IN
BUSINESS
inally, the same old story.
Tired of that riches-to-rags-back-to-riches tale about Kentucky basketball, the one you've been hearing over and over again the past few years? Sorry, here it goes again, but for good reason. In order to get a true perspective on the makeup of this spiffy 1992-93 edition of the Kentucky basketball team, one must look back three years, to the days when things were more iffy than spiffy at the University of Kentucky, and the riches had, indeed, turned to rags. College basketball's all-time winningest program had been knocked off its lofty perch, its pedestal replaced with an NCAA ball and chain and
an image problem larger than the federal deficit.
Tired of Rick Pitino being labeled a program-saver, a hero of the masses, an emperor in the Roman Empire of college basketball? Sorry, you've come to the wrong place. In order to truly appreciate the fact that this Kentucky basketball team is right back there in everybody's top ten, one must not forget that just three years ago, the team didn't even have ten players. The fact that it's business as usual at Kentucky is string music to followers of this basketball program, and is a credit to Pitino and his staff, who inherited college basketball's version of a sow's ear in 1989 and came within 2.1 seconds of turning into a silk purse last season.
Tired of hearing about "The Greatest Game Ever Played," last year's Kentucky-Duke game in the finals of the NCAA East Regional in Philadelphia.' Sorry, but the story bears repeating, especially when you think back to 1989, when this team was publicly humiliated by 50 bazillion points at Kansas. It took one of the greatest turnaround jump shots of all time to burst the bubble of one of college basketball's greatest turnaround teams of all time. And it wasn't until a few weeks after that bubble burst that Kentucky followers discovered the party wasn't over after all. It had just slatted again.
It's business as usual at Kentucky. Party on, Cats.
continual on page 16
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Outlook