Well folks, I am sure everyone has been anxiously awaiting my take on this years Basketball Cats. It has been a rough couple of years for those of us in the "Roman Empire," but this season has the makings of the worst since Eddie "He who must not be named" Sutton attempted to drive the death nail into our beloved basketball coffin. Fortunately for Kentucky Fans, Rick "He who must not be named #2"
Pitino rescued the Cats and put us back in the National Spotlight. Before season's end, is it going to be Tubby "He who must not be named #3" around the Bluegrass or will Billy Clyde be able to turn it around for the Cats? In fact, if Billy Clyde can't turn it around, he might become Billy "He who must not be named #4" around the Bluegrass. (That's right I just made a Harry Potter reference). Today's State of the Union will be more of a retrospective look at what got the Wildcats tho this particular state of Affairs. I write this on the Eve of the "Dream Game" as a a way to get everyone prepared for the big game. We depart for the big Honeymoon tomorrow, so expect post-game analysis and the other parts of the State of the Union at a later date.
- You probably never thought you would see the day where a picture of Rick Pitino (aka Slick Rick, aka Traitor Rick, aka Benedict Arnold, aka That piece of crap that had the audacity to coach for Little Brother after leading us back the promised land, aka "Cleveland Clinic" Rick, aka 3 game losing streak to Dayton Rick, etc) on derekaburden.blogspot.com did you? Well here it is, and for good reason. Despite the fact that I despise what he did when taking the Little Brother job, he should be credited for bringing the Cats back to dominance in the '80s. Also of note, the 1996 Kentucky Basketball team has to be the best team assembled since Walton or Alcindor roamed the court in Westwood. This team would absolutely destroy people, once notching 86 points in a half. 86 POINTS IN A HALF! And no it wasn't against souteast northern missiouri technical college, it was against an SEC opponent.
Rick deserves his credit for turning us around. We went from a team full of no-talents with one Superstar (the Unforgettables) to a team full of superstars in 1996. The only problem was, he had no intentions of staying. Thinking he would hit the lottery with Tim Duncan, Tricky Dick bolted for Boston. The rest, as they say, is history. He instead got Chauncey Billups (pre Mr. Big Shot era) and tried to run a full court press in the NBA. This doesn't work in a league where 6'8" men dribble like they are 5'10" point guards. Humiliated, rich, and with his ego beaten down he stepped down (got fired) from the Celtics. In a whirlwind move, he accepted the job with little brother and found the college game much harder the second time around. Players no longer listened to their coach, and not everyone wanted to play on a campus whose most attractive feature is a series of silos proclaiming it "The best college sports town in America". The little known fact about this sign is that in small print at the bottom it says : "and by best in America, we mean second best in the state." Little Brudder fans proclaimed that they would be a "top 5 program in no time." This has not occurred, and despite the fact that Rick has a final 4 on his resume for the Tards, it is the only season he has played in the second weekend of the NCAA tournament.
We have digressed a bit into the struggles of Traitor Rick, but who doesn't enjoy reveling in his misery? Moving on to the relevance of our current struggles, here was our recruiting class that Traitor Rick worked so hard to get us while negotiating with the Celtics prior to the 1998 season: Micheal Bradley (who transferred, Myron Anthony (who stole a car), and Ryan Hogan (who transferred). Well, one could excuse that, he was job shopping. So how did he do the year after winning it all in 1996 and sending four (4!) players to the NBA? His recruiting class was: Jamaal Magloire (all time great) and Steve Massiello (greatest ball boy ever). So in Ricks final 2 years while being atop the College basketball universe, he still somehow only got 1 impact recruit in 2 years. The effects of this would be seen a couple of years into Coach Smith's tenure
- So that leads us into the Tubby Smith era. As mentioned previously, the Tubster was left with an absolute ton of talent on his squad, and promptly took that squad to the National Championship in his first year. This calmed some people's fears about having an African-American as a head coach at the University of Kentucky. However, with Saint Rick (as he was known at the time before coaching for da Ville) going to 2 consecutive championship games, Tubby had one more year to live up to his mentor.
- So that takes us to the 1999 NCAA tournament. This is one that really sticks out to me, and I am quite bitter about because I witnessed it in person. In the round of 16, the Cats faced Miami (OH) and Wally's world. What I remember from that game is this: there were about 50 Miami fans there, but they were the 50 loudest and most obnoxious people you will ever meet. It seems like the same cars were doing loops around downtown St. Louis with "Wally's World" flags hanging out of their cars. I must give them props, because they really brought it. The next game we played the Spartans of Michigan State to give Wayne Turner his fourth final 4 in four years. That would have been a helluva accomplishment. It wasn't meant to be as the Cats took at early double digit lead, but fell to the dancing leprechaun, Mateen Cleaves. I hate that man to this day.
Well at this point, the slim recruiting by Mr. Pitino in the last 2 years of his tenure began to show, as the Junior and Senior class was lacking (sound familiar?). The Tubster lost in the second round of the NCAAs to Syracuse, preventing a rematch with Michigan State. This was Coach Smith's first 10 loss season, leading to the moniker "10 loss Tubby."
Contrary to popular belief, Coach Smith landed several good recruiting classes in these early years, but was never able to deliver with a good run in the postseason. Disappointing losses to Southern Cal and Maryland ended the next 2 seasons before Cats' fans would like them to. Then came 2003.
2003 is all the evidence that you need Tubby Smith is a great coach. In 2003 everything clicked. We had a Bona Fide Star (Keith Bogans), surrounded by a bunch of unselfish role players willing to do whatever it took to win. A perfect record in the SEC and a 26 game win streak, the Cats appeared to be the team to beat, after being discarded at the beginning of the season. Looking ahead, it appeared odd that 2 lower seeded teams were playing closer to home than the #1 overall seeded Cats, but that didn't matter.
Then came the Wisconsin game. Wisconsin is perennially one of those Big Ten teams that wins games by just beating up the other team, or boring them to the point where they don't care and just let them score so they can have the ball back. Fortunately this type of game was right up the Tubster's alley, and the Badgers played the Cats close, but finally succumbed under to the much superior Cats. 'Quis played the best game of his career and finished with 28 of the teams 63 points. This was not the story of the game, though. The story of the game was Keith Bogans sustaining a sprained ankle early in the game and only playing 15 minutes. The injury was of the dreaded "high ankle sprain" variety which one time caused football-cat and SEC defensive player of the year Dennis Johnson to miss an entire season. It looked liked the Cats would have to challenge Marquette without their best player. Shouldn't be a problem, though, they only have 2 white kids who can shoot it, some fat guy that transferred from Miss State, and some kid named Wade who can't shoot it from the outside.
Well, we all know what happened. However I feel like a couple of key details from this game are often overlooked. First of all, D Wade did murder us with a triple double totaling 29 11 and 11, but that was not the main factor that killed us. We got behind big in the first half due to some strong shooting from Novak, and Robert Jackson (the fat guy from Miss State) held us off late with some key low post scoring. On the UK side, 2 factors really affected this game other than Bogans' injury. First off, Chuck Hayes picked up 2 fouls about 2 minutes into the game, and Marquis Estill followed his career best game up with an absolute stinker. Jackson dominated him the whole game, and in a situation where the Cats needed Estill to step up he could not produce. Had Hayes been able to stay in the game, he might have been able to slow down Wade. Had Estill not had his head up his butt, he might have been able to be the go-to-guy the Cats were missing with Bogans out.
- That takes us through the "successful" part of the Tubby Smith era. He tried to get it together with a good run in 2004 (#1 overall seed) but suffered a shocking 2nd round loss to UAB. He also tried to get it going again in 2005 with an Elite 8 run, but could not get a rebound in overtime to make a trip to the Final Four
It has been lamented enough that I need not discuss the next 2 seasons and the messy exit for Coach Smith (including the entire national media calling Kentucky a bunch of racist idiots). This brings us to The Billy Clyde Era which we will touch on in the next post.
