A Final Wrap On The Cult Of Cat Basketball's Wildest Season. By Tom Danehy THE MORNING AFTER the UA Wildcats won the national championship in men's basketball, my mom called me from California to tell me I was going to have to eat my words. "Why Mother Dear," I said, "whatever do you mean?" She has a subscription to The Weekly, but there's about a three-week lag time. (That must mean it's sent Priority Mail.) In the issue she'd just received, I'd written the Cats were heading into the NCAA Tournament without much fan expectation. The UA had staggered down the stretch in the Pac-10 season, losing its final two games in the Bay Area, and finishing a painful fifth place in the conference. Wildcat fans had been burned by high hopes for the Tournament too many times in the past, and so this time--with this team--people were setting their sights a little bit lower. I explained to her that the column, although only three weeks old, was appropriate for the time. No one really did expect anything from the Cats. And it was all right. They were young, they'd been through a grueling conference schedule, they were a year away. Heck, even Lute Olson his ownself had vacation plans for the weekend of the Elite Eight. I told Mom to be patient. By the time she gets the next issue (around Mother's Day), she'll see that after the Cats had squeaked by their first two opponents, it was obvious to me they'd acquired That Thing. A spark, a swagger, an aura of confidence. Hard to define but easy to spot. So easy that, heading into the Sweet 16 match-up with the top-rated Kansas Jayhawks, I was already predicting a national crown for the Wildcats. Sure, it came a week after I'd sent them off into battle with a shrug. Things had changed. The Cats had found themselves at the absolute perfect time. After they won a gut-wrenching first-round game against South Alabama, a game other Cat teams could have found--and as a matter of fact, did find--a way to lose, they showed equal grit in overcoming another second-half deficit against the College of Charleston. It was suddenly clear: These guys weren't haunted by ghosts of Early Cat Flameouts Past; they were too young to know about that stuff. Emerging unbeaten and unbowed from two tough early-round games had left the Cats battle-hardened and eager for more. The mythology of the Tournament says the eventual champion will have to win at least one close game. These guys won six close games; six wins by a total of 32 points. It was somehow both improbable and perfectly logical at the same time. THIS IS A championship for locals to savor and basketball fans everywhere to marvel over. It's a testament to the beauty and wonder of the game which will soon be the world's favorite. Five guys--not the biggest, the fastest, nor even the most skilled--taking on all comers and beating back every challenge with a delicious combination of teamwork, selflessness, and determination. They weren't flashy; they didn't try to rain dunks down on people. Heck, they had a three-on-none in the title game, and when they tried to throw an alley-oop for a dunk, the pass almost went in the basket. They didn't have nicknames, although the dorks at CBS tried to pin "Wild Thing" on Miles Simon. That fit about as well as "Newt Gingrich, Statesman." Simon ended up scoring an "Oh well" 30 points in the title game, as in, "Oh well, if y'all aren't gonna score, I guess I'll have to." Mike Bibby, whose listed height of 6'1" is more charitable than Jim Click at a Boys Club function, pulled down nine rebounds. Michael Dickerson, the leading scorer, whose shooting stroke was treated like luggage and misplaced during all this frequent air travel, played gritty defense on Kentucky's leading scorer, Ron Mercer. And all the Cats shot free throws the way every coach in America preaches that they should be shot--like each one is worth a point on the scoreboard. So now Lute has his national championship. He earned it. It should make the next six or seven years before his retirement easier to enjoy, removing the self-imposed pressure of never having won one and allowing him to proceed simply on his competitive desire to win another one. It was an incredible run, one which will stick in the hearts and minds of Cat fans for as long as they live. It did not exorcise demons, for those who truly understand the game of basketball realize that no real demons existed. Past losses were just that, losses in a tough tournament setting. It did not erase the East Coast mindset of some know-nothings who don't understand the game. And it probably didn't even change the minds of people who don't like Lute Olson simply because of the way he chooses to live his life. What it did do is show that hard work can overcome a lot of obstacles. It proved a good team can beat a collection of great individuals. And it paid back a lot of fans for their decade-long investment of cheers and tears in a program that looked like it might forever be known for opportunities missed and promise unfulfilled. SOME TV LOWLIGHTS from Championship night: • KOLD-TV, Channel 13, which reaped an incredible ratings boost from the Cats' run to the title, may or may not have translated that windfall into permanent viewership for its generally much-improved newscasts. For one thing, in their post-game combined newscast and pep rally, they spent eight minutes, 42 seconds telling us they were going to be on the air for an hour and five minutes. Enough already! We're watching. Now do stuff that will make us want to keep watching. • KGUN-TV, Channel 9's coverage was less enthusiastic, but they were quick to note they were going to hack up their daytime lineup the next morning to cover the Cats' homecoming festivities. It's one thing to preempt All My Children for a special report about World War III or something, but to do so for a parade and tell viewers of your decision 12 hours in advance is inviting a phone-bank meltdown. • When things got dicey on Fourth Avenue, none of the stations acquitted themselves particularly well. I only brushed by KVOA-TV, Channel 4, so I'm not sure how they handled it, but they suck on most things, so they probably sucked on that one, too. KGUN showed the car being overturned by the dimwits who brought disgrace to our community by acting like their inbred relatives back home in Chicago. Both Kristen Lee on KGUN and Emily Frances on KOLD looked genuinely frightened by the events, and their fear carried over onto the screen. It was creepy having to watch them work under those conditions. Neither one would make a good war correspondent. • Later Frances was holed up in a Fourth Avenue bar, dramatically clutching a pair of headphones--all that could be rescued when KOLD's news van was set upon by a throng of hooligans. Emily, you missed your chance. If you were one of those upwardly mobile type reporters we often see on local news for six months or so before they move on, you could have torn your blouse and mussed up your hair, and then told us how you rescued the headphones. COMEDIAN/DIRECTOR DAVID Steinberg used to tell a story about when he was going to appear on the old Dick Cavett show. Steinberg had sorta long hair back then, and as he was walking toward the studio, past a line of people waiting to get in to a taping of Let's Make A Deal, someone called him a "weirdo." Steinberg turned around and saw that his critic was some guy dressed as a pizza. I thought of that when I saw on TV a guy in Indianapolis with red and blue paint smeared all over his face, glassy eyes, and a concave rib cage where his chest should have been. He peered into the camera and said, "Finally, we're going to get the respect we deserve." Dude, you better hope the one thing you never get is the respect you deserve. I'VE ALWAYS HATED Kentucky basketball. I'm old enough to have marched in civil rights demonstrations as a kid, and to have cheered as racial barriers tumbled throughout the South when I was in my teens. I also remember Kentucky and its bitter racist coach, Adolph Rupp, standing as one of the last bastions of hatred and stupidity in the world of sports--and I never got over it. Many blacks felt the same way for a long time, long after Rupp was dead and gone. That image still lingered for many people. Well, times have changed and Kentucky has joined the 20th century, even as the rest of us are heading into the 21st. It still has an ugly legacy, one which has never been formally addressed by the school or many of its fans. Much of what is better with Kentucky has to do with Coach Rick Pitino. Even after Sports Illustrated savaged him in an article earlier this season, Pitino remained a top-notch basketball coach, one who cares deeply for his own players and brings honor to his program and the game itself. Pitino's post-game demeanor was a display of dignity and grace not often seen in the world of sports these days. He was so incredibly gracious in defeat, heaping praise upon Olson and the Arizona players. He showed his love for his own players and brought honor to himself with his composure and class. Would that we all could be so dignified in tough times. I READ A book once which detailed the shooting deaths of several people in one day in American history, including one poor kid who was shot by some jerk because he had thrown a snowball at the man. Alas, these 100 or so people who died that day were even cheated in death, because they were all shot on Nov. 22, 1963. All the coverage went to JFK. On a much-less grave note, pity the Wildcat women's basketball team, who chose to make 1996-97 their breakout year, the one in which they would go to the NCAAs for the first time ever. That's like a tiny stone being tossed in a still pond, its ripples just starting to spread away from the center, when the asteroid hits. The women's great year will forever be an afterthought to the men's title. Oh well, there's always next year...when the men return their entire team and go for two in a row. FINALLY, FOR ALL those guys who, for one twisted reason or another, hate the Wildcats--up yours. There's Todd, at the fitness place, whose love of pure sport was brainwashed out of him while at ASU. And Skippy, who will be leaving for the Philippines soon and probably not coming back until football season, or the thawing of Ferdinand Marcos' body, whichever comes first. And Phillip, the kid down the street who has never been able to beat me at basketball and so is giving up on a chance for a happy life and enrolling at Salpointe. Hey, maybe that's why those morons killed themselves in California. They didn't want to see Arizona win a title. Either that or they were tired of getting a busy signal at America Online.

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