NEW ORLEANS — Kentucky Coach John Calipari likes to say there are no rivalry games at this point in the season.
Try telling that to the Bluegrass State when the winner of Kentucky and Louisville plays for the NCAA title.
“The fans take it as, whoever loses, it’s their funeral, really,” Louisville senior guard Chris Smith said. “It’s really cut-throat, I would say.”
The game today is the fifth time top-seeded Kentucky (36-2) and fourth-seeded Louisville (30-9) have met in the NCAA Tournament.They split the previous four meetings.
It’s a given that Louisville and Kentucky would be rivals, their campuses a mere 70 miles apart in a state where basketball is king. To hear fans of both schools tell it, however, the programs might as well be on different planets.
Kentucky is a college basketball blue blood, its seven national titles second only to UCLA, while Louisville has a nice little tradition going with two national titles.
Kentucky is the bigger school, and its campus is set in rural hill country. Louisville sprawls over several city blocks and railroad tracks cutting through the center of campus.
The Wildcats count most of the state among its fan base, too, while Louisville isn’t necessarily even No. 1 in its own city. In fact, about the only thing the two schools have in common is Louisville Coach Rick Pitino, who led the Wildcats to one national title and two other Final Four appearances in eight years at Kentucky.
Forget that engendering any warm-and-fuzzy goodwill with the Kentucky folks, however. Now that Pitino isn’t theirs, Kentucky fans hate him, too.
But the bad blood has been simmering for generations.
Kentucky never scheduled in-state schools under Coach Adolph Rupp, and former assistant Joe B. Hall dutifully followed suit when he took over as coach. Gov. John Y.Brown stepped in following their matchup in the 1983 NCAA Mideast Regional finals and told the schools to start playing each other.
Kentucky holds bragging rights in the annual in-state rumble, winning 18 of the 29 games, including a 69-62 victory at Rupp Arena on Dec. 31.
“All you hear from the fans is, ‘Don’t lose to the Cardinals. Whatever happens, Big Blue Nation better not lose to Louisville,’ ” recalled former Kentucky guard John Wall.
Fan is short for fanatic, after all.
There are some fans who can view the rivalry with detachment, however. Or at least reason.
Try as they do to rise above the nitpicking, even Calipari and Pitino can’t resist the fray.Both coaches were reminded Friday about a comment Calipari made back in October about Kentucky’s uniqueness, which sure sounded like it was a slap at Louisville.
“There’s no other state, none, that’s as connected to their basketball program as this one,” Calipari said then. “Because those other states have other programs.”
Asked about that exact comment Friday, Calipari said, “I didn’t say that,” explaining that what he meant was Kentucky fans are scattered across every inch of the state while Cardinals fans are more concentrated in and around Louisville.
“We sleep with the enemy in Louisville,” Pitino acknowledged. “We have many Louisville men and women that marry into Kentucky families. It’s very difficult to swallow, to see that happen.”
Pitino seemed to try to give Calipari the benefit of the doubt, saying the third year Kentucky coach hasn’t been around long enough to really appreciate the depth of the rivalry. But Louisville guard Peyton Siva has been around the same amount of time as Calipari, and he sure seems to get it.
“For outsiders, I’d just say wear white,” he said, “so you can blend in.”
Sports, Pages 20 on 03/31/2012