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Kentucky Basketball: One Of A Kind
Florida Columnist Gives His Views Of UK
This is a special day that comes around once each year. No, for basketball fans hereabouts, it isn't Valentine's Day. It's the day the Kentucky basketball team performs here.
Kentucky is to college basketball what Notre Dame is to football, what Santa Claus is to Christmas, what bourbon is to a highball.
UCLA and North Carolina? Nice basketball programs but not like Kentucky's. Have UCLA and North Carolina ever won the Olympic Games? Kentucky has. Who has the record for the most career victories and the most consecutive home victories? The late Adolph Rupp of Kentucky. Where does the nation's No. 1 ticket scalper live? Lexington, Ky.
Jack
Hairston
Sun sports editor
Reprinted with permission from Gainesville (Fial Sun
Just what is Kentucky basketball?
? It's the Birmingham hotel that's Southeastern Conference Tournament headquarters, the lobby packed to the rafters with Wildcat fans, each one holding a basketball in one hand and a pen in the other, hoping to get a Kentucky player's autograph if one should appear.
? It's Chuck Noe, then the VPI basketball coach, weeping after a last-second Sugar Bowl loss to Kentucky, while Rupp stands a few feet away, telling the media that they should go back to their offices and write editorials condemning Noe's type of slowdown basketball.
Rupp coached forever
? Kentucky basketball is being told by several Wildcat fans during one of Rupp's rare off years that the Old Man is over and done with and will be gone shortly, and then Rupp comes back to win another seven SEC championships, including five in his last five years.
? It's Rupp being given a Cadillac for having a great basketball program, and the late Bear Bryant, then Kentucky's football coach, being called to the same podium to be honored for having defeated national champion Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl, and Bryant is presented with a cigarette lighter.
? Kentucky basketball is the late Harry Lancaster, Rupp's longtime assistant and later UK's athletic director, telling how he conducted all the practices for Rupp and provided most of the game strategy (former Kentucky players have confirmed to me that Lancaster did most of the coaching, although Rupp was, for sure, the supreme boss) and how, if Lancaster's bench strategy worked, Rupp would tell the media, "I decided to do that because. . .," and if it didn't work, Rupp would say, "That was Harry's damned idea."
? It's the aging Rupp, one of the alltime great coaches, in the Mid-East NCAA finals in Columbus, 0. against Jacksonville University, sitting quietly on the bench (perhaps affected by medication of some kind), while assistant Joe B. Hall runs the team. (Kentucky was rated No. 1 in the nation going into that game, but Artis Gilmore and JU defeated Dan Issel and Co.)
Just one NCAA title?
? Kentucky basketball is high-powered Wildcat fans constanty plotting to get rid of Hall as their coach because he won only one national championship  and, many suspect, finally succeeding in their mission when Hall "resigned."
? It's most SEC teams over the years celebrating when they lose to the Wildcats in a close game.
? Kentucky basketball is me looking at my hands in the second half and seeing them drenched  the only time ever  with nervous perspiration. (The occasion was Tulane, the basketball team I was covering on a regular basis at the time, shooting for its only win ever over Kentucky. Down to eight players after academic losses and with no starter over 6-4, Tulane managed to win the game. A year later, 1958, that same Kentucky team won the national championship again. To this day, Tulane's victory total over Kentucky is one, and the Green Wave no longer even fields a team.)
? It's Kentucky often having more fans for a UK-Florida game at old Alligator Alley than the Gators had.
? It's 10,000 Wildcat fans turning out for UK shooting practice in the morning during the SEC tournament.
? It's Harry Lancaster, reminiscing again about Rupp, saying Rupp couldn't sell hail insurance (a sideline of his) to Bourbon County farmers, then rasping on the drive back to Lexington, "Harry, what these people need is one damn, big hail storm!" (Lancaster and Rupp feuded when Lancaster became athletic director, but just before Rupp died, Lancaster visited him at the hospital, and the two old friends made up.)
? Kentucky basketball is a 38-year-old Norm Sloan coaching Florida to its first win over the Wildcats in 31 years in early 1965. (It was a televised Saturday afternoon game, and I can recall the Gator starters without looking them up: Gary Keller, Dick Tomlinson, Jeff Ramsey, Brooks Henderson and Tom Baxley).
? It's defending national champion Louisville being heavily favored on its home court and getting blown out by a sensational Wildcat freshman, Rex Chapman (Dec, 1986), and it's Alabama being knocked out of the SEC lead on its own court by Eddie Sutton's Wildcats (one week ago today).
? Kentucky basketball is Sutton, Chapman and all the rest being at the O'Connell Center today, this time to play another Sloan-coached Florida team that has a chance to win, this game also on Saturday afternoon and also on TV, like 1965, this time the Gators being led by Vernon Maxwell and Andrew Moten.
This is just another stop out of thousands for Kentucky basketball and its people, soon to be forgotten by them. But it has a chance to be one of those rare, precious memories for the Gators and their fans... a win over Kentucky.