ATLANTA — Forget the game in December. And forget the last tournament meeting (and how could you not since it was 29 years ago). Kentucky and Indiana are two of the most storied basketball programs in history, and you can bet your life that they will be playing like it on Friday night in the Georgia Dome.
"The Indiana-Kentucky games have always been big. And, for me personally, there's no question that it's a big deal," Indiana coach Tom Crean said. "When you love the game and get involved in it, you know that these are two incredibly storied programs that have won at high levels for long periods of time. There are a lot of household names who were coaches and players, and a lot of teams where people can remember a lot of things about them."
The players and coaches on these two teams are poised to add their names to that "big deal" list.
Indiana has five national titles; Kentucky has seven. The Hoosiers put the last undefeated team on the court in 1976; this Kentucky team has been favorably compared with some of the greatest of all-time. With UCLA and North Carolina, these are the programs even the passing college basketball fan knows and admires.
Their paths to this spot were very different. Reeling from the rock-bottom Kelvin Sampson scandal, when Indiana found itself on probation and struggling with sub-.500 records, Crean has clawed the Hoosiers back to the premier ranks.
"For the program now to be in this position and to be playing against a team like (Kentucky) and to have already played them and had success against them, it means that a lot of people — the players, the coaches, every one of our staff members — everybody has been working towards a common goal, a common theme," Crean said. "And that's to get Indiana back to some sort of excellence."
Kentucky has been No. 1, No. 2, or No. 3 all year, and its fans have been full-throated in their belief that this is the year for Big Blue to add another national title.
"It's Kentucky," Wildcats coach John Calipari said. "Do you expect anything else? Kentucky is one of those places where you are supposed to win every game by 25. If you're winning by 15, it's 'What's the issue? What's going on with the program?' If you, God forbid, lose one, it's 'How can we lose this game?'
"I love our fans. They're crazy. They watch game tapes three times. I don't even watch game tapes three times. But that's coaching and playing in Kentucky. It's a little different."
There have been three Kentucky-Indiana tournament meetings: 1973, 1975, and 1983. The Hoosiers won the first; the Wildcats the last two. But even though both coaches are downplaying the importance of games long past, everybody on both sides remembers recent history, Dec. 10, 2011 is kind of recent. Indiana won at home 73-72, Kentucky's only regular-season loss. The 3-point buzzer-beater Indiana hit to win that one has been shown on television hundreds of times.
"We see it a lot," Kentucky point guard Marquis Teague said. "They got a lot of commercials."
The Cats weren't likely to forget even without all the televised reminders.
"I change the channel every time," Terrence Jones said. "I haven't made it through (the whole thing)."
Seeing their most disappointing moment of the season (or changing the channel) just reinforces their commitment not to let it happen again.
"We have got to play for the whole 40 minutes," Kentucky senior Darius Miller said. "In those (loses) we had stretches where we weren't playing with high intensity or weren't ready to go."
They will be ready to go Friday night, and Indiana coaches and players know it.
"To play a team like Kentucky, there are a lot of different stages you go through, and belief is a big part of that, because they are so good," Crean said. "You have to believe you can win the game, because they have the ability to come in and throw those first couple of blows, and they're hard to recover from. If you don't believe you can win, it's a lot harder to recover from that."
Belief is the one thing that both these teams will bring to the floor.
"It's been fun playing together," Kentucky's Jones said. "I think that's what is making it easier on each individual player. There hasn't been a lot of pressure on just one player because guys are stepping up at different times. When they try to game plan to stop two guys, the other three step up."
That team effort has placed Kentucky on the cusp of history. The next step is this epic rematch.
If you love college basketball, this one is going to be fun.
