Kansas 65 - 75 Kentucky (New York City) (No. 2,054)

I have never liked Kansas's basketball team. To me, Kansas basketball calls up memories of countless nights spent watching the Jayhawks grind out 65-63 wins over the likes of Colorado or Texas Tech on the road, or watching them win by 30 points over some hapless Big 8 team at home. At home, the Jayhawks tend to make a lot of three's, run up and down the floor with abandon, and benefit from one of the most generous whistles in basketball. On the road, the Jayhawks tend to miss their three's, and slog out victories over lesser teams by playing tenacious defense, grabbing rebounds, and taking advantage from one of the most generous whistles in basketball. With their habit of winning lots and lots of games against mediocre opposition, and their habit of missing jump shots away from home, they are the perfect team to carry a high seed into the tournament, only to lose to a hot-shooting underdog -- as Virginia Commonwealth showed last year.

Kentucky fans do not like or respect plodding basketball, and to me one of the most humiliating facts about the later Tubby Smith years was that Kansas had significantly passed Kentucky in basketball talent and athleticism. Tubby led UK into games with the Jayhawks in each of his last three seasons, and the results showed the extent to which our program had fallen off the pace. In January 2005, KU beat us 65-59 at Rupp. In January 2006, Kansas beat us 73-46 in Lawrence -- that may literally be the worst game I ever saw Kentucky play. And in the 2007 tournament, Kansas never broke a sweat in an easy 88-76 win. That was the last game where I destroyed something; after seeing yet another pathetic UK possession or Kansas dunk, I kicked a space heater to death.

That was also Tubby's last game with the Cats, and things have changed since then. Since Coach Cal came to town, this has become one of the most bitter rivalries on the Internet, as UK and KU fans have fought each other on message boards all over the place. They claim that Calipari's teams are a bunch of undisciplined thugs; we claim that Self's goons would struggle to make the tournament without their pet refs. In each of the last two seasons, the arguments have raged from November to March.

Tonight, however, both teams' fan bases faced the unnerving prospect of seeing their argument settled on the court. I had thought that maybe Kansas would be glad for the chance to play a team that didn't try to slow them down -- but no, they play that plodding style because they like it. In the first half, our freshmen (with the exception of Anthony Davis) looked somewhat overwhelmed by the tenacious (some would say dirty) Kansas defense, and Marcus Teague (this year's point guard) really struggled -- late in the half he had 0 points, 0 assists, and 6 turnovers. Kentucky was playing very good defense, but they just couldn't score, and at one point they trailed 21-14.

But Kentucky doesn't only have freshmen on this team. They still have Terrence Jones, Doron Lamb, and Darius Miller, and those guys have not forgotten how to win. The three upperclassmen held things together with their defense and smart shot selection in the first half, and we were all tied, 28-28, at the break.

In the second half, Kentucky finally backed up all the boasts their fans have made over the last few years. Teague had finally adjusted to Kansas's strength and pace, and he started picking their defense apart. Jones and Davis totally dominated the boards, and got Kentucky's running game in motion. Miller kept making key passes and smart defensive plays, and Lamb poured in three huge three-pointers. Soon the Cats had roared out to a 54-37 lead, and they did not look back. Kansas -- which went 4-17 from three-point range -- would have struggled to score at all if their sneaky point guard, Tyshawn Taylor hadn't kept getting to the free throw line. Taylor made a remarkable 15 of 16 free throws, but that was not enough to hold off the ferocious Cats. It was a very pleasant evening, and no space heaters were damaged at my house.

What have we learned? This Kentucky team is very, very good -- I think that at this point they're pretty far ahead of the John Wall team from two years ago. I'm still worried about who, other than Lamb, can make three-point shots. They are a dreadful free throw shooting team -- they were 16-30 from the line tonight, or the margin would have been much larger. They have a tendency to make a lot of silly turnovers. And I am worried about how they will defend big, physical centers. But none of these problems appear to be insuperable at this point. And in the meantime, we pounded Kansas in front of a big crowd in New York. Basketball in November doesn't get much better than that.