Nebraska really couldn't handle Kentucky's quick hands and quick feet: the Huskers seemed to function, or malfunction, in slow motion as their magical season came to a shocking close. UK won every category except for free throws in a game that wasn't even as close as the box score makes it look.

Kelsey Griffin had something to say. "The thing that hurt so much about losing this game isn't the game," she explained, "it's the fact that I'm not going to get to go back and practice with these underclassmen and the rest of my seniors."

Announcers and fans tried to figure out what happened: how could a team with just one loss all year collapse in front of a very friendly crowd, before a UK team that lost to South Carolina, Auburn and Vanderbilt?

The answer seems to be that nobody on the Big Red schedule plays like that. Texas A&M, who enjoy pressure defense, come the closest, and Nebraska lost to TAMU a few weeks back. But the Aggies don't run the full length of the court, the whole game: as far as I know, no Big Twelve team does that, and TAMU, you'll remember, got sent home by a run-and-gun Gonzaga team.

I hadn't seen the Wildcats before, and I was impressed: they remind me of Latta-era North Carolina, in high gear all the time. Like those UNC teams, they consider turnovers and fouls fine prices to pay for games played at their exhausting pace, and sure enough their most surprising loss involved foul trouble and a big free throw disparity. In their other suprising loss, they got beat on the boards, and this extremely short Wildcat team is certainly vulnerable to posts who have more experience handling their kind of pressure.

UK's student paper calls it the biggest win ever for a program long overshadowed by UK's men's team. "It's not time for us to attach meaning... to this win," coach Mitchell said. "We will be working hard to advance."