Just a few blocks from where Kentucky and Utah played a little basketball game of ‘Cats and ‘dogs Monday night–Wildcats and Underdogs, that is–the Alamo sits amid modern clutter, pale, out of place and unimpressive on first viewing, not unlike the Utah basketball team.
They played defense at the Alamo, too. Col. Travis and Davy Crockett and Ol’ Jim Bowie, the whole overmatched few, D’d up and blocked out, but they lost the battle, not unlike the Utah basketball team.
Yet their legacy to this day is they are remembered as winners.
Kentucky won its seventh national title Monday night. That is what Kentucky is supposed to do. Second title in three years, third title game in a row.
“I’ve had two coaches (Rick Pitino and Tubby Smith) tell me to live in the precious present,” tournament MVP Jeff Sheppard of Kentucky said. “That is what I’m doing, and I don’t know if it gets any better than this.”
But in the years ahead it is likely this one will be recalled more for who did not win than for who did.
And so it ends, another March Madness, this one subtitled a Taste of Majerus, delicious for any appetite, full of all the familiar flavors.
Buzzer-beaters and blowouts, Cinderellas and creeps, the unfamed and the overblown, the winners and the whiners.
And there Majerus was, bigger than all of it, bigger than life, bigger than several lives and most parade floats, restoring for all coaches the simple joy of success, not of the prize but of the journey, the anti-Knight, the anti-Lute.
“I’m going to congratulate Kentucky and go off into the night,” Majerus said.
This should have been Tubby Smith’s night, but it wasn’t. This will be Smith’s year, as it was Pitino’s and Joe B. Hall’s and Adolph Rupp’s. Winning Kentucky coaches are never forgotten.
But even in winning, Tubby Smith will not receive the boost out of this that Majerus will. Nobody sends congratulations for not dropping the baby.
“What a wonderful, wonderful thing this is,” Smith said. “I thank God for the privilege and honor.”
Utah’s story was fantasy. And that is much harder to let go.
Utah center Mike Doleac said: “It’s kind of like the `Hoosiers’ story. We’re a bunch of fundamentally sound guys who play hard.”
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Kentucky’s story is nonetheless remarkable. A coach left, two lottery players went with him, a parent died, and expectations never diminished.
Utah got the stares and cheers from strangers. Kentucky got the shrugs.
“We lost all those guys, and everyone thought this was going to be a rebuilding year for us,” senior Allen Edwards said. “So there’s a lot of satisfaction in being here.
“But just getting here isn’t what our goal is. Our goal from the beginning has been to win the national championship. That never changed.”
This Kentucky team will have the distinction of overcoming the largest halftime deficit, 10 points, of any championship-game winner. Recovery has been the trademark of the team. Ten times Kentucky had trailed by double digits at half and won.
“The Comeback Cats,” nominated guard Heshimu Evans.
Weary Utah got a bad case of second-half short arms, and, back to that Alamo image again, simply was outplayed and outnumbered.
“Poor Andre (Miller),” Majerus said. “He looked like a punch-drunk fighter on his last legs. But we don’t get here without him.”
In the end the difference was basically pedigree. Kentucky had more and better players than Utah, but the philosophies were identical.
“A positive attitude, hard work and teamwork,” said Sheppard, as if he were reciting from the Majerus playbook rather than Kentucky’s.
“That is as fundamental as it gets. And look where it’s got us. A national championship.”
Remember the Alamo? Remember Hanna Mottola.