Men’s final: While one team plays with destiny on its mind, its opponent is involved in the party of all parties.

INDIANAPOLIS —  All that stands in the way of Kentucky’s seventh national title and Coach Rick Pitino’s coronation tonight is an Arizona bunch that spent Sunday’s press conference exchanging giggles and spit wads.

To Kentucky, the Final Four is ghost-of-Rupp, team-for-the-ages, serious-business stuff.

To Arizona, apparently, it’s a food fight.

The night before they knocked off North Carolina in the national semifinals, Arizona players admitted they passed time by trying to hook one another’s noses with calamari rings at a downtown Italian restaurant.

For a Kentucky team trying to make its mark in history by becoming the first team to repeat since Duke in 1991 and ‘92, Arizona’s kiddie-corps giddiness has to be unnerving.

Teams, in theory, are supposed to wilt at sight of Kentucky’s uniform.

Arizona obviously bows only for incoming appetizers.

Tucson’s Wildcats, with their senior-less lineup and 18-year-old point guard, Mike Bibby, have shown little regard for lore in this tournament.

Arizona has already defeated top-seeded Kansas and North Carolina to get to tonight’s game and, with a win, would be the first team to beat three No. 1-seeded teams en route to a title.

Arizona appears to be having too much fun to realize how important all of this is.

Kentucky point guard Wayne Turner remembers watching Arizona’s stunning Southeast Regional semifinal victory against Kansas.

“They had no fear,” Turner said. “And I don’t think they have any fear of us either.”

As Kentucky considers its place in history, and hunkers down in an out-of-town hotel to meditate, Arizona could be found soaking up the atmosphere.

The other day, Arizona junior guard Miles Simon waited in line at the RCA Dome with other tourists to get into Fan Jam, the Final Four’s virtual-reality ode to college basketball and free enterprise.

Arizona is presumably worried about Kentucky’s knee-knocking, full-court-press defense, which has already de-constructed two top-five teams in the tournament: Utah and Minnesota.

Both schools said they were prepared for Kentucky’s defensive mayhem, claiming the swarm technique couldn’t possibly rival that of last year’s Kentucky squad, one of the greatest in recent NCAA history.

“When you read all the quotes by Utah, they came out and told us exactly who we were,” Pitino said Sunday. “ ‘They’re not last year’s team. They don’t have four draft picks. They don’t have this.’ ”

Kentucky defeated Utah by 13 points and Minnesota by nine, with Kentucky’s trap forcing the Golden Gophers into 26 turnovers on Saturday.

Yes, Arizona is concerned about Kentucky’s pressure.

“Their defense is like a swarm of bees,” Arizona forward Bennett Davison said in-between Sunday noogies with his teammates.

Arizona also knows it may be the best-equipped team to handle Kentucky this side of South Carolina.

The Gamecocks’ three-guard offense of Larry Davis, Melvin Watson and BJ McKie easily de-coded the Kentucky press in sweeping the Wildcats in Southeastern Conference play.

Kentucky had alibis for its other two losses. It fell to Clemson in the opener before Pitino figured out he needed to play a center: Jamaal Magloire and/or Nazr Mohammed.

Kentucky also lost at Mississippi, but that was without star guard Derek Anderson, who sat out the game because of injury.

The losses to South Carolina, plain and simple, were the result of matchup problems.

“The only guard to really beat our press was Melvin Watson,” Turner said of South Carolina’s guard.

Arizona boasts a three-guard lineup--Bibby, Simon and Michael Dickerson--that poses a similar problem.

All three Arizona guards can beat their defenders off the dribble.

While Kentucky may be one of the best conditioned teams in the country, Arizona says it has the quickness to handle Kentucky’s pressure.

“That’s our type of game,” Arizona center A.J. Bramlett said. “We excel in the full-court game.”

All five Arizona starters can run the floor effectively.

“A lot of teams don’t know how good we are until we get out there,” Bramlett said.

Arizona Coach Lute Olson said he borrowed the lightning-fast lineup theory from legendary UCLA Coach John Wooden, who called Olson this week to wish him luck.

“He’s told coaches forever, ‘Give me the quickest player that you can give me, because quickness will outdo size any day of the week.’ ”

Kentucky can match Arizona’s quickness on the perimeter, but not inside, where the game will probably be decided.

The question becomes whether the quickness of Bramlett and Davison can offset the power of Kentucky’s center tandem of Magloire and Mohammed.

“Our big men have to be involved in breaking the Kentucky press,” Bramlett said. “It can’t just be the guards.”

Kentucky will argue it is a different team than the one that was swept by South Carolina, the second defeat a crushing blow at Rupp Arena on Senior Day.

Pitino says the loss was a blessing, forcing him to make a lineup change that spring-boarded his team into tonight’s title game.

The move Pitino made was inserting sophomore Turner at the point guard position and moving Anthony Epps to the shooting guard spot.

Kentucky has won eight consecutive games since, by an average of 21 points. Turner, after overcoming some ego problems--Pitino: “Passing to him last year, from his high school days, was treated like a virus.”--was finally ready for the burden.

Turner’s maturity and ability to beat his man off the dribble have made Kentucky less prone to South Carolina-type assaults.

“We need a point guard now that’s going to create, get in the lane and then turn around and get in your face defensively,” Pitino said.