Kentucky basketball is way of life

HOPKINSVILLE, KY — Spring is here. Somewhere a bird is singing. Somewhere a dog is barking. Somewhere, a squirrel is . . . doing whatever it is squirrels do. Squirreling. Chewing nuts. Whatever.

Anyway, the point is, something new is in the air. You can't see it, you can't taste it, but it's there all the same. You can feel it. You can sense it in the depths of your soul — investment bankers excepted. It's a slight tingling on your fingertips and an almost imperceptible humming in your ears. It's dancing right behind your eyes and tickling the nape of your neck.

It's Kentucky basketball.

The NCAA tournament is upon us, and once again the Kentucky Wildcats display to the rest of the country what it still has to aspire to.

I can't remember a time that I ever thought of basketball without thinking of the Kentucky Wildcats.

Kentucky. Basketball.

Basketball. Kentucky.

It just sounds right. Go ahead, say it aloud. It fits. Like Bonnie and Clyde. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Ben and Jerry. Jack and Daniels. You can't explain it, but you know it goes together. You might as well ask why the sky is blue or what clouds are made of.

I've often wondered how my enthusiasm for Kentucky came to be. The best I can do is telling you a little bit about my life.

I was born in South Korea and adopted by a family in western Kentucky. I think being from South Korea helped the transition to the American South quite a bit. Instead of rice paddies, I got tobacco farms. Instead of opium, I got cigarettes. Instead of sake, I got beer.

And, most importantly, I got Kentucky basketball.

In truth, my brother is a bigger fan than I am. He's always been proud to share with people that he was born in a hospital just a block away from Rupp Arena.

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For his 16th birthday, instead of a car, he wanted his room repainted in Kentucky blue with a basketball goal over the door and Wildcat wallpaper.

On his 18th birthday, his favorite gift was not the car he got, but the accompanying key chain that played the Kentucky fight song. He wore out the one-year guarantee battery in less than a week.

Even now, at 24 years of age, he says the best gift he ever got was a soft basketball that plays "Go Cats" after it hits the ground or is caught.

My brother's not the only fanatical one in my family. Basketball is important to all of us. My brother went to Western Kentucky University for college but remained a UK fan. My older sister went to Butler, my mom to UK and my dad to Murray State.

So, the only time I was ever ashamed to go to Princeton was in March 2003, my freshman year, when all the alma maters of my family made it to the NCAA tournament and Princeton didn't.

See, basketball — Kentucky basketball — brings our family together.

My family got our first computer in 1992. I know this because that was the year that Kentucky got off its three-year suspension from participating in the NCAA tournament.

To celebrate, my brother found a banner program on the computer and printed out sheet after sheet of banners and posters using the old type of paper that was stuck together and had those tabs with the holes in them on the sides that you had to tear off.

Our living room was transformed into the ground floor of Rupp Arena, built from nothing but paper and a stretch of the imagination. Every available wall space was covered with printouts of "3" and "Go Cats," covering paintings, college diplomas and baby pictures with equal disregard.

But despite the enthusiasm of two kids with face paint dancing in their living room in western Kentucky, the Wildcats lost, 104-103 in overtime after Christian Laettner sank a 17-footer in literally the last two seconds of the game.

Let's just say that if this weren't a family newspaper, I would start calling him very lewd names right about now.

But as much as that game still stings, we've had plenty of highpoints to make up for it, none greater than our national championships in 1996 and 1998.

One of the great things about Kentucky basketball, in my mind, is that it doesn't produce great pro players. It produces great teams.

Sure, players such as Tayshaun Prince, Jamaal Mashburn and Rex Chapman have gone on to the NBA in recent years. I'm more impressed, though, by the vast number of players who nobody remembers now, but who still produced when it counted most. Guys like Jeff Sheppard, the 1998 Final Four MVP, or Cameron Mills, a scrappy point guard on the same team.

It's guys like them, mediocre players who meld into championship-caliber teams, who have allowed us to win more Southeastern Conference championships than all other teams combined.

That sort of success breeds loyalty. One Kentucky fan that I know went to UK for the sole purpose of watching Rex Chapman play basketball. He's written the coach every year for the past 14 years at the end of every season to tell him what he thinks he did right and what he did wrong, just so he can get an autographed picture. He has them framed and hanging along his wall.

My mother once bought 64 issues of Sports Illustrated off eBay just so she could get the one with Mashburn on the cover.

She underwent surgery last Thursday, but the first thing she did when they took the tubes out of her mouth was watch the end of the UK v. Eastern Kentucky first-round game of the NCAA tournament.

And when the Wildcats won, it brightened the day a bit for all of us.