6:47PM EDT October 17. 2012 - Rick Pitino still remembers the first time he was told about weddings and funerals in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
Never, ever have them on the day the Wildcats are playing.
The first two years, I thought people were putting me on,'' Pitino said of his early days as Kentucky's coach in the 1990s. "Finally, I realized they weren't putting me on. It really is that important.''
Now Pitino coaches Louisville, where 1,400 fans showed up the other day just to hear him talk basketball at lunch.
He can look north across the Ohio River to Indiana, where there are 33 high school gyms that seat at least 5,000 people.
He can look east toward Lexington, where all the tickets for Kentucky's first open practice – Big Blue Madness -- were gone in 35 minutes, with 600 tents of people camping out to be first in line.
Indiana. Louisville. Kentucky. They go 1-2-3 in the first USA Today coaches' poll, like neighbors in mansions on the same swanky street. All, of course, with basketball goals in their driveways.
"I thought I understood it before I ever moved here,'' Indiana coach Tom Crean
said. "It took about three days for me to realize I didn't have any gauge on
it. You can get it in bits and pieces watching it on TV, but until you really
get in here and spend a little time, you don't realize just how deep the passion is.
It would be like what Alabama football fans would feel.''
Crean's No. 1 Hoosiers return the top five scorers from a Sweet 16 team, led by Cody Zeller, one of the leading candidates for national player for the year. No. 2
Louisville brings back most of a Final Four lineup, led by point guard Peyton
Siva. No. 3 Kentucky, which said goodbye to the first two picks in the 2012 NBA
draft and three other first- or second-rounders, depends on a new wave of freshman blue chippers, pausing on the road to the NBA to sign with John Calipari, who knows how to thrive with them.
To take the scenic route from Indiana University to the University of Louisville, you go 100 miles through the hills of southern Indiana, passing within nine miles of French Lick and Larry Bird's old jump-shooting grounds. To get from Louisville to Lexington and the University of Kentucky, you slice 76 miles across the Bluegrass State on Interstate 64.
You can visit all three in one afternoon, a 3½-hour drive past barns and basketball lovers.
"It's a 365-day thing here,'' Kentucky Sports Radio host Matt Jones said. "They don't just care. They care all the time.''
Added Evan Daniels, national recruiting analyst for Scout.com: "Basketball is everything. Basketball is absolutely everything in the states of Kentucky and Indiana.''
You can measure that in success. Together, the three have won 15 national championships and gone to 32 Final Fours. The last time an NCAA tournament bracket did not include at least one of them was 1965.
You can measure it in fan support. Kentucky has been first or second in national attendance every year since Rupp Arena opened in 1976, and led last season with 23,721 fans a game. Louisville was third at 21,503; Indiana, in a smaller arena, ninth at 16,462. In 2002, they were 1-2-3 in attendance.
You can measure it in money. According to Sports Business Journal, Louisville was No. 1 without peer in basketball revenue for the 2010-11 season at $40.9 million. Duke was a distant second at $28.9 million. Kentucky was sixth, Indiana seventh.
You can measure it in passion, of a pure and virulent stripe that coaches appreciate, if never quite fully understand. "They're crazy,'' Kentucky coach John Calipari said lovingly at last spring's Final Four of Wildcat fans. "I love it, but they watch tapes more than I watch tapes.''
Pitino added, "Basketball means so much to people. I find it absolutely refreshing. When I see all these football moves where everybody's got to go out of their (conferences), then see all the other sports have to make adjustments to football, it (is) great for college basketball to see something like this happen.''
You can measure it in ticket demand. At the 1980 NCAA Mideast Regional at Rupp Arena, back when teams could play at home, the semifinals had Indiana vs. Purdue and Kentucky vs. Duke. But the real prize was the championship game session, because it would almost certainly be Indiana against Kentucky. On the street outside, a scalper asked $100 for the two-session ticket. But both Purdue and Duke pulled off upsets. The same scalper stood outside afterward, offering tickets to the Plan B title game. He wanted $5.
You can measure it by the intensity of feeling between the schools. Kentucky and Louisville could not agree to meet during the regular season for 60 years, coming to an accord in 1983 only when the state legislature began twisting arms.
Kentucky and Indiana have met every season since 1969, but that series is going on hiatus because they could not compromise on a playing site this season. Indiana and Louisville have managed only 16 meetings.
"You move on and you hope it turns around somewhere down the road,'' Crean said of the divorce with Kentucky. "I would think that at some point there'd be a series with Louisville. I think it'd be good especially if we're not playing Kentucky.''
"We would love to play them,'' Pitino said of the Hoosiers.
Kentucky inflicted arguably the most painful defeat of Bob Knight's career, knocking the unbeaten Hoosiers out of the 1975 NCAA tournament.
Indiana upset Kentucky on Christian Watford's buzzer-beater last season. It was a moment replayed so often -- even on an ESPN promo -- that Wildcats forward Michael Kidd-Gilchrist said before their Sweet 16 rematch, "I hate that commercial. We're going to get them back.''
They did. Kidd-Gilchrist scored 24 points in a 102-90 Wildcats victory.
And when Kentucky and Louisville met in the Final Four last April, the therapists of the Commonwealth were on standby.
"There will be people in Kentucky that will have a nervous breakdown if they lose to us,'' Pitino said that week. "They've got to put up fences on the bridges. There will be people consumed by Louisville.''
Kentucky won 69-61.
The three teams enter this season together at the top, alike in their fervor for the game, but divided in their loyalties.
"There's certainly an amount of local pride – even though these teams all kind of hate each other – that this is the center of college basketball again,'' Jones said.
You can tell by who wins the hearts and minds of their state.
"It's like a vicarious kind of pride, a sense of involvement,'' said Dr. Mary K. Anglin, chair of the University of Kentucky department of anthropology, and possibly the only person on campus who has never been to a Wildcats game.
"People get involved in the stories of the kids, so they know different kinds of stats. They know their interests. It's this whole kind of running saga.''
Kentucky has no major professional sports for competition, but it's ridiculous to think of Wildcats fans ever having their attention diverted, anyway.
"I think you could actually almost invert it,'' Anglin said. "A professional team of some amazing caliber would have a worrisome time coming to Lexington because they'd have to compete with this."
Such good teams, such high rankings, such loud noises from the fanatical and long lines of the faithful.
And if all three neighbors reach the same Final Four, it would be the greatest block party in college basketball history.
"I'm not sure it'll happen,'' Pitino said. "But it would be a lot of fun.''
Contributing: Nicole Auerbach and Eric Prisbell
I'm sure there are some very passionate fans, just like I'm sure there are passionate hockey fans in Alaska, but I think it's fair to say Indiana is more passionate about high school basketball than Kentucky, I do think it's fair to compare UK hoops to gopher hockey, after all there were a lot people who wanted Lucia's ahead despite two national titles, and now four frozen fours, not to mention all the final five and wcha league titles
