Upon the resignation of head coach Rick Pitino, who had amassed an overall record of 219-50 in his eight years at the helm, the University of Kentucky athletic director, C.M. Newton, was not only presented with the daunting task of replacing a great coach in 1997, but was given the awesome responsibility of putting a man in charge of arguably the greatest basketball program in the history of the NCAA.
Following the 1996-97 season, a year in which UK had come up just five points shy of upending Mike Bibby and the Arizona Wildcats in the NCAA championship game, Kentucky would lose three members of its starting five to graduation, including current Portland Trailblazers star Derek Anderson.
With up-and-comers like Ron Mercer and Jamaal Magloire waiting in the wings, the Wildcats were left with one of the most talented yet inexperienced squads in the country; all they needed was an effective coach and leader to steer them in the right direction.
That’s exactly what they got May 12, 1997. After spending over two weeks interviewing some of the nation’s most qualified head coaching candidates, Newton and UK decided to hire a guy by the name of Orlando “Tubby” Smith, who had just led an underclassmen-laden Georgia Bulldog team to a 24-9 record and a subsequent No. 3 seed in the 1997 NCAA tournament.
In his first year at the helm, coach Smith led the Wildcats to an SEC championship and entered the NCAA tournament with an overall record of 29-4, which was good enough to earn UK a No. 2 seed in the Big Dance’s South Regional.
After coming up with a two-point victory against the No. 1 seeded Duke Blue Devils and pulling out an overtime win against Stanford in the Final Four, Kentucky found themselves once again vying for a national championship.
The Wildcats came out sluggish and would trail Utah and the team’s star point guard Andre Miller by 10 points going into halftime but would rally back in the game’s final stanza to win their second national championship in just three years.
The win marked the first time in which a team had ever come from behind by more than eight points in the championship game, and it was the only time in tournament history that a first-year coach had won the title since Cincinnati’s Ed Jucker accomplished the feat in 1961.
Since the 1998 championship team, Smith has led Kentucky to an overall record of 97-39, but has failed to bring a team any deeper into the tournament than the Sweet 16 in each of the past three seasons.
Under normal circumstances, reaching the field of 64’s third round of play would be more than enough to appease the players, fans and athletic department; in Kentucky, however, that is not the case.
Throughout the school’s storied history, UK has captured seven national titles, been an NCAA runner-up three times and has reached the Final Four on 13 separate occasions.
The winning precedent in Lexington can be traced back to the school’s most controversial, yet successful head coach.
Adolph Rupp, whose 876 wins made him the winningest coach in NCAA history until former North Carolina head coach Dean Smith surpassed him in 1997, guided Kentucky to four national championships and orchestrated 13 SEC tournament titles in just 19 appearances.
A former UK Media began: “In the storied land of Kentucky Colonels, there dwelled but one Baron, a man of consummate pride and a molder of powerful teams which for more than four decades made the name University of Kentucky synonymous with the game of basketball.”
After the “Baron” was forced to retire at the age of 70, his assistant, Joe Hall, took the reigns in 1973. Hall led Kentucky to four Final Four appearances and a national championship before stepping down after the 1984-85 season.
And before Pitino acquired the job in 1990, the Wildcats were led by current Oklahoma State head coach Eddie Sutton. Sutton’s UK career proved to be a tumultuous one, as the NCAA would strip the Wildcats of their 1988 SEC title and place the school on probation after discovering a number of rule violations by Sutton and the program.
Despite the UK basketball tradition being slightly tarnished by the Sutton era, Kentucky is still widely considered to be the best college basketball program in the country.
And because of this tradition of excellence, Kirk Penney and the Badgers will not only have to out-think coach Smith and contain Keith Bogans in their matchup with the heavily favored Wildcats, they will have to try to erase Adolph Rupp, the national championships and the ghosts of the past from their minds before Thursday night.
