Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 27, 1993 TAG: 9303270048
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: CHARLOTTE, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
If you believe that, you're probably not a Kentucky basketball fan.
The Kentucky Derby lasts two minutes. The rest of the year, most of the Bluegrass State is consumed by hoops. Only one state had three teams in the NCAA's Sweet 16.
Basketball is big at Louisville and Western Kentucky, but they play in the shadow of the Big Blue. Kentucky has had more All-Americans and more NCAA Tournament appearances than any other school.
However, trying to put UK basketball into names and numbers can be a trying experience. As coach Rick Pitino said Friday: "Kentucky basketball is very special. There's a lot of pride, tradition, a storied past."
Pride and tradition can weigh on you, and it's tough to launch threes when you're lugging around the hopes of an entire state. It seems UK basketball has changed, even if its fans haven't.
The last time Florida State and Kentucky met in an NCAA regional final - as they will in the Southeast today - it was 1972, in Dayton, Ohio. The Seminoles won their only trip to the Final Four.
It was the last game for Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp, he of the brown suit and record 876 victories. It was also the last game as a UK student for the guy whose photo is above this column.
If it was a sad day for Kentucky basketball, it was only the beginning. In Rupp's years, the Southeastern Conference really was a football league. Basketball, the joke went, was something they did at Alabama and LSU to fill time until spring practice.
As the pressure increased in-state for Kentucky to be what it had always been, the Wildcats won a lot of games, but not enough. Joe B. Hall was Rupp's successor. Nice man, good coach - but he wasn't Rupp.
When UK beat Duke for the 1978 NCAA title thanks to Jack Givens' wondrous performance, the attitude among the players and their fans was one of relief.
In 1984, the 'Cats reached the Final Four again, losing to Georgetown in the semifinals. UK looked like it was shooting a medicine ball. Georgetown (Ky.) College could have beaten the Wildcats.
Wake Forest coach Dave Odom, a Virginia assistant at that Final Four when the Cavaliers fell to Houston, said he thought those Wildcats "were wearing a collar, carrying an albatross maybe even heavier than even they, with all of their success, could carry."
Hall quit and was replaced by Eddie Sutton. It might as well have been Willie Sutton. Where Kentucky basketball had once been Wah Wah Jones, Dan Issel and Memorial Coliseum, now it was Chris Mills, Emery Air Freight and cold cash.
There was a time, two decades earlier, when Kentucky wouldn't have had to cheat to win.
Pitino, to date, has been able to separate his players from their fans' obsession. He sounds like he's playing the same kind of tough defense his 29-3 team does.
"We are a small family in the middle of a great state that has all of this enthusiasm for basketball," is how Pitino depicts his program, which has risen from two seasons of NCAA probation to consecutive appearances in the regional finals.
"Really, I don't think Kentucky fans are any different from Indiana fans, or North Carolina fans," Pitino said. "If their expectations are different from those fans, I don't feel it.
"What we have tried to do is change the perception some people have of Kentucky basketball. You're not going to do it in three-and-a-half or four years, but I think we've done a good job of making people understand we're in the business of entertainment, not the business of life and death."
Pitino, having come to Kentucky from Providence College and the New York Knicks, said a Northeasterner can't comprehend what UK basketball is.
He's right. Even someone who grew up with it and around it - and for a short time, even in it as a manager - can't understand why Kentucky basketball makes so many Bluebloods see red.
"There are more coaches in Kentucky than in any state in the U.S.," said Wildcats guard Travis Ford, who left his home state for Missouri before transferring back to the Bluegrass.
"I think there are some fans who are very disappointed that we've lost three games," Pitino said. "They can't understand how that happened.
"When we came in, they were talking a lot that when Kentucky fans would win, it was a relief more than it was a pleasure. I was just not going to subscribe to that.
"I've never coached that way. I've never wanted to play that way. I don't want my players feeling that.
"Right now, we're having a lot of fun. Our fans are enjoying themselves. When someone says, `Win it all,' I don't pay any attention to them."
Obviously, one of Pitino's coaching strengths must be selective hearing.
by CNB