DES MOINES, Iowa — The first thing senior guard Yogi Ferrell asked Derek Elston on Friday morning was about the IU-Kentucky rivalry.
Ferrell is as ingrained in IU history as anyone, but has never played in this once prevalent rivalry. Elston, the IU director of player development, was on the last team to do so.
So, Elston said he is going to sit some players down when they eat Friday evening and explain his experiences with the two power programs. He will explain his time as part of both the rebirth and suspension of a rivalry some call one of the best in basketball.
That’s what makes this rivalry so interesting. It is one that returned at staggering heights and somewhat ended only a few months later when the two sides couldn't agree on where to play. The passions are simmering, but they have not fully cooled.
The wait will end Saturday, when the two blue-blood programs meet with national title hopes on the line.
The rivalry certainly means something to Jordan Hulls. The former IU guard is a Bloomington native whose college basketball education centered around two things.
“All I've known is to root for IU and whoever is playing against Kentucky,” he said.
But those newer to the rivalry didn’t always know it that way. Despite meeting every year from 1969 to 2011, both teams hadn’t been simultaneously relevant since the early 2000s.
Once Kentucky Coach John Calipari took over for the Wildcats in 2009, Kentucky seemed to be taking control of things.
Avi Zaleon, now with the Dallas Morning News, was the IDS men’s basketball columnist for the 2011-2012 season.
“It was kind of always like the Monstars versus the Looney Tunes,” he said in a phone interview.
Elston admits his first two years playing Kentucky were difficult because IU was still trying to rebuild from NCAA sanctions and the Wildcats were loaded with star-studded talent.
“We had to battle guys that you’re still seeing putting up 30 and 30 in the NBA,” Elston said.
But 2011 was when things changed, or almost changed.
Both teams were undefeated for the Dec. 10, 2011 contest, but nobody outside the IU program was really sure the return of IU was for real.
For example, Zaleon lived in his Delta Chi fraternity house that season. One night, he left his computer open and a drunk fraternity brother went on his Twitter account and wrote, “I guarantee an Indiana victory against Kentucky next week.”
“That just goes to show where we were at,” Zaleon said.
Hulls said the team entered that game confidently. They felt they had proven themselves in the prior games and this was a chance to earn that national recognition. The IU fans didn’t quite feel as confident.
“I think everybody viewed it as, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if we beat Kentucky?’" Zaleon said. “Much in the same way I would be like, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if I got into Duke Law School?’”
The point is, IU fans absolutely hated Kentucky fans, but the programs were on such different levels that it sometimes didn’t feel like a rivalry. Then that shot happened.
A consistent trait about “Wat Shot” stories is that many people tend to primarily remember what happened after Christian Watford’s buzzer-beating 3-pointer to beat Kentucky went in.
Elston and Hulls remember the first thing they did was sprint on the floor to tackle Watford. Hulls said he will always remember standing on the scorer’s table in celebration. Elston said the game is ingrained in all of the players' minds.
Zaleon remembers being on press row as all the reporters stood in preparation for Watford attempting the shot. He said he grabbed then-Bloomington Herald-Times reporter Dustin Dopiriak’s forearm and yelled, “Dustin, oh my God,” as the shot went up.
Once the shot fell, the feeling around the rivalry changed. Zaleon said he remembers feeling numb but having a job to do. He took the approach of speaking to people in Assembly Hall as they rushed the court and wrote about it in his postgame column.
That was the moment IU men’s basketball became nationally relevant again. It was also when the rivalry didn’t feel so uneven anymore.
So, three months later, when the two happened to meet in the Sweet 16, it felt like a meeting of mutual respect. Zaleon thought going in this time that IU could win it. IU was now a No. 4 seed and people were aware of what it had.
“We knew that we had a good game plan and that it was going to be a hard fought game regardless,” Hulls said.
This time, Kentucky won the high-scoring shootout 102-90. It was an interesting moment in the rivalry that seemed to be returning to its old heights.
There was sadness among the teammates. They had grown as a program so much they really believed they should have won it. At the same time, fans were more accepting of the loss because they knew the program was coming back to what it used to be.
The growth showed in how upset IU fans were the following year when IU lost in the Sweet 16 again. The expectations were back.
Then, the annual rivalry ended, or at least stopped for a while. Calipari wanted to play in neutral sites and IU needed some home games. IU Coach Tom Crean doesn’t think it’s permanently over, but it’s on break for a while because of other agreements for the next few years.
Except for Saturday. The NCAA provided us with an opportunity to see the two clash once more without any need for an agreement between the two sides.
Hulls thinks they should play again. He said there’s no reason not to. Elston is with the program and didn’t want to say too much about it.
Zaleon thinks the rivalry still exists, but that losing the annual game mainly hurts IU in terms of strength of schedule. The Kentucky game, Elston said, was always the chance to see where IU stood. It was not too early in the season and was right before conference play.
Regardless of whether the teams should play, they will play. It’s two high-level teams who were absolutely underseeded by the selection committee to give viewers a second-round treat.
Elston is excited to be a part of it again. Hulls has a game with Belgium’s Limburg United and will have to record it and watch later. He said he will be avoiding social media.
The rivalry may not have been played for a while, but the interest is there.
“People have been waiting since the Sweet 16 loss to play this game,” Zaleon said. “That’s cool. That’s really cool. Like people harbored their feelings from fucking four years ago and it’s going to come to fruition in one game.”
He used the example of a boiling pot of water. It was boiling in 2012, and then somebody turned the heat off. It might be cooling down. But it has by no means stopped boiling.
