Fight on (choke), U of L (Sob!)

I’d less than honest if I said I was overjoyed to hear that Elisha Justice will be wearing red and white next year. Of course I wanted to see him keep the blue and white color scheme he’s been used to for practically all his life. But then, if he’d got a more timely offer from John Calipari, he could have taken his Wildcat tee-shirts with him to college without looking out of place.

Well, what the heck! I’ve got used to seeing Rick Pitino in the Derby City, so I guess… .

Seriously, now that Elisha is going to play for Denny Crum’s successor, I plan on being a much bigger Cardinal fan. He’s a Cardinal because he gave Rick Pitino his word, and he had enough character to keep it. And I don’t need to add that a lot of people would not have been so honorable. So to him, I say “Good luck! May you soon have an NCAA Championship ring to go with those KHSAA titles!”

Not a lot of players from the mountain region have been successful at Division 1 schools. Call it culture shock. Life in Lexington or Louisville ain’t like the smaller towns in Eastern Kentucky. But there are a couple of notable exceptions; John Pelfrey and Richie Farmer.

If Elisha wanted to emulate any player from the 15th Region after he enters college, he could do no worse than to model his behavior after John Pelfrey. Of all the outstanding players from our region who ever made the trip to Lexington, Pelf was the only one who ever stayed.

Yes, there was the great season the Wildcats had during Pelf’s senior year. They won in the SEC Championship game. The team also made the Elite 8 in the NCAA tourney. We will forgo any mention of the team they lost to, or the player who made that winning shot in OT. The thing is, if you went by his last year, you might not be so impressed with Pelf for staying put.

But when you consider what Pelf (and Farmer) put up with to get to that last year, then the feat becomes even more impressive. Pelf’s freshman year was the bluest (not in a happy U. K. way, either) year in the history of this storied program. Hey, this is pretty much all bad memories, but it is also a lifetime ago for Elisha, so, here goes:

Scandal, turmoil, illegal payments, NCAA investigations, losing season, injury, and general unrest among the few U. K. fans who even showed up for the games, and them are the highlights!

I think Pelf would have stayed at U. K., no matter what. He’d have stayed if they had demoted him to waterboy. He had determination. And he had loyalty, to his school, and to his teammates.

Seems to me like I’ve heard those words used to describe someone else lately. In fact, there were even more glowing words thrown in. Yeah, that was Elisha Justice.

You might think it’d be easy to heap praise on Elisha. He’s a winner, after all.
 
But Elisha wasn’t born halfway between third base and home. Like Pelf, he put in some work. And like Pelf, he’ll come out on top, too!