Our reputation is building The rest of the country is starting to get to know that our Cats may be a team of the ages and all basketball fans everywhere will be watching to see how far we will go. Cats Domain Message Boards CHICAGO – In the main arena bowl at the United Center, the band struck up as halftime drew to an end. Cheers followed. Evidently there had been sufficient cleanup of all the UCLA blood and dignity spilled on the court that it was deemed safe for the Kentucky basketball team to return to the killing floor. And at this moment, three members of the school’s spirit squad popped out of a room off a hallway in the back. Their problem hit them. They had left the Wildcats without pom aid. “That’s our fight song,” one of the girls said. “Oops. I think we missed it.” And that was it. On the list of Kentucky’s imperfections Saturday, that was the beginning and the end. The rest was brutish, unmerciful and just completely absurd, this 83-44 victory that transcended all metaphors for demolition or involuntary surgeries. This was something far, far more terrifying, something we had not seen this insensate leviathan accomplish before: The Wildcats destroyed a team’s hope. That is a very hard thing to do against athletes conditioned to believe all things are possible at all times. And the nation’s No. 1 team nevertheless made emphatically clear to a very respectable major college basketball program: No, there is no chance for you, that nothing is possible but sorrow and darkness and a whole lot of badly missed basketball shots. If you think Kentucky will get beat this season, you are not thinking unreasonably. It is also time to prepare for the eventuality that you may be wrong. The Wildcats are now competing only against their own ability to crush the will out of every team that happens across their path. As it grows, they’re going to get hungrier with it, UCLA coach Steve Alford said. Just look at their demeanor. This thing reaches 18, 19, 20 in a row, you may not get them. Bad as it had been for others this year, it was never bad like this. Before UCLA scored a point, a single, solitary point, Kentucky posted 24. The Bruins finished the first half with seven points. Seven. They wound up averaging 0.2 points per possession before halftime. It was the lowest-scoring half by a Kentucky opponent since Dec. 28, 1943. Seriously: 1943. No one had been this feckless against this program since before the Potsdam Declaration. For a good 16 minutes of game action, the courtside stat monitors were stuck on the pregame screen, the score static at 0-0. It was a simpler time for UCLA, back then. A time of innocence and wonder. It was a better time. It is a long, long time ago now. They took our confidence out right at the beginning,” said Bruins guard Bryce Alford, who by the middle of the first half was bent over, exhausted, like he’d been running through a sandstorm. And they put it to us from then on. So this is now the horrifying prospect facing college basketball. It is one thing to get beaten by Kentucky; it is another thing to have your faith driven from you.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 17:16:44 +0000
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