Basketball is wired to the spiritual center of the cosmos.
What goes around comes around in basketball.
The arc of the moral basketball universe is long, but no lie can live for ever.
Henry Iba coached the first USA Olympic team that did not win the Olympic Gold Medal.
The team played Russia for the Gold Medal and lost.
It is widely reputed that Iba and his USA team got jobbed in the midst of the Cold War by partial refs.
Such wrongs are eventually righted, though it may take a number of attempts.
Bill Self leading his team into the World University Games against Russia is one of those echoing events from a long ago wrong.
Bill Self is the true heir of the Iba legacy.
It cannot be mere chance that brings him to this game tonight.
This is cosmic.
Go, Bill, go!!!!
(Note: I do not wish to re-open old Cold War wounds. Russia is NOT the Soviet Union. And Sasha Kaun, a Russian, is one of our most beloved Jayhawks of all time, and a player we are grateful to Russia for sharing with us. This game is a great game between two good teams. It is an honor to play Russia. Let the best team win. But past is prologue. And this is one small part of the past that needs to be remedied in a small way.)
