INDI🐭ANAPOLIS — They were getting ready to rush to their closets, or run to the sporting goods stores, to put on their “I Hate Christian Laettner” T-shirts.
Thought they would be 39-0, 40 minutes from perfection, with a chance to exorcise the ghost of Laettner and 𒈔The Shot in the 1992 East Region final.
Thought they would be swigging Wisc-y Sour.
Thought they would make history, first team since Bobby Knight’s 1976🌄 Indiana Hoosiers to go♎ undefeated.
Thought wrong.
Trudged off the Lucas Oil Stadium floor 38-1.
The Wisconsin Badgers, America’s party crashers.
Who made No. 1 Kentucky, a 71-64 loser, see red.
“It’s like a movie like when the main character dies and you’re like, ‘What? Why did the main character die?’ ” Willie Cauley-Stein said in a somber Kentucky locker room. “And you’re just like super-hurt over like the good guy or the guy that you never suspect is going to die and he ends up dying, and that’s the end of the movie, an💃d there’s just no cliffhangers, no nothing, you’re done. That’s the way it feels, that’s the way it ended.”
Wisconsin-Duke 💯fo🌼r the national championship Monday night. Not Kentucky-Duke.
“It hurts because we knew that it’s not a five-game series, it’s not a seven-game series and that just one game can just end our season,” Devin Booker said. “I guess we just kind of took it for granted a little bit but …
“Still, I feel like we’re the best team.”
John Ca♊lipari, the Coach They Love to♑ Hate, watches Bo Ryan go for his first national championship and Coach K go for his fifth.
“This season is🌞 historic,” Calipari insisted. “If you want to blam🅘e somebody, blame me.”
Blame the perfect pressure if you must.
“I wasn’t thinking 40-0, I was just trying to win the game, get on to another game,” Calipari said. “I would hope my team was that way💜, but they’re 18- and 19-year-olds. Maybe they were.”
But mostly blame Wisconsin.
Frank Kaminsky 🗹and Sam Dekker, Wisconsin’s great players, looked born fo𝐆r the biggest stage.
These weren’t mere Badgers, they were a pack of honey Badgers, forcing Kentucky, down nine in the first half and down eight early in the second half, to dig d🌸own deep to try to find every ounce of heart and courage champions sometimes are asked to find.
Then Kentucky found it.
On one sequence, Karl-Anthony🍸 Towns grabbed two offensive rebounds 🔯on missed shots then scored over Kaminsky. Kentucky, 60-56.
“I’m like, ‘We’re going to win 👍this thing,’ ” Calipa๊ri said.
Then🧸 Kentucky lost it, unveiled its Shot Clock Violation Offense three times.
“We’re not a team that gets shot-clock viꦬ🌸olations,” Calipari said.
Dekker hit a s🍌tep-back 3 that broke🐭 a 60-60 tie with 1:25 left. Kaminsky sank two free throws with 24.5 ticks left. Bronson Koenig sank two free throws with 12.2 seconds left.
One and done. … Suddenly just plain done.
“We did something great,” Towns said.
“But just weren’t perfect.”
Wisconsin believed. Wisconsin played to win. Wisconsin expected to win. Wisconsin recogn🧜ized Winning Time down the stretch when lesser teams crum🐼bled against Kentucky.
“They always kept fighting,” Booker said.
Cauley-Stein, asked about Kaminsky, said: “He’s so … goofy, and it’s just unorthodox. … You just can’t stop him.”
Defense doesn’t always win championships, especially against smart, efficient, unselfish 🦩offense and refuse-to-lose defiance.
Wisconsin was fearless, playing with a chip on its shoulder that Kentucky should have expected from a grizzled, irrepressible bunch that had be🉐en waiting an entire year to avenge a heartbreaking Final Four semifinal defeat. The Badgers savaged the offensive boards against Kentucky’s Goliaths.
“It’s very tough because we basically went t༒he whole season winning all oꦅf those games for nothing,” Tyler Ulis said.
When iဣt was over, this brot🍌herhood of young Kentucky players mourned the end of their brotherhood.
Calipari had been telling everyone all along: “We’re undefeated, but we’re not🧸 perfect.”
Now they’re neither.
Honey Badgers. The perfect comparison.