Kentucky Wildcats 64. Wisconsin Badgers 71: Post-Season Lament

Well, Kentucky Wildcats fans, I’m as sad as you are about the outcome of this one. But in college basketball, this happens all the time. The best team, very often, does not win. Whether or not you think Kentucky was the best team or not, they did not win.

Congratulations to the Wisconsin Badgers. They won this game and deserved to win, and I have no reason to complain. Kentucky, as the theoretical top team, needed to do better than this, and they did not. We faced a great team, and they proved that on this night, they were better than we were. Perfect seasons always come to an end, and usually, they end badly. This one was one that ended badly.

I think the thing that bothers me most about this game was the inability of Kentucky to defend Wisconsin. I think that says way more about them than it does about us. They made huge shot after huge shot, and for the most part, Kentucky answered. Unfortunately, an untimely poor call on an offensive rebound putback placed the Wildcats in a bad place.

I don’t blame the officials, they didn’t do it on purpose (remember Hanlon’s Razor and substitute fallibility for stupidity). It was just bad luck for us, and good luck for them. It happens. Nobody is perfect, and we can’t ask the officials to be more perfect than ourselves, or more competent.

So here we are, sad and unhappy about the result. Try to remember that no matter what happened, this was a great effort by the Wildcats and by the Badgers. It was maybe not an instant classic just because of the way things ended, but I think I will remember this one for a very long time, and not with much satisfaction.

Congratulations to Wisconsin, sadness for us. Isn’t the first time, and won’t be the last. We have failed to grasp the brass ring a total of three times in the last four tries, and that’s about par for repeat Final Four participants. We’ll just have to do better next season.

I want to thank you all for being such great fans, and for being here through this wonderful season. We join the ranks of some awesome teams who failed to get to the top of the mountain, and it is mighty company indeed.

Postmortem tomorrow. Go, ‘Cats!

P.S. If you have FRSB, now would be a good time…