Can’t name any Final Four players? Blame NBA rule

As we now head toward the national-championship game of college basketball Monday night, there has been but one pervading thought as I’ve watched the three-week NCAA tournament unfold:

Who are these guys?

And if you’re in the business of college basketball, that is worrisome. Very worrisome.

Every year, it seems, college-basketball players are becoming as nameless and faceless as telemarketers to the vast majority of American sports fans. And you wonder when we will just hang up and tune them out altogether.

Read more: OrlandoSentinel.com

Commonwealth is lucky to have two top coaches

History shows it doesn’t take much to fuel a Calipari-Pitino fire

NEW ORLEANS — It was February 2005 and Memphis was 13-10 and coming off a double-digit loss to Houston. The team’s most talented player (Sean Banks) had flunked out of school mid-semester. Another starter (Jeremy Hunt) had recently been arrested on a domestic violence charge. But John Calipari didn’t use his weekly spot on the C-USA teleconference to discuss either of those things. He instead indirectly lobbied the officials for an upcoming game atLouisville.

“It will get rough sometimes and they’re going to have their crowd going and you’ve got to block all that out and just play between the lines,” Calipari said before later suggesting he wasn’t concerned with the Cardinals’ “rough-house” style because he knew a “Final Four” officiating crew would be working the game, and such a great group of officials would never, under any circumstances, let Louisville touch and grab and hold his Tigers.

Rick Pitino was not amused.

Read More: CBSSports.com

Kentucky’s John Calipari, Louisville’s Rick Pitino bring frosty relationship and simmering rivalry into Final Four matchup

NEW ORLEANS – When Kentucky plays Louisville in the national semifinals Saturday at the Superdome, it will be more than the latest chapter in college basketball’s most bitter rivalry.

The escalating tension between coaches Rick Pitino of Louisville and Kentucky’s John Calipari has become more riveting than any episode of CBS’ “Survivor” and threatens to trump what’s at stake in the biggest game ever between these two blood rivals.

Pitino, 59, has built a Hall of Fame career by restoring Louisville, which had been reduced to second-class citizenship in the state, to its former glory. He accomplished this after rescuing Kentucky from the ashes of an NCAA scandal and returning it to hallowed ground.

Read more: nydailynews.com

Cats-Cards not life or death; it’s much more than that

LEXINGTON, Ky. The old-timers showed up right when Wheeler Pharmacy opened and made a beeline for the back of the store.

They took their usual seats at the lunch counter and had their usual conversation about Kentucky basketball.

“Coming down here looking for a little bit of knowledge is like trying to get a sip of water from a fire hydrant,” explained Jim McGary, one of the regulars.

Read more: charlotteobserver.com

Rick Pitino and John Calipari now bitter rivals

In the opening round of the 1996 Final Four, it was billed as a defining moment for both coaches, who happened to be Italian, loved pasta, loved wearing $800 suits, considered one another as brothers. Rick Pitino, at the time the 43-year-old coach of the Kentucky Wildcats, had been something of an older brother to 37-year-old John Calipari, dating from a meeting at a summer basketball camp, where a 20-year-old Pitino was counselor and Calipari little more than a wide-eyed listener.

Read more: nola.com

Louisville fans and Kentucky fans now fighting … at the dialysis clinic?

If you aren’t already tired of hearing about how intense the Kentucky-Louisville rivalry is, you’ll likely be sick of it come tip-off on Saturday night.

But just in case you haven’t fully grasped what this game means to the state of Kentucky, I urge you to read this headline from WKYT 27 in Kentucky: ‘Fist fight errupts between UK and UofL fans during Dialysis.’

Read more: nbcsports.com

No pressure? Rick Pitino has plenty to lose against Kentucky

Rick Pitino sounded just this side of giddy on a Monday teleconference for Final Four coaches.

“When you love a team as much as I’ve loved this one, really these last two, it’s nice to see them get a reward,” the Louisville basketball coach said.

U of L’s reward for making a surprise run to the 2012 NCAA Tournament semifinals is an intrastate Armageddon with No. 1 overall seed Kentucky (36-2). On New Year’s Eve, the Cats escaped the plucky Cards 69-62 in Rupp Arena.

Louisville basketball proves it’s among elite in win over Michigan State

PHOENIX — The University of Louisville basketball team’s locker room in US Airways Arena has the look of a hunting lodge, with a huge stone wall covering about half of it.

On Thursday night, the Cardinals bagged some very big game. The team in the “Infrared” uniforms that Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly described from press row as “hunting vest orange” shot top-seeded Michigan State out of the NCAA Tournament, 57-44, to move into the Elite Eight and one win away from a berth in the Final Four.

Read more: courier-journal.com

How Rick Pitino got to Kentucky

In an excerpt from “The Last Great Game,” Gene Wojciechowski tells the story of how Rick Pitino decided to leave the New York Knicks for the Roman Empire of college basketball — even though the empire was in ruins. Little-known fact: Had Pitino been told one secret piece of information, he would have never ditched the Knicks for UK.

More than anyone, President of the University of Kentucky Dr. David Roselle understood how the scandal, investigation, and sanctions would traumatize the university and its followers. But he also recognized who the real victims of the scandal would be. So during the darkest days of the controversy, Roselle visited the UK locker room and spoke to the remaining Wildcat players.

“I know it’s very, very tough on you right now,” he told them. “The public is on you. I think, I hope, and I believe there will be a day you’ll be able to say to yourself, ‘I am glad I accepted a scholarship to be a basketball player and student at the University of Kentucky.’ I think you’ll see that day.”

Given Kentucky’s NCAA transgressions, just having a season was no small feat. And athletic director C.M. Newton soon informed Roselle that Pitino had agreed to visit Kentucky. There was still hope.

Read more from ESPN.com

3.2.12