LAWRENCE, Kans. — Saturday at Allen Fieldhouse was about the past: the very long ago and the very recent. The winningest program in the history of college basketball, Kentucky, was visiting the second-winningest program, Kansas, and at halftime, Kansas held a ceremony in which the game’s commandments were unveiled at center court of its holiest cathedral.
Six years ago, a Kansas alum paid $4.3 million at a Sotheby’s auction to purchase the original 13 rules of basketball as written by its inventor, James Naismith, in 1891. Naismith went on to found the first basketball program at Kansas in 1898, and this ceremony was a celebration of the fact that the rules would be permanently housed in a museum annex to Allen Fieldhouse.