Bob Lutz: A blowout loss that Ottawa’s basketball team will forever relish

As the Ottawa men’s basketball team boarded its bus Monday night after a 117-58 loss… there was laughter, excitement and stories to tell.

The Braves players had just experienced the basketball thrill of a lifetime, which seems odd in that it came during a 59-point defeat. But that defeat came against Kentucky inside Rupp Arena in front of 20,000 blue-blood fans who hope their Wildcats will be cutting down the nets in Houston come April.

Ottawa, meanwhile, is picked to finish sixth in the KCAC.

Ottawa vs. Kentucky?

It happened.

“What a great experience,” said Ottawa senior guard Marshon Norfleet, who scored 20 points. “It was a totally different platform than playing at the NAIA level. When we tipped off, I was happy and excited to play in front of that many people.”

It so happens that Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart, who grew up in Mission and went to Shawnee Mission North, is a 1981 Ottawa graduate. On Monday night, he was honored at halftime for receiving the Under Armour Athletics Director of the Year award and he wanted Ottawa as the Wildcats’ exhibition opponent.

“I found out about the game in the summer,” said Ottawa first-year coach Aaron Siebenthall, a top assistant for the Braves the previous nine years. “(Kentucky deputy AD) DeWayne Peevy reached out to me in June and said they were thinking about honoring Mitch and would we be interested in coming for a game.”

It didn’t take long for Siebenthall to answer that question, although at first he thought it might be some kind of joke.

“I have some pretty clever friends,” Siebenthall said. “I figured it might be one of my friends messing with me. But I vetted Peevy’s existence and he was real. He does exist.”

Ottawa has one player who stands taller than 6-foot-6. Kentucky has about 75 of them. Six, actually, but the Wildcats are huge, athletic and one of the best teams in the country year after year.

The Braves loaded their bus with 35 players — the varsity and two JV teams — and arrived in Lexington around 7 p.m. Sunday evening. Barnhart hosted a team dinner at Kentucky’s football stadium and another 200 or so Ottawa fans showed up for the game, Siebenthall said, including his wife, mother and in-laws.

And his daughter, Berkley, who turned one over the weekend.

“I have a good picture of her with coach (John) Calipari from after the game,” Siebenthall said.

Calipari, Kentucky’s coach, spoke to the Ottawa team in its dressing room before Monday night’s game and again briefly after it was over.

“A bunch of their fans stayed around after the game and waited for him to come back after the press conference and do his radio show,” Siebenthall said. “So there were probably 300-400 fans still there when our team walked back out to meet friends and family and those Kentucky folks gave us a standing ovation.”

The game wasn’t much. Nor did anyone expect it to be.

Kentucky shot 60 percent to Ottawa’s 26 percent. Kentucky had 59 rebounds to Ottawa’s 28. Kentucky scored at will against the smaller, less-athletic Braves. Five Wildcats scored in double figures and they were led by 6-5 freshman Jamal Murray, who had 22 points and 12 rebounds.

In this game, though, the winning and the losing didn’t matter. Not like it had two days earlier when Ottawa dropped its regular-season opener to the rival Baker Wildcats 82-74.

“We’re just 10 minutes from (Baldwin City) and Baker is a big game for us,” Siebenthall said. “My line to a lot of people was that I wanted to beat the Wildcats just once in our first two games and that I didn’t care which.”

Siebenthall said his players handled the Kentucky experience as well as could be expected, although he admitted everyone was a little shell shocked during the game’s first few minutes.

“They turned off all the lights for the introductions of the Kentucky starters before the game and then there were fireworks,” Siebenthall said. “And Kentucky was blocking some shots that our guys were not expecting to be blocked.”

Coaches, though, are trained to find silver linings in any dark cloud. And Siebenthall is proud of the 35 points Ottawa scored in the first half — never mind that Kentucky had 67.

“We only had 33 points against Baker in the first half and Kentucky pressed us the whole game,” Siebenthall said. “My quote after the game was that I felt like I was back in college and had taken a really hard test. I didn’t do very well but at least the test was over.”

And filed immediately into the memory banks of every Ottawa coach, player and fan who had the experience.

“I tried to keep my head in the game and not worry about them being so much bigger, stronger and faster than us,” Norfleet said. “I’d definitely do it again.”

It’s probably better that this be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for Ottawa. It’s a game whose legend will grow.

“I was thrilled for our guys,” Siebenthall said. “They had smiles on their faces the entire game, regardless of the score. They did exactly what we asked them to do, which was to soak up the experience and live in the moment.”

This story was originally published November 4, 2015 at 2:34 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: A blowout loss that Ottawa’s basketball team will forever relish."