The Presteblog staff photographer, who doubles as my aunt, got these photos from Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis Monday night:

They are from Wisconsin’s first NCAA men’s basketball championship game appearance since 1941.

Wisconsin lost 68–63, two days after ending Kentucky’s undefeated season, ending the careers of seniors who went into Wisconsin unheralded and left having won Big Ten regular-season and tournament titles, back-to-back Final Four berths, UW’s first number one NCAA seed, and a championship game appearance.

The painful part is that there is no guarantee that Wisconsin will get back to the Final Four. Certainly not next year, with the irreplaceable Frank Kaminsky graduating and Sam Dekker possibly departing too. Coach Bo Ryan has coached longer than he will coach, so the last, best chance for a national championship in my lifetime more likely than not ended at the buzzer Monday night.

However, UW lost to Duke, which if you’re not a Dook-hater is certainly not a terrible program to lose to. Sports Illustrated has quite a story this week on all the things coach Mike Krzyzewski had to do to get this title. And there should be great satisfaction in defeating Kentucky, which was so flummoxed by Wisconsin’s play that coach John Calipari was yelling at his assistants “What do we do?!” toward the end.

And of course, for those of us who grew up with a .500 season being a highlight, this is still somewhat surreal. Badger fans of today really don’t know how good this is, unless you remember how bad it used to be.