Sweet 16.  My sixteenth birthday consisted of renting out a local gym and inviting a bunch of friends out to play, you guessed it, basketball.  There was a cookout, cake, horseshoes, and other standard Kentucky boy birthday events.   I also purchased a 1973 Plymouth Scamp for $300 as my first car in that summer of 1992.  Yes, I’m only 31 years old, so this Plymouth was not a “cool” first car by any stretch.  It was sitting in a field and was spray-painted gray and pink.  When we got it home and started the restoration, we found a small screwdriver in the oil pan.  There were dirt-dobber nests under the hood.  This car’s halcyon days were long gone, left somewhere in the mid-seventies, probably at a drive-in movie taking in Rocky or Jaws.  This car was a used-to-be.

Similarly, in the college basketball world, it might even be a stretch to say that the average fan thinks of WKU as a used-to-be.  For fans my age or younger without a sense of history, the Toppers are a never-was.  It has been since 1971 since the Toppers were deeper into the national championship bracket than they are right now.  The have made other Sweet 16 trips (1978, 1993), but not deeper ones.  I would not say that Topper hoops was a car sitting abandoned in a rural Kentucky field, but WKU was pretty far from the average fan’s mind. 

But, like my ’73 Plymouth, a careful restoration has been going on lately.  Tyrone Brazelton runs as fast and clean as the 318 engine in my old Plymouth.  Courtney Lee is as smooth and comfy as the bench leather seats were.  Jeremy Evans’ pogo-sticking for blocks and dunks pump me up like the Pioneer 6x9’s I put into my restored car (probably blasting Nirvana or Smashing Pumpkins).  Much like my father and I restored my Plymouth, Darrin Horn and his staff have restored the pride and given new life to the Topper hoops program.  So many times recently, WKU has had “good” teams that simply could not break through into greatness.  But, regardless of what happens on Thursday against heavily-favored UCLA, a feeling of greatness is back.

These next few days should be soaked up for all they are worth because they simply do not come around too often for schools not named UCLA, Kansas, North Carolina, and a handful of others.  There are 341 Division I basketball teams and only sixteen remain.  WKU is one of those today.  Whether this restoration will lead to more runs like this one remains to be seen, but this much is true: today, WKU basketball is more than a never-was, more than a used-to-be, and more than just another good team.  They are one of 16 teams still competing for the national championship.