Bloggin' the Cats

Let me now proudly say that I am an alumnus of the University of Kentucky. Yes, I do like to brag about this, not that my alma mater has as much reason to return the favor. But I am working on this. Stay tuned to the station for occasional updates.

I am nothing if not an unlucky fellow. Like most of my fellow Kentuckians, I succumbed to one of my basest desires when I decided to go to U. K. That is to say, I wanted to watch the men's team play basketball at that site we from the Bluegrass State consider to be the world capital of BB, Rupp Arena. What's not to like about this scenario?

Not only was there Rupp, there was also Memorial, that classic example of a college gym. It was here that the great ones played BB for UK. The first team I ever paid any attention to was the one that featured number 44, Dan Issel, as its star performer. Dan'l and company introduced me to the idea of seeing U K ranked highly and competing fiercely.

In fact, this was sort of the middle of the era that was dominated by UCLA, the great John Wooden, Bill Walton, Lew Alcindor (now Kareem Abdul Jabbar, the best NBA star ever, in my humble opinion), and a whole ensemble of greats, but Issel and U K managed to be ranked N. 1 for a large part of that season. Sadly, that old upset bug got 'em in the end, as Jacksonville, a school that featured a pair of seven-footers-one of which was Artis Gilmore, who would be Issel's team mate on the now defunct Kentucky Colonels of the now equally defunct American Basketball Association-beat the Cats in the finals of their regional that year. This was also the year I learned how depressed a U K fan can be when the team doesn't live up to expectations.

Back to what would be the future, my enrollment period at U K. The would be Eddie Sutton's last year. Eric Manual was still on campus but was no longer allowed to play on the team. That was sad. The investigation into the men's team was fully involved, much like a house fire. That was even sadder. And U K was losing a lot of games. This would be the first losing season since 1919 (this was 1989, so that would make it seventy years, huh?) This was the saddest part of all.

Well, at least you could get tickets to the games. Not that many fans really wanted them. I worked at the Convenient Food Mart next door to Tolly Ho to help buy an occasional prime rib dinner from Alley Oops, and a night on the town at Two Keys or the U Club. On one occasion while at work, with not much going on, me and my boss and a couple of customers were discussing the state of affairs in Downtown Lexington. One customer mentioned crime, and the second one suggested that it was wise to consider what you displayed in the dash of any parked vehicle. He had, he went on, parked on Main a week or so earlier, and had inadvertently left a couple of U K tickets in plain sight. Sure enough, upon his return, he found that someone had broken the passenger side window and had left two more U K tickets on the dash.

Okay, so that was the worst of my three years at U K. The very next year would be Rick Pitino's first year. This offered the one thing that was missing from Eddie's last year, and that was excitement. Yeah, there was the Massacre at Kansas, when Pitino insisted on the run and gun and was outgunned by about fifty points. But the next year, the last time U K played the Jayhawks in a regular season game, we saw U K return the favor. This game, very close in the second half, turned into a blowout after Pitino called a time out, and the Cats went on a 19-2 run. How much fun was that?!? And we helped. We (the fans) made all the noise we could and we were overjoyed everytime a Jayhawk turned the ball over when hit by a relentless press.

And I got to see one of my favorite SEC and NBA players, Shaq Daddy, in person, being guarded by U K's BMOC, Jamal Mashburn. Good times. Good times. But one of my favorite games was in Pitino's first year, against Denny Crum's Cardinals. Their BMOC was Felton Spencer, a future NBA-er, (I saw John Pelfry, from Paintsville and the 15th region, my home region, really sky against him a couple of times) and the Cards were heavily favored. But the U K faithful were out en masse. So en masse that, during half time, it was all I could do to make a pit stop, get a refill for the bladder in the form of a large Coke, and the game was already underway when I got back to my seat. Final score as I recall was Cards 64, Cats 60. This time the moral victory was something to be savored.

Come to think of it, maybe I wasn't as unlucky as I might have thought at the time. More on this topic at odd intervals.