You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Perfect Storm!
Kentucky loses to Wisconsin in the Final Four.
Congrats to you Badger Nation. You deserve credit.
But don’t fool yourself Cheese Heads. In many ways, the story is Kentucky losing more than Wisconsin winning.
For Big Blue Nation, so much was lost Saturday Night.
Coming into the semi-final game, Kentucky is 38-0.
The media, the fans, perhaps the team itself, felt perfection was a given.
Perfection had become common place, a yawn, something that was, dare say it? Mundane?
Why not win 39? How could you not win number 39?
It’s just one more than 38, right?
Wrong.
Win #39 collided with probability and outcome.
Maintaining Perfection is not a perfect science.
Win number 39 fell apart like a Buster Douglas knock out punch to Mike Tyson’s jaw.
Calling Mr. Tyson “your facial tattoo is ready.”
Kentucky Wild Cats are going home today with their big blue tail between their legs.
They are stunned. They are crying. They are still shaking their heads wondering what the hell happened.
We were perfect? How did we lose? Big Blue nation is crying in their Bourbon.
Saturday Night in Indianapolis, the perfect record was destroyed.
The perfect season extirpated.
The national championship talk silenced.
Wisconsin did what no other team could do all season, beat the Wild Cats.
The Cats were prohibitive favorites to dance all the way to the title.
I took them in my pool. The President took Big Blue in his pool. Jesus on this day of Easter Resurrection is rumored to have liked the Cats to take it all.
Perfect is a tough place to be.
Humans are not known for perfect. In fact people are known for their ability to master imperfection.
That was the thing that bothered me all along about the Cats versus the Badgers.
The Cats were so perfect. So very very perfect.
And every day perfect continues is a bigger chance that perfect fails.
Newton’s 1st law of motion stipulates that every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.
But Newton never sank a three at the buzzer. Newton never used his left hand to go strong to the glass.
Newton never played one on one with Perfection?
Perfect is hard to maintain. Perfect is 100 percent. Perfect is absolute. Perfect is the cats pajamas and pie in the sky.
Not only did the Kentucky Wildcats have to beat everyone else, they had to beat perfect.
Perfection plays blanket defense, picks your pocket and races down the floor for a slam dunk captured on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
Perfect doesn’t run a trap or a zone defense or a box and one.
Perfect simply leans on you, like boxing’s rope-a-dope. It delivers body blows and then scrambles your senses with the weight of the world. Perfect wears you down till you falter, till you let your guard down.
“Hello Mr. Tyson would you like that wake up call at the end of the round, sir?”
Wisconsin beat Kentucky because it had an extra force on the court.
It was five on five, human to human, player to player. But Wisconsin had an edge.
It had the probability that sooner or later, perfection cannot be maintained.
Kentucky was 38-0.
Every win increased the odds that a loss was coming.
It’s like a roulette table where black has come up 38 times in a row.
The lack of red on the totem pole above the table commands attention.
How many more times can red stay off the pole.
A 39th time? The law of imperfection says no.
The force on that marble, that wheel, that gaming table is so astronomical you wonder how the casino doesn’t implode upon itself.
The probability of that marble landing in a red space in that next spin is so intense, it is like the force created by a super magnet connected to the sun.
The marble has no choice but to obey the law of probability.
Eventually, the tides turn and the balance, the harmony is returned to the universe.
One Kentucky player said, ” I don’t think it weighed in on us. If so we would have lost a long time ago.”
“38 and done”, Wisconsin fans chanted leaving the arena.
To the victor goes the spoils and Wisconsin can play their fight song from the rafters of the team hotel.
But know this.
Wisconsin didn’t win as much as Kentucky lost.
Make no mistake; perfection was hiding in a dark alley with a big club ready to take the Cats out at the knees.
Perfection?
It’s a universal impossibility.
Just ask Justin Bieber’s hairspray?
Life’s Crazy™