CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Maybe this best explains the puzzle of Kentucky, a simpler version of the way Winston Churchill once tried to describe the challenge of Russia: "A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma."
How do you beat Kentucky?
"You have to be fearless," Kyle Smith said. "And also cautious."
Fearless and cautious? It's like choosing to write in poetry and prose, like trying to tell a story that's both tragedy and comedy, trying to box with ferocity and finesse. Can it be done? It probably can't be done. Although … it could be done.
"You have to play better than you're supposed to play," said Smith, the Columbia coach whose Lions led the Wildcats 11-0 back on Dec. 10, and who never trailed until there were 13 minutes left in the game. It was one of the few times the 34-0 Wildcats were even threatened across this joy ride of a season.
"Maybe you have to play better than you believe you can play," Smith said.
Bobby Hurley is as well-versed as any participant in this tournament about what lies ahead for the 63 other teams that now officially form this year's NCAA Tournament side bet, all seemingly playing for the runner-up trophy. The last time a team this fearsome arrived at the Dance looking this unbeatable, it was 1991. UNLV was a raucous, rollicking road show, and the Runnin' Rebels showed up at the Final Four in Minneapolis with a 34-0 record of their own.
By the time Hurley and the Blue Devils were done with a 79-77 upset for the ages in the national semifinals, the Rebs were 34-1. And in a nice piece of basketball symmetry, Hurley's upstart Buffalo Bulls gave this year's Wildcats one of their other rare scares, leading 38-33 at the half Nov. 16 before Kentucky settled in for a 71-52 victory.
Buffalo coach Bobby HurleyPhoto: AP
Yet Hurley, like Smith, understands the paradox of Kentucky is all too real: slow the game down, they can beat you 50-35. Speed it up and they'll gladly beat you 90-50. Focus on the inside, they'll rain 3s on your head. Take away the perimeter and get ready to allow dunk after dunk after dunk after dunk.
"If you don't have good guards who take care of the ball, make good decisions, when to go, when not to go, they can go on a run and put you away very fast," Hurley said. "If you play it slow, and you allow yourself to get in the half court with their size and let them set their defense, it's very hard to score on them …
"You have to strike a balance between knowing when you can get some easy shots, yet not making it an all-out track meet, and you've got to hope they miss from the perimeter."
Part of it is talent, a relentless, unforgiving, unsparing supply of talent, two platoons of future NBA players coming at you in wave after wave, shift after shift. Even that great Vegas team, if you somehow got Larry Johnson or Stacey Augmon in foul trouble, you could take advantage of the minutes they spent on the bench by exploiting reserves who were actually reserves.
Kentucky's reserves may be future NBA All-Stars.
Or, as Larry Brown, who once pulled a terrific NCAA upset when his Kansas Jayhawks took out a seemingly invincible Oklahoma team in 1988 — and who is one of the only men qualified to make such a statement — said Wednesday:
SMU coach Larry Brown
"I think they'd honestly make the playoffs in the Eastern Conference if they were in the NBA."
And that wasn't all Brown had to say on the subject.
"I think in order for somebody to beat Kentucky, Kentucky has to play as poorly as they can possibly play, and somebody else has to play great because they defend so well," said the only man alive who has won championships at the college and professional levels.
So, yes: there is the talent factor. But now there also is the intimidation factor. Before Buster Douglas, Mike Tyson often walked into boxing rings so far ahead on points because of his reputation that the other guy could have been using cement gloves and he wouldn't have had a prayer. Thirty-four-and-oh speaks volumes. And gets in people's heads.
"I'm the wrong guy to ask," said Steve Alford, coach at UCLA, who saw the full impact of a motivated Kentucky's wrath when the Wildcats jumped to a 24-0 lead in Chicago Dec. 20, en route to an 83-44 smearing of the Bruins. "We scored seven in a half. I'm surprised anybody got within 30 of them."
UCLA coach Steve AlfordPhoto: AP
The Wildcats have made no pretense about wanting to become the first team since the '76 Indiana Hoosiers to finish a season unbeaten. Columbia's Smith can actually relate to that. Twenty-four years ago, Smith played for a Hamilton College team that won its first 26 games of the year and was riding a 32-game winning streak.
In those years, teams from Hamilton's conference (the NESCAC) were forbidden from playing in the Division III NCAA tournament, so the unbeaten record came down to the last game of the ECAC Upstate tournament. Potsdam State, a perennial power but in '91 a mere 20-6 entering the game, was the opponent.
"The thing to watch when Kentucky plays is the guy who has just an unbelievable career night against them," Smith said. "Someone even the guys on his own team wouldn't have expected to step up and make 3 after 3 after 3, get Kentucky thinking too much."
In '91, that player was a backup point guard named Bill Dundon, averaging all of 1.9 points a game, playing only because the Potsdam starter was thrown off the team the day before … and of course Dundon scored 26 points, made shots from everywhere, every angle, and Hamilton's season ended with a "1" on the right side of the hyphen.
"Yep," Smith said, all these years later. "Bad memories."
Or forever memories if you're the team that has this year's Bill Dundon, or this year's Bobby Hurley (12 points, seven assists in that fabled Vegas game) or this year's Dwight Clay (whose shot for Notre Dame ended UCLA's 88-game winning streak in 1974), or any of the Villanova Wildcats who shot 90 percent — not a typo; 90 percent — in the second half to beat Georgetown in 1985.
"Probably the only place they could get beat is in the NCAA Tournament," said Villanova coach Jay Wright, whose own collection of Wildcats will celebrate the 30th anniversary of that team by being one of the "other" No. 1 seeds in the Kentucky Invitational. "Because the NCAA Tournament, so much pressure comes down in a close game when you haven't lost a game all year. It's just so different than anywhere else."
It is different. Much different. Like being fearless. And also cautious.
"Hey, it's ingrained in our culture, right?" Smith said. "We love underdogs in this country, all the way back to the Revolution."
Sixty-three underdogs will have their say, have a shot at making a shot heard round the world.
"Kentucky wears blue," Smith said, laughing. "But they're the Red Coats."
— Additional reporting by Zach Braziller, Mark Cannizzaro, Howie Kussoy and Steve Serby
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