Jamie Rhodes-USA TODAY Sports
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The entourage had arrived, but the centerpiece of the group was missing.
Friends and relatives of Chris Mack rolled in to Rooster’s restaurant late last Wednesday night for the usual postgame ritual: bar food, beer and a lot of laughs. They took a dozen chairs near the Christmas tree in the sports bar on the north end of this city, a place with 25 TVs interspersed between bipartisan wall trappings—some Louisville, some Kentucky. A Secretariat poster is probably the only thing in the place that every patron can agree on.