Seventh Annual
UK INVITATIONAL TOURNAMENT
Four national basketball powers, all of whom ranked among the top dozen teams in the country last season with a combined won-lost record of 93-19, will be participants in the seventh annual University of Kentucky Invitational Tournament December 18-19.   In addition to the host Wildcats,
the defending UKIT champion who finished with a 24-3 mark and second place national ranking, the 1959 tourney will include NCAA runner-up West Virginia (29-5), North Carolina (20-5) and St. Louis (20-6).
Pairings made by UK Athletic Director and Tournament Manager Bernie Shively have slotted Kentucky and the team they whipped for the title last December, West Virginia, in opposite brackets. A classic rematch of the two powers may be in the offing, but the high calibre of the tournament is reflected by the fact that all four participants are being touted for high national honors again this season and any one appears capable of winning. As Shively proudly puts it: "I believe this 1959 UKIT field to be the strongest ever assembled for a tournament in advance of the NCAA finals."
Outstanding fields are nothing new to the UK Invitational, however. In the short space of six years, University of Kentuckya school already internationally respected in basketball circleshas captured the imagination of the cage world with its holiday cage festival that returns big-time basketball to the campus.
Increasingly-important national prestige has become attached to the UKIT as reflected by the fact that in the past two years the winner has valuted to the top position in the wire service polls.
Furthermore, the UK Invitational ranks far ahead of all other tournaments as the most lucrative in the history of the game. According to UKIT policy, all participating teams share equally in the net proceeds and the payoff each year has been of national-record size. Last year, each of the four teams picked up checks for $ 1 3,817.35exceed-by better than $2,000 the previous high dividend paid in 1957. Kentucky's amazing "Fledgling Five" walked off with a fourth UKIT title for Coach Adolph Rupp last December by rolling to a surprise conquest (97-91) of highly-favored West Virginia, who later was to lose the NCAA championship by a single point. Oklahoma State outlasted Ohio State to capture third place. The feat of the Ruppmen was made all the more amazing by virtue of the fact that they measured Ohio State on the first night without the services of two startersforward Bill Lickert and center Don Millsand beat the Mountaineers with Lickert still in the hospital.
Previous participants in the UKIT have included La Salle, Utah, Dayton (two appearances each), Minnesota, Illinois, UCLA, Southern California, Duke and Southern Methodist.
The outlook for the 1959 renewal promises no letdown in the calibre of basketball seen since the tournament was organized.  All four clubs should rank high in the national cage picture.
Pre-season selections have pinpointed the host Wildcats and the North Carolina Tar Heels, who meet in the nightcap of the opening tournament session, plus the sharpshooting Mountaineers of West Virginia as teams to watch particularly this season. All three rank in the top five nationally in advance estimates. St. Louis, always a good basketball team, is rated as a darkhorse outfit.