Good Rivals make for good basketball

I’m a fan of the men’s basketball program at the University of Kentucky, much as the most of us who reside in the hinterlands of Kentucky are. Not that U.K.’s men’s program is the only game in town, of course; there is also the Hoops team from U. K., aka women’s basketball.

This team, though, languished in the background until U. K. hired one Mikki DeMoss in 2003, a long-time assistant under Tennessee’s Coach Pat Summit. Coach DeMoss just proceeded to work miracles at U. K.

When Coach DeMoss left U. K. to take a circuitous route back to Tennessee, she left behind Coach Billy Mitchell, who was also schooled under Coach Summit. For that reason, the recent successes the U. K.’s hoops team has enjoyed can be indirectly attributed to one of its bigger rivals, Tennessee.

This year, for instance, the hoops team made it to the Elite 8 again before bowing out to a Hoops giant, the UConn Huskies team, under legendary head coach, Geno Auriemma. And as for the future, well, the skies the limit.

Kentucky fans never gave Tennessee a break because of this, though. But the average U. K. fan’s ire when directed at Tennessee is rather tame when compared to how they feel about a closer school.

That would be Louisville. This school, whose mascot is the Cardinal (as in the Kentucky cardinal), can evoke very strong feelings in a Wildcatophile; harsher feelings than are directed at even U. K.’s SEC foes.

I can’t take the hard-nosed approach when it comes to Louisville’s men’s basketball program, though, and this isn’t entirely my fault. I was a wet-behind-the-ears U. K. fan in 1971 when Louisville hired a new basketball coach by the name of Denny Crum.

This Coach Crum wasn’t your ordinary run-of-the-mill novice; he came from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) where he’d spent an inordinate amount of time under the tutelage of one John Wooden.

Because of this, I was sure Louisville’s program would blossom, and it did. Later when Coach Joe B. Hall took over U. K. from the legendary Adolph Rupp, he, Coach Crum and Coach Bob Knight (B-O-O-O-O-O!), formed a friendship that lasted until Coach Knight when wacky and clubbed Joe B. in 1975.

Indy was killing U. K. at the time. Later that season, U. K. upset an undefeated Indiana in the finals of the Southeast Regional, and suddenly Joe B. wasn’t mad anymore.

For years afterwards, Coach Knight would go around saying “We should have been undefeated!” And Coach Hall would ask “Would you like some cheese to go with that whine?”

When Coach Crum retired from Louisville, the Cards hired U. K.’s ex, Rick Pitino. Knowing his history with U. K., I cannot find it in myself to hate him, either. Without Coach Pitino, Kentucky’s pride and joy, the U. K. men’s basketball program, might have wound up in much the same boat as Southern Methodist University’s football program after it received the death penalty.

Because Coach Pitino did show up, U. K. rebounded nicely, and even though he’s at another school, simple courtesy suggests that U. K. should honor him incessantly, because without him, we might not now have anything to cheer for.

Anyway, good rivalries do make for good basketball, as was demonstrated in the Final Four game between U. K. and the Cards on Saturday last.