,” Olson said. “And it is always the same question. I know I’ll be in my grave and people will still be talking about loses.”
No, now people will be asking Arizona to do it again.
No less than Dean Smith had already named next year’s final pair, Arizona and Duke.
“Knowing these kids,” said Olson, “they will not be satisfied. They’ll have to understand that everybody will be coming at them, but we always get every team’s best shot.
“We haven’t seen many who don’t come at Arizona full bore. It has been many years since a Pac-10 team beat us without staying on the floor and cutting down the nets.”
Even with championship nets around his neck, there is room on Olson’s shoulder for a chip.