After a season where a resurgent Indiana program handed Kentucky their first (and only) regular season loss and the Cats finished off the Hoosiers’ hopes for a Final Four in the Sweet Sixteen, good friends John Calipari and Tom Crean spent the summer going back and forth in the media about the future of the series. The annual matchup between the two schools, which had continued for 47 consecutive years, eventually died and both programs moved on without each other.
Until Tuesday night.
During Indiana’s beatdown of North Carolina, ESPN college basketball analyst Dick Vitale announced that he’d received a text from Calipari saying that he’d be willing to play the take the court with the Hoosiers again and that he had a plan. The UK coach proposed a season-opener with Indiana at the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn in a big-time event benefiting the V Foundation. It was a proposal that was essentially the same as what was originally tossed around and declined on the IU side of things, but Calipari changed the sales package some by making it for charity and moving it to the NBA’s sexiest new arena.
Walter Cornett, of Glendale, Kentucky, is the owner and operator of Walter’s Wildcat World. He founded WildcatWorld.com in 1998 making it one of the oldest Kentucky basketball fan sites in operation today.