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Time’s reputation for distorting the past is well established and equally deserved. It’s so good at what it does that at some point in every person’s life they begin to doubt – to some degree at least – the validity of their own memories.
I bring this up because in my surely flawed mind, 90 percent of the games Louisville played against Cincinnati in the 1990s took place on Thursday nights at 9 p.m. on ESPN. Both teams always had legitimate national title aspirations, and every game between the pair rivaled Game 5 of the 1976 NBA Finals.
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Most people experience several drastic life changes in their 20s, 30s or 40s, but there’s a sense of familiarity inherent in established adulthood that makes all the rearranging feel like it’s still part of the same “era,” for lack of a better term. The same can’t be said for youth, where the period from ages 6-13 essentially encompasses three or four different lives. It’s likely this phenomenon that has made late Thursday night games against Cincinnati feel like more of a staple of Cardinal basketball in the ’90s than they may have been for other generations.
Still, the memories feel fresh to me.
This was a period where Cincinnati was consistently one of the best team in college basketball, and almost always the baddest. The rivalry between the Cardinals and Bearcats defined Conference USA basketball, and it always demanded a national audience.
In the days leading up to the games against UC, my friends and I would update each other on the status of our persuasive attempts to earn permission to attend the game or at least stay up and watch it. Some would celebrate an unparalleled triumph of youth, while others would shed tears and be relegated to an early morning update from their father or The Courier-Journal.
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The one memory I have that stands out above all others from this period was basking in the glow of the 1996 victory in the old living room at my parents’ house and realizing that “The…
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Publish date : 2025-11-20 18:39:00
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