It's hard for Kentucky to enjoy the journey when it ends in rough spot
INDIANAPOLIS — After his basketball team's final practice before embarking for the Final Four, Kentucky coach John Calipari told the Wildcats to take a walk through the Joe Craft Center, the program's basketball facility.
Walk around, Calipari said, and take it slow. Take a good, long look — at the lockers, the lounge, the court, the training room, your teammates, your coaches. Just soak it all in, he said.
Press pause. Absorb it. Enjoy the journey, and remember it.
Throughout this season – and for much of his entire tenure with the program – Calipari preached this mantra, stressing its importance as the Wildcats charged at basketball history: Stay in the moment.
"He always says that," senior guard Sam Malone said, "usually the night before games. He says he loves coaching us. That's always part of his message: enjoy every second of it."
Calipari says it daily, forward Marcus Lee added.
"That's the best way to go through life, to enjoy right now and not think about what's coming up," he said. "Because what's coming up might not come."
And that's how it was since July, when the Wildcats began their journey in the Bahamas, playing exhibition games against foreign competition. Nothing changed, assistant coach John Robic said.
"What they did all year, just took us all on a ride, our staff, our school, our state," said Calipari. "Took us on a ride."
Kentucky lost to Connecticut in last year's championship game. Two years ago, the Wildcats lost in the opening round of the National Invitational Tournament, stubbing their toe one last time in a season lost amid titanic expectations. But never before Saturday — not under Calipari, perhaps not ever in the history of this proud program — had Kentucky's enjoy-the-journey refrain been tested with such a burning shock.
After losing in the national semifinals to Wisconsin, the team's first loss during an otherwise unblemished season, Kentucky is left weighing two opposing mindsets — that of a single game's shock and despair against an entire season's memorable journey.
Calipari stressed this point again following the loss, gathering his team into rows of folding chairs in the center of the locker room to reiterate a run of talking points: I'm still proud of you; it was a privilege to coach you; I'll always remember our path, and you should too.
"Coach, he talked to us about how there will probably never be another team that'll be 38-0," guard Dominique Hawkins said. "He wished that we would've gone 40-0, he said."
But 38-0 is now 38-1; it's not 40-0. And that's the problem: Calipari and his staff can talk about loving the journey and not the end result, but for these Wildcats, it's far easier said than done.
"We never learned how to lose," Hawkins said. "We never felt the feeling of losing. We expected to be in the championship game. We expected more than 38-0."
Center Dakari Johnson: It just doesn't seem real.
Forward Trey Lyles: It's impossible to deal with. It's hard to even consider.
All-America forward Willie Cauley-Stein: It's like when the main character of a movie dies.
"We don't remember our wins, we remember our losses," forward Marcus Lee said. "That's how we are. And right now this one hurts."
There's the pain stems from a missed shot at history: Not since Indiana in 1976 had a Division I men's team gone unbeaten. But there's agony to be found in the sudden blow of not just the loss but the end of the road for a specific team set for another overhaul.
The team has three seniors, each occupying an unessential role at the bottom of Kentucky's rotation. But five underclassmen could opt to forego any remaining eligibility and enter the NBA draft, continuing the program's recent one-and-done tradition.
If the loss itself provides the initial shock, this jolt of realization — that it's over for this iteration of Kentucky basketball — yields a secondary tremor.
"We talk about building a relationship with your brothers," Malone said. "Your 15 brothers that are with you. I wouldn't trade these guys for the world. It's just not the way it's supposed to end."
It was supposed to end, just not like this. These Wildcats made a run at history; history, as it tends to do, proved impossible to overcome.
"It's going to stick with this group of kids," Robic said. "They're great kids, they're smart kids. They're competitors. They wanted to win every game. They almost did."