Smith's compassion and his industry come from growing up one of 17 kids in a low-country Maryland farm family. In the 1966 NCAA final, played at Maryland's Cole Field House, a Kentucky team coached by Adolph Rupp lost to Texas Western, the first national champion to start five black players. Smith, then 14, was no Kentucky fan that night. "Not so much because [Texas Western] was black," he says. "But seeing the underdogs win the way they did gives all underdogs some hope. That's what it did for me."

Jamaal Magloire took care of business upstairs during the game.    (Manny Millan)

Under Pitino, Kentucky had been the classic overdog, a 94-foot force of nature. Those close to him say Pitino lit out for the Boston Celtics last spring in part because he didn't believe that the Wildcats, after sending six players to the NBA over two years, could win a title this season. And while it's hard to think of a squad with five players who were national champions two years ago as Team Woebegone, the group that Smith inherited did need remedial work. In December the Wildcats lost at home to a Louisville team that would go 12-20. After Pitino, their style seemed so pedestrian that one talk-radio caller voiced a heretofore unthinkable question: How come the basketball Wildcats can't be as exciting as Hal Mumme's pass-happy football team?

Following another home loss, to Mississippi on Valentine's Day, Smith ordered up supplemental 6 a.m. practices. Ole Miss would be the Wildcats' last loss of the season. "After we lost those three home games, even I wanted to call my own radio show and say, 'You bum!'" Smith said last week. "Now I think people in Kentucky have accepted that maybe this guy knows a little bit."

On Monday night, while Smith was thanking (in no particular order) God, his parents, his wife, Pitino, Kentucky athletic director C.M. Newton, the players, the school president, the fans, the Utes ("for their good effort"), the NCAA, "all the teams that played in the tournament," the media, San Antonio and "all the players I've ever coached"—and then thanked them all over again—Pitino was watching in a friend's Miami Beach condo, unable to work out the logistics of chartering a jet to the game.

"Rick is the most charismatic communicator and master teacher and coach I've ever seen in one package," says Newton, who hired both Pitino and his successor. "We had a whole team of kids coming back that he recruited. We had to have someone whose ego would permit the inevitable comparisons to Rick—someone confident enough in himself, because those comparisons would be constant."

Early in the season Smith proved to Newton that he was that man. Guard Allen Edwards had let slip that he thought the team ought to be pressing more, and his comments were bandied about in the media. "Now, there are three ways to respond to that," Newton says. "One is to tell the player to shut up, that this is my team, and we'll do things my way. Another is to get defensive and make a big deal of it. Then there's the way Tubby handled it: He said, 'Allen is a good young man, a college student entitled to express his opinions—but, hey, I'm the head coach, and I'll determine the best defense.' Allen had bought into Rick's philosophy, and Tubby had enough patience and understanding to handle it without feeling threatened."

Success is a choice, or so goes the title of the latest of Pitino's motivational tomes. But for the man who took Pitino's place, success is more like an imperative, at least to a black man coaching at a place that rose to prominence under Rupp, who well into his retirement was telling sportswriters that the game suffered from having too many blacks playing it. Newton still gets unsigned hate mail criticizing his choice of a replacement for Pitino. But the achievement of Smith's first team is certain to have Newton repeating one of his favorite lines with more gusto than ever: "Who's our coach isn't a black-and-white issue. It's a blue-and-white issue."

Smith stepped up and made the final cut.    (John Biever)

Smith and his team won over college basketball fans in this Final Four even as the rotund Majerus and his Utes staked a worthy claim of their own for the nation's affections. Majerus was an assistant at Marquette when wisecracking Al McGuire won the national title in his valedictory season, 1977, and now he does a better McGuire than McGuire himself. Utah's hotel in San Antonio was "one step ahead of the health department," Majerus told the media. The Utes don't make the late-night highlight shows because, "What are they gonna say? 'Here's a down screen and a jump shot?'" At a press conference on Sunday, as someone asked Miller a convoluted, racially charged question, the P.A. system began warbling with feedback, and Majerus, sensing where the question was going, seized the moment. "It's God," he said. "Sending you a message."

Not since that 1977 NCAA title run that Coach Al called "seashells and balloons" has a coach been such a people's choice. Majerus isn't going anywhere, however, except perhaps to another coaching job at Arizona State or in the pros. So not beating Kentucky was just so much more scallops and Blimpies.

Moments after Monday's final buzzer, the Wildcats repaired to their locker room to receive their most public fan, Kentucky alumna, actress and Academy Awards presenter Ashley Judd, who has now strung together two Mondays she's not likely to forget. Donna Smith, the coach's wife, was among those who helped Judd pick out the thigh-and-mighty dress that caused gasps when she swanned onstage at the Oscars. Says Judd, "When I became something of a scandal, Donna said, 'You know what? Four old ladies picked that dress out. You're doing what we can't.'"

In a way, Donna Smith's husband was doing the same on Monday night, achieving what others before him couldn't because they never had the opportunity to try. His feat was made all the more poignant by the fact that Rupp's widow, Esther, died the day before the championship game.

Kentucky's victory also came only hours after North Carolina forward Makhtar Ndiaye retracted and apologized for a baseless charge, leveled after Utah's 65-59 semifinal defeat of the Tar Heels last Saturday, that the Utes' Britton Johnsen had hurled the n word at him. The 1998 title game seemed to hold out some hope that perhaps racism is finally ready to take its leave from college basketball.

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In the Bluegrass they'll come up with a nickname for this team, something to fall in line behind Rupp's Runts, the Fiddlin' Five, the Unforgettables and the Untouchables. But to fans in 49 other states, those who have always had a hard time warming up to the Wildcats, Tubby Smith's first team might be known as the Irresistibles. "Allen Edwards's mother passed away this season," center Nazr Mohammed said last week. "I had my weight situation [Mohammed dropped 60 pounds to get to his current 240]. Scott [Padgett] had to come back from flunking out [his freshman year], and Shep had to sit out last season. Every player on our team endured some kind of hardship."

It's all worth it when you can step out on a stage before millions on a Monday night, virtually naked to the world. When you can take a heart that aches on Valentine's Day and make it glad again.

Issue date: April 6, 1998