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Enjoy from my personal collection of NCAA Tournament games. I remember getting back from an afternoon of playing some pickup basketball at Wilson Park in Chicago midway through the second half of this game. I was enthralled by the championship mettle of this Kentucky team that was just so hard to beat. After losing to North Carolina during the Sweet Sixteen of the 1998 NCAA Tournament, this Michigan State team was primed to defeat the defending national champion Wildcats. What a fun game this one was, with me happy that Michigan State had finally broken through to the Final Four but incredibly impressed by Kentucky's title-winning DNA during the final games of the stellar college careers of point guard Wayne Turner and forward Scott Padgett. In many ways this loss marked the end of an era for Kentucky basketball as Turner and Padgett were holdovers from Rick Pitino. After reaching the Final Four during his first season with Kentucky, Head Coach Tubby Smith would never break through again, losing Elite Eights in 1999, 2003 and 2005. As maligned as Smith was by Kentucky fans, he did a great job of keeping the Wildcats at the top of the sport for nearly a decade after Pitino left for the Boston Celtics of the NBA.
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