TERRE HAUTE —
If the annual Indiana-Kentucky basketball game was not significant, would the coaches of the two universities be talking like this?
“We were willing to play [the next two series games] in the state of Indiana, and they said no to that. That means they don’t want to play us,” Kentucky coach John Calipari told ESPN.com.
“The bottom line is that [Kentucky] didn’t want to play home-and-home,” said Indiana coach Tom Crean, “and we did.”
A series deserving of cancellation usually involves no nyah-nyah-na-nyah-nyah. Attendance drops, the intensity of play cools, and everybody just shrugs and says, “Let’s call the whole thing off.”
That’s not the case here. Instead, with healthy doses of indignation and finger-pointing, officials at both schools have announced that their rivalry — which had been renewed every season since 1969 — must end because UK and IU can’t agree on where to play. Kentucky wants neutral sites, such as Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Indiana wants the games played on-campus, rotating between Assembly Hall in Bloomington and Rupp Arena in Lexington.
You may be thinking, “Hey, it’s a basketball game, for cryin’ out loud. How hard is it for two border-state colleges to pull that off, especially after having done so successfully for the past 42 years?” We wonder the same thing.
Egos play a role in the impasse. Calipari’s Kentucky Wildcats are fresh off a national championship. In an open letter to fans, “the Big Blue Nation,” Calipari explains that UK has elevated to a plateau heretofore unseen in college basketball. “Nontraditional,” he calls the Wildcats program, the new “gold standard. Everyone has to accept that.” Everyone, perhaps, except Galileo, who proved the universe does not revolve around Earth or, by extension, Lexington.
In his letter, Calipari lamented that no other program shoulders the burden of having to replace five or six players every year, as those teenage phenoms trade their gold status at UK for NBA platinum after just one or two seasons in a Wildcat uniform. (Even Bill Clinton would have a hard time saying, “John, I feel your pain.”) Kentucky can no longer afford to lock in a nonconference opponent (such as IU or North Carolina) for a long-term contract into perpetuity, Calipari said. After all, what if the Wildcats win another NCAA title, and then eight players leave as first-round NBA draft picks? In the event of such an atrocity, Calipari couldn’t, in good conscience, subject the following season’s new UK collection of McDonald’s All-Americans to a road game in Assembly Hall.
On the flip side, Indiana has dug in its heels by insisting the series continue in the campus arenas. Twenty of the 43 meetings between IU and Kentucky since 1969 have been played at neutral sites, such as the old RCA Dome in Indy and Freedom Hall in Louisville. Huge crowds turned out, and the two schools split the proceeds, so refusing to continue that routine seems lame on Indiana’s part.
IU claims it wants the Wildcats-Hoosiers games played on the campuses, so the students can easily attend such a highly anticipated game. Indeed, the Indiana students savored that opportunity last season. The resurgent Hoosiers handed Kentucky its only regular-season defeat with a game-ending shot, and the IU students immediately swarmed the court. Indiana fans also heckled Calipari more colorfully than any other UK road opponent, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. Emboldened by his NCAA title, Calipari may have decided, “I don’t need this.”
Whatever the root, this feud needs to play out on the basketball court. To Calipari, Crean and their bosses we say, find a way to play that game.
Opinion
EDITORIAL: When it’s IU vs. UK, there’s got to be a way
Let’s continue the feud on the basketball court
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