BTI's Rants and Ramblings: Forgotten UK NCAA Tournament Classics

This is going to be a very tough week for this fanbase as UK misses its first NCAA Tournament in 8 years (2020 not withstanding) and only its 3rd since 1992.  The blow is only slightly softened by Louisville also missing the tournament but it's still going to be tough seeing 68 other teams battle it out for the national title.  So I thought we could spend this week remembering some of our forgotten classics in the NCAA Tournament.  Yeah, it's easy to to reminisce about national championship games, shocking upsets, and great individual performances.  But there are several games that have fallen through the cracks of our memory and this week I bring back 5 of those. Today we travel all the way back to Year 2 of the Tubby Smith era, 1999.  The defending national champs went into the tournament as a 3-seed and were unimpressive in their 1st round win.  So nerves were high when the Cats took on 6th seed Kansas in the 2nd round in New Orleans.  This was a down year for Roy Williams and Kansas but a couple elite guards proved to be very dangerous for the Cats. Remember this was the first game following the tragic death of John Stewart so there had to be a little extra emotion in this game for the team.  After a slow start, UK and KU basically traded the lead for much of the remainder of regulation but it was Kansas who led late, leading by 5 with just 1:10 remaining.  But two Wayne Turner free throws and then a clutch Scott Padgett three with 20 seconds left tied the game, the Cats got a stop at the buzzer and went on to win in overtime. So take a few minutes and relive this UK Tournament classic from 1999.  More to come the rest of this week.