In the history of every basketball program there are great highs and lows. In Duke’s case, the low might be the famous UNC comeback, you know, the eight-points-in-sixteen-seconds game.

But the high point is blindingly obvious: the greatest moment in Duke’s glorious basketball history, and one of the greatest, if not the greatest in the history of college basketball, was the Laettner shot.

For Duke fans, of course, it’s a moment of glee every March when CBS runs the intro to tournament games and that long, glorious pass from Grant Hill is caught by Laettner, who fakes, shoots, and, well, you know it as well as we do. Maybe better.

For Kentucky fans, of course, it’s a knife in the heart every time it plays. How painful is the memory of that game? Apparently this painful. Even now.

On the one hand, you have to feel a little empathy, especially for the players, who were simply magnificent. For about 16 minutes, they played some of the most electrifying basketball anyone anywhere has ever played. The game is really supposed to be frantic, and manic, and in a dream you see your team play like this once in your life if you’re lucky.

No fair-minded person would want to be anything but respectful to a bunch of underdogs who put themselves in that position. There’s a special place in American hearts for Rocky types, and God bless them.

But Kentucky fans are a different story. So many of them, online and in person, are difficult to put up with (we should take this moment to praise the writer of the article we just linked who didn’t buy into the “Laettner stomp” myth..

In Flannery O’ Connor’s short story, A Good Man Is Hard To Find, the Misfit kills the unfortunate family after the grandmother recognizes him. “She’d have been a good woman if there’d been someone there to shoot her every day.”

Kentucky fans are somewhat like that: they need to have their arrogance shorn on as close to a daily level as possible.

It’s a wonderful program with wonderful tradition and, yes, many wonderful fans. But college basketball doesn’t begin and end in Lexington, and the more often Wildcat delusions are punctured, the better. Here’s hoping CBS shows the Laettner shot until the last person who saw it expires.