Gracious losers are still, after all, losers. And when one of them is Stanford, nobody is likely to remember very long anyhow. Kentucky will go, as Kentucky usually does, into the final game of the season, thereby authenticating the most mutual corner of the great Kentucky triangle: bourbon, horses and college basketball, though, of course, there are those who will argue for bourbon.
In just a splendid college basketball game, Kentucky did the expected Saturday to get the chance to meet Utah in Monday’s final, but it took overtime and it took a lot of breath-holding and finger-crossing to dispose of the nerds from Palo Alto, a place where basketball is either an oxymoron or a problem in physics.
It turns out, Stanford may know the meaning of the word “oxymoron,” but it does not know the meaning of the word “quit.”
“We’ll be back,” promised sophomore forward Mark Madsen, the guy they call Mad Dog.
This was as close to any sort of bitter regret as Stanford would get. Not your usual postgame anguish, not the typical “we wuz robbed” sentiment of, oh, a Jim Harrick, the coach of the Rhode Island team Stanford beat to get to the Final Four.
“Kentucky deserved to win,” Madsen said. “They made big play after big play.”
Does any one team deserve to win a one-point game?
“Oh, I can go back and look at a turnover here or a failed defensive assignment there, and I will,” Stanford coach Mike Montgomery said. “But our guys gave everything they had, and I think we proved we belong at the level we’ve achieved.”
What’s that, nice guys finish tied for third?
Take, for example, the most critical play in the overtime, a slam-dunk miss by Kentucky’s Scott Padgett that bounded off the back of the rim and out of bounds.
More Top Picks Signs Of Sensory Processing Issues In Toddlers
The ball is given not to Stanford but to Kentucky. Wildcats guard Jeff Sheppard hits a three-point shot with a minute to play for a four-point lead Stanford is not able to erase completely.
Lots of room for griping here, huh?
“Well, actually, what happened,” Madsen said, “is I had my hand inside the cylinder on the shot and goaltending really should have been called. Actually I was happy, because I goaltended the ball.”
Who admits that sort of thing? Especially in the semifinals of the national championship tournament?
Well, what about this, then? Stanford center Tim Young, all 7 feet 1 of him, is fouled out of the game on the first play of the overtime, a critical loss, when the infraction, if there was any, was too ticky-tack to be noticed.
“He said he was pretty sure he pushed the guy,” Montgomery said. “And it was his fifth foul.”
What is reason and logic, some sort of contagion at Stanford? Oh, that’s very fine in the classroom or the lab, but we’re talking sports here. Where’s the trash?
“They played smart down at the end,” Stanford guard Arthur Lee said.
“We had a great run,” reasoned Madsen.
Leave losing and satisfied? Hey, this is March Madness. Somebody has to cry.
How about the possession arrow? Bad idea, right? Stanford works to get a jump ball and loses the ball, and three critical seconds, because the possession arrow is pointed in the wrong direction.
“I guess that’s an instance where you’ve earned a break and it goes against you,” Montgomery said, “but what if we had the arrow? No, alternate possession is the valid way to do things.”
Talk about your full Monty. This Monty is full of it.
Just whine, baby. This is the Big Dance.
“The officials did a really good job,” Montgomery said.
I suppose you would expect this lack of antagonism from a place whose game mascot is a . . . well, it is the answer to the Barbara Walters’ question, if you were a tree, what kind would you be?
Who’s intimidated by a dancing fir?
If Stanford wants to stay in the big time, get back here three years in a row like Kentucky, be a perennial like North Carolina or Arizona, it is going to have to work on its indignation.
Nobody likes a rational loser.