The air around college basketball buzzes heavy with Wildcat swoon and Louisville “who knew!” this week.

Louisville earned its party crasher role by bravery certainly, but bravado too. Final Four has its Cinderella and we have a Bluegrass State celebration.

Final Four as marketplace?

If the word GREAT could be sold by a street vendor instead of thrown around like Digger Phelps’ predictions, you could still buy one for 12 cents.

We wonder if an enterprising hustler has recognized the tee-shirt potential of: “No Tobacco Road Team? … u gotta be kiddin’ me!”

On the other hand, if you owned copyrights to phrase Dribble Drive this week, you could sell it for enough cash to buy top-grade gas to drive your eight-cylinder car free for a year, plus a tune-up and new windshield wipers.

All these novelties and Big Dance in Big Easy. It will be Bigger Fun for Kentuckians than ever because …

• Four teams are in New Orleans, none named Dookie or Tar Heel.

• Opie Taylor-voiced Roy Williams will glad-hand with Jayhawkers and accept his familiar condolences; Mike Krzyzewski will be recruiting. Leaves all the clever answers to questions for Bill Self, Thad Matta and two of the game’s best spinners of all time, who in a general election year, represent a Blue and Red State.

Geography this Final Four week? Take out map USA and trace college basketball traditional Bermuda Triangle. Ready? From the top, Columbus, Ohio, turn left, go past St. Louis to Lawrence, Kansas. Got that? Next, draw a line from Lawrence to Whitesburg, Kentucky. Not Lexington, not Louisville, but Whitesburg.

Line from Lawrence to Whitesburg just about covers it, right?

College basketball’s Bermuda Triangle belongs to us. By half anyway.

Next, the mini-drama.

John Calipari and Rick Pitino do not exchange Christmas cards. Each shows up in New Orleans with 11 coaching wins each against the other. Both will be quizzed about one-and-done and all will watch to see who grows testy first. Meanwhile, a flammable headline or two that will sell out the racks.

Talking head experts say the Final Four field features three good teams and one great one. In this section of Bermuda Triangle, fans already know which is which and will watch carefully what Kentucky’s governor wears in New Orleans and which side of the arena he posits himself.

Personality and politics aside, the teams …

Kansas and Ohio State are typical corn bread and beans Final Fourists. Big, tough and physical inside, quick and splashy outside. One team or the other, on its biggest day of any year, will shoot 20 per cent, cry at post-game podium and go home. On Monday, CBS will align its mind-numbing blizzard of commercials and Saturday’s survivor will face, if form holds, a Kentucky team Kansas or Ohio State will approach with pay-back in mind.

Louisville. Fans and CBS love a Cinderella even if its two-time NCAA title holder Louisville. Bonus, the network boys and girls get college hoops premier quote man in front of a camera, Rick Pitino. The very best.

Pitino’s team is personification of its coach. A feisty collection of mostly shootists which the coach implores “… don’t just be happy to be here.”

Context of how far Cinderella has come for this slipper is important. Consider an answer to this question: Will the Cardinal fan please stand up who believed Louisville would be in the Final Four following events of February 29?

Answer: Nobody. The Cards laid an egg in Yum Center when South Florida held them to 51 points in 58-51 game. UofL lost three of its last four regular season games and fans were howling for Pitino’s head. This week, the conversation includes, Why isn’t our coach in the Hall of Fame?

Nice team, Louisville. Frenzied style, blue collar courage, pistol-pete willingness to shoot, and no surrender.

Then there’s Kentucky.

To say the John Calipari team has evolved into a juggernaut is like saying the Titanic was a boat.

Baylor coach Scott Drew spoke for the majority after his team was drummed into submission: “Was that team as good as I expected? Kentucky was actually better than I thought.”

Better … and better … and better.

Kentucky is playing at a level so magnificent, sports writers may be at the brink of exhausting their store of adjectives, verbs and newly minted nouns. Nah.

Consider the analysis of Anthony Davis

“It’s kind of hard to play us,” he said.

After two exhibitions and 40 games, straightforward enough, don’t you think?

This Kentucky team is a team stunning by its intelligence, efficiency, unselfishness and focus on mission all driven by man in the blue suit.

For more than four decades, I’ve witnessed and written about basketball teams in the Bluegrass State including five of Kentucky’s seven national championship teams. None rises to the level of this one in all phases.

Personally, I avoid the word great, yet for a college basketball team, this is one.

Louisville versus Kentucky? The Cardinals grew and grew had a nice run, but Kentucky plays Monday night.

Cautionary postscript. Before the Big Finale in the Big Easy this weekend, we ought remember college hoops has had magnificent teams before, odds-on favorites called juggernaut and unbeatable. Among them, Nevada Las Vegas (1991), Georgetown (1985), Houston (1983) and Indiana (1975). I leave it to you to guess what happened to all of them.

For today, for this weekend, Columbus, Ohio to Lawrence, Kansas to Whitesburg, Kentucky, embrace the precious present of basketball’s Bermuda Triangle.

And so it goes.