Today is, well, you know, the big one.  The game that has been the nemesis for the Kentucky Wildcats since 1999.  Since the 1998 championship, Kentucky has played in the Elite Eight no less than five times, including this one.  Kentucky has failed to advance, so far, in four of them.  Today, the Wildcats get a chance to do it again, this time over the North Carolina Tar Heels.

It is way past time to put that unfortunate streak behind us, and as recently as the first game of the SEC tournament, I never would have conceded the argument that this could be the team to do it.  But I think we are all starting to believe, and if you still refuse to Believe in Blue at least a little, well, you are just an impenetrable skeptic.  But nobody should convince themselves this will be easy, if it is doable at all.

Now, for today's links:

• Kentucky and North Carolina bring the winning tradition - Wire - Lifestyle - bellinghamherald.com

  It's a basketball traditionalist's dream matchup: North Carolina vs. Kentucky, two of college basketball's blue bloods, 1-2 on the list of teams with the most NCAA tournament victories, the schools that produced Jordan and Worthy and Prince and Wall and Larry Brown and Pat Riley.

  Nice piece.

• College stars considering NBA options - San Jose Mercury News

• Kentucky and North Carolina have evolved since December :: Lexington Herald-Leader

  Jones recalled the defensive cohesion that Kentucky lacked in the game in Chapel Hill. UNC made only 41.4 percent of its shots. But Jones saw the Tar Heels' 37 free-throw attempts, a high for a UK opponent this season, as telling.
  
  "We'd have a (teammate) right next to us," Jones said. "We didn't believe another player would help. We'd just foul. I'm telling you, they had to go to the line at least 30 times.

  That's a really mature, really excellent point by Terrence Jones.  Very perceptive.

• Kentucky freshmen still get all the hype, holdovers have been holding everything together - The Washington Post

  "I knew how good a recruiter he was, he recruits one-and-dones, and he recruits great players. I just thought he’s a winning coach, so whoever he brings in, we have a chance to compete," Liggins said. "When he came in, he talked to me. He said, ‘This is what you need to do, you need to do this and this in order to play,’ so that’s what I’ve been doing."

  Liggins has blossomed into one of the premier defenders in college basketball, in part because he spent last season wearing the white jersey of the second team in practice. He would go up against Bledsoe and Wall every day, and it only made him better.

  This points out an underrated consequence of having so many talented players on the team -- it tends to make the other guys better.

  Liggins and Harrellson are amazing in how far they've come, and what they had to overcome to get where they are.

• Kentucky Upperclassmen Extend John Calipari’s Season - NYTimes.com
  The first half of this article is really good. The second half is so quixotic as to render the author's point difficult to discern.

• Mark Story: Cats busting one jinx at a time in tourney | University of Kentucky Sports News | Lexington Herald-Leader

  "We definitely owe them one," Kentucky center Josh Harrellson said Saturday of the Tar Heels. "We have a grudge."

  UK's blue-collar hero was referring to Carolina's win against the Cats earlier this season in Chapel Hill. For UK fans, he could have been referring to decades of basketball frustration.

  This whole "grudge" thing has worked before.  Maybe it will work again.
  

• Opposing centers play pivotal roles - The Boston Globe

  "The one thing this team does better than almost every team I’ve had is listen,’’ said Kentucky coach John Calipari.

  This is perhaps the highest praise a basketball coach can offer his team.

• Opposing centers play pivotal roles - The Boston Globe

  "The one thing this team does better than almost every team I’ve had is listen,’’ said Kentucky coach John Calipari.

  This is perhaps the highest praise a basketball coach can offer his team.

• NCAA Notebook: Kentucky basketball's Harrellson refuses to be overmatched :: courier-journal.com

  "I think Harrellson is probably the most underrated player in college basketball," Ohio State coach Thad Matta said. "He's a tremendous player and knows his role and does it well."

  The really cool thing is that I am finding myself in agreement with Matta.  Harrellson is the most underrated player in the country.

• Duke Basketball Report - The unofficial home of Duke basketball fans and the Cameron Crazies
  Our friends at DBR have produced a nice, albeit short, examination of the UNC-Kentucky game. Ignore the fact that they are a Duke blog and give it a read.

• NEWARK, N.J.: After losing five players to NBA, Calipari has Kentucky back in the hunt :: Kentucky.com

  Let's be real, the man lost five first-round NBA draft picks last year. Lesser programs would be destroyed by such a day if they had ever dreamed of experiencing such a day. Even Cal himself was moved to label it the "greatest day in Kentucky basketball history," an over-the-top treatment of the moment which is now forgiven given the encore.

  Just ask Ohio State. Ooops, sorry, the Buckeyes just left, carrying their No. 1 overall seed with them.

  Oh, snap!  This is some of John Clay's finest work, ever.  Maybe I need a trip to Jersey to inspire me.  Seems an unlikely place to find inspiration, but it clearly worked for John.

• Tudor's Take: Observations on the eve of UNC-Kentucky, Part II - CharlotteObserver.com

• Dick Vitale Picks Cats From Church
  Kiss of death?

• Elite 8 Preview: No. 2 UNC vs. No. 4 Kentucky :: Beyond the Arc

• One More Time: Tom Leach With The Final 30 Seconds Against OSU (Video) :: The UK Nation
  Tom Leach is really getting good. Well, okay, he's been good, but this call is just fantastic.

• COLUMN: The sequel to the Kanter saga? The feel-good story of Harrellson : The Kentucky Kernel

• Harrellson's about-face even surprised him - NCAA Basketball - Sporting News

  "I just wanted some praise, but I did it the wrong way, instead of just going and talking to him," Harrellson said. "It was a blessing in disguise. It was the smartest-dumbest thing I’ve ever done. It made me the player I am today."

  We've all heard it a thousand times, so one more won't matter.

• North Carolina vs. Kentucky: John Calipari sticks to minimalist routine heading into East Regional final in Newark :: NJ.com

  "I want them worrying about us. Let’s play our best," he said. "If that’s not good enough, it’s been a heck of a year."

  Via Aaron's blog.

• Knight grabs his moment, makes No. 1 fade to black - NCAA Division I Mens Basketball - CBSSports.com

  Yet what they are doing now is undeniable. This is a gritty, hardworking team that believes. Excuse the putrid cliché but it’s the truth. Something about them should scare the rest of the tournament, including North Carolina, their next opponent, who beat the Wildcats earlier in the year. [emphasis mine]

  Word.  Via Aaron's blog.

• Kentucky Sports Radio :: The Final Four’s late night notes
• Kemba’s the MVP, but UConn wouldn’t be here without Jeremy Lamb :: Beyond the Arc

• Jim Tressel could land in further trouble at Ohio State after latest revelations :: New York Daily News

  This is the type of manipulative, reckless behavior that got Tennessee basketball coach Bruce Pearl fired for lying to NCAA investigators and should earn Tressel a year-long suspension or even a pink slip if school officials want to maintain any semblance of integrity with the NCAA.

  Wow.

• Basketball Prospectus :: Every Dog Had its Day

• UNC bandwagon fans, you don't know the half of it - NCAA Division I Mens Basketball - CBSSports.com

  And dominant is exactly how North Carolina looked on Friday night. For 15 minutes, it crushed the souls of Marquette and made Charles Barkley, with his anti-Big East predictions, look like even more of a sage. So now going into the East Regional final on Friday, we should expect to see the casual college basketball observer give the Heels lots of love. Pundits will look past the team that easily could have fallen in the second round to Washington, and will only remember the unprecedented performance we saw here on Friday night.

  Excellent piece by Matt Jones, and I love that he raises the point of a logical fallacy, although his easy-to-understand "fallacy of the most recent" is more aptly known as the "Bandwagon Fallacy" or "Appeal to Popularity", an informal logical fallacy based on consensus. 

  The consensus may be that nobody can beat North Carolina when they play like they played in that 15 minutes, without regard for the fact that they have rarely, if ever, done so this year.