Aaron Harrison thinks about Wisconsin loss more than game-winners

You remember where you were when Aaron Harrison hit the shots against Louisville, Michigan and Wisconsin. There’s a chance you may not remember much of what happened in the hours after, but you definitely know where you were and who you were with during Kentucky‘s magical March Madness run in 2014.

It wasn’t just the shots, either. It was the build-up, t-shirts made going into the season with 40-0 aspirations after putting together the best recruiting class in history on paper, only to lose nine games in the regular season and fall out of the rankings entering postseason play.

As confidence waned externally, internal confidence soared, Harrison calling his shot following the team’s 72-67 loss at South Carolina to open the month of March.

“We know what we can do and it’s going to be a great story,” he said at the time.

Then came a hard-fought run to the SEC Tournament title game before losing to No. 1 seed Florida 61-60 — a nice confidence boost going into the NCAA Tournament. And we know how the rest of the story goes, the Wildcats rattling off wins over Kansas State, Wichita State, Louisville, Michigan and Wisconsin en route to the championship, Harrison hitting game-winners in the latter three contests against the Cardinals, Wolverines and Badgers.

Did he actually believe those words when he said them, genuinely planning to speak that run into existence?

“Yeah, definitely,” he told KSR on Tuesday. “I mean, I was just confident in our team. I just felt like we had a team that could beat anybody. We were just young and we were just a little inconsistent, but I definitely just believed it when I said it. Then we made a historic run, so it made for a good story.”

How would he rank the shots that helped make it a story we’ll all be telling our great grandkids one day? He’s going Elite Eight, Final Four, then Sweet 16, in that order.

“I think Michigan was probably my favorite, just because — I mean, it was on front of Sports Illustrated. I don’t know, I think I felt like it was a tougher game for us and I didn’t really expect it at all. That was my favorite one,” he told KSR. “Then the one against Wisconsin, that was number two, I would say. That was pretty crazy, obviously, hitting a game-winner in a Final Four game is just ridiculous. Like, so crazy. And I would say Louisville, I would put that at number three just because there was the most time on the clock when I shot it of the three.”

Expect to see more big shots from Aaron Harrison for the @LaFamiliaTBT squad in the @thetournament ! @AaronICE2 joined KSR today and ranked some of his biggest shots in his Kentucky career!

🎧-https://t.co/hNfBYmQ7tO pic.twitter.com/JAft6Wkaqk

— Mario A Maitland (@MarioMaitland_3) July 3, 2024

When you hit some of the biggest shots in the history of not only Kentucky basketball, but the NCAA Tournament, you’d have to have the highlights playing on a constant loop at your house, right? Photos and art hanging up everywhere to commemorate the moments you became a Wildcat legend?

Well, not exactly. In fact, Harrison says he thinks about the Wisconsin game that came the following year more often.

Yes, that Wisconsin game. The one that shattered our hearts into a million pieces on April 4, 2015. The day 38-0 became 38-1.

“No, no, nothing like that, man,” Harrison said of celebrating his game-winners in the decade since that historic run in 2014. “I probably still don’t appreciate it like I should, really. I think I might think about the loss more than making the shots, I’d definitely say that.”

The pain may not be as strong as it once was and it may not be something that haunts him every day like it did before, but it certainly stings. And quite often.

He certainly appreciates the game-winners and his big-picture legacy in blue and white, but that night in Indianapolis will always be the one that got away.

“It definitely hurts. It definitely — I mean, I don’t think about it every single day anymore, but I definitely still think about it a lot,” Harrison told KSR. “You know, you always think about what you could have done and what you could have changed, but being a part of that team, I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

“How it ended, it was — I guess it is what it is, but I definitely still think about it.”