Tubby Smith’s first season as Kentucky coach showed that not even winning the national championship can completely satisfy some people in the Big Blue Nation. Yeah, he won it all in 1998, it was said, but he won it with Rick Pitino’s players.
For Allen Edwards, a senior forward on that UK team, the irritation caused by that kind of depreciation has not eased over time.
“It probably (ticks) me off a little more than ever now because I am a coach,” he said. “I know that guy coached us, too. He also shaped us, too.”
Edwards, now an assistant coach at Loyola Marymount, called it “such a disrespectful comment.”
For C.B. Akins, a retired minister who served on UK’s Board of Trustees from 2011 to 2017, the discounting of Smith’s accomplishment fit a familiar pattern.
“That’s America speak,” he said. “I did hear it. That’s the typical language of our country. I’m painting with a broad brush now. It’s a refusal to give Black people credit when it’s due.
“It didn’t take away from what Tubby did. Could you and I have taken Rick’s team and won a championship?”
The presumption seemed to be that Pitino trained those players to be champions. After all, Kentucky won the NCAA Tournament two years earlier and then advanced to the national championship game the following year. Then Smith merely had to steer the best basketball car to the winner’s circle.
The players don’t remember it that way. They suggest that inheriting Pitino’s players made Smith’s job harder rather than easier.
Scott Padgett, a starting forward, noted the difference it can make inheriting players conditioned to expect success rather than seeking a fresh start.
“When you’re winning championships and you were highly successful, to get you to change from what you were doing when you were highly successful is really, really hard,” he said. “It’s, like, why would we change? As a young kid — 21 or 22 years old — your mindset is why would we change? This has worked so well.”
Wayne Turner, the point guard, pointed out that Smith had not recruited the players. And leading scorer Jeff Sheppard had been part of Pitino’s program for four years going into the 1997-98 season.
When asked if Smith’s job was easier because Pitino had trained the players, Turner said, “I would say it was harder because he had to come in and gain the trust of all of us to believe his philosophy of coaching.”
There was resistance.
“We were fighting against his system,” Turner said.
For instance, Smith wanted to overplay the wings. On occasion, UK was beaten on backdoor cuts.
“We didn’t like that we didn’t trap a lot in our presses,” Turner said. “We didn’t like changing defenses, playing zone.
“It was frustrating.”
Smith acknowledged the players’ resistance to change.
“We had some real confrontations,” he said. “But it all worked out.”
Sheppard spoke of something like a hybrid approach in the 1997-98 season. Smith allowed more running and pressing than he might have otherwise, he said.
The players also said that Smith did not inherit obviously superior talent.
“We were the leftovers,” Sheppard said of the 1997-98 UK team. Gone was the foundation of back-to-back Final Four success: Ron Mercer, Derek Anderson, Anthony Epps, Tony Delk, Antoine Walker and Walter McCarty.
“We were just good players,” Edwards said. “We did not have a top-five pick. To think anybody could just come in there and win a national championship …”
The first Kentucky player picked in the 1998 NBA Draft was Nazr Mohammed at No. 29. The first UK player picked in the next two drafts were Padgett at No. 28 in 1999 and Jamaal Magloire at No. 19 in 2000.
Edwards mentioned another attention-getting fact. In Pitino’s final season, Kentucky lost both games against South Carolina. “One would say our team was more talented” than in Smith’s first season as coach, he said. In 1997-98, UK beat a South Carolina team with four of its five leading scorers returning three times.
In remembering his first season as Kentucky coach, Smith recalled something he heard from the man who hired him, Athletics Director C.M. Newton.
“Coaching is coaching,” Smith said. “You can win with your players or his players. And that’s what I’ve always prided myself in. I was able to do that.”
To suggest he did not receive proper credit is to invite a hypothetical question. If the races of the coaches involved were reversed, would a Pitino championship in 1998 be considered merely the result of inheriting Smith-coached players?
When asked that question, Edwards and Turner laughed.
“I never looked at it like that,” Turner said before adding, “I don’t think there would have been a whole lot of moaning and groaning about that person’s players.”
Padgett likened Smith replacing Pitino to Kentucky’s transition from Adolph Rupp to Joe B. Hall. The successor faces an audience that will be difficult to fully please.
Looking into the future, Padgett said, “I will feel sorry for whoever is going to replace Coach (John) Calipari someday. I don’t wish that on anybody.”
Sheppard suggested that Calipari’s successor duplicating Smith’s ability to handle the difficult transition would be good fortune for Kentucky.
“It’s a tough transition that he made look simple,” Sheppard said.
Stability
SEC teams are in their third straight season in which none is led by a first-year coach.
Prior to that, the SEC had not gone two straight seasons without a coaching change since 2000-01.
The coaches with tenure in 2000-01 were Tubby Smith (Kentucky), Billy Donovan (Florida), Jerry Green (Tennessee), Jim Harrick (Georgia), Eddie Fogler (South Carolina), Kevin Stallings (Vanderbilt), Mark Gottfried (Alabama), Nolan Richardson (Arkansas), Rick Stansbury (Mississippi State), Rod Barnes (Ole Miss), John Brady (LSU) and Cliff Ellis (Auburn).
After the 2000-01 season, Green resigned and Fogler retired.
Instability
Arkansas Coach Eric Musselman will be coaching despite a torn rotator cuff in his left shoulder.
“The pain has really been keeping him up at night,” his wife, Danyelle, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “For a person that doesn’t sleep much at night during the season normally, now to add that pain on top of it, he’s been having a pretty rough time”
Musselman said he walked around until 4 a.m. one night to try to ease the pain, the Democrat-Gazette reported.
When asked if the pain could be eased on future road trips if hotels provided a recliner for him to sleep on, Musselman suggested competitiveness extends to lodging, “That’s probably not going to happen in any of the SEC road hotels,” he quipped.
It’s the second time Musselman will continue coaching despite a major injury. He coached the Venezuela National Team in the 2011 FIBA Americas Championships despite a torn Achilles tendon in his left leg. He said the torn rotator cuff is more painful, especially at night.
Gregory Echenique, a player for the Venezuela National Team, was on the Nevada team that Musselman coached in the 2015-16 season. NevadaSportsNet reported how Echenique remembered Musselman coaching despite the torn Achilles.
“He would throw his crutches down and literally crawl to get after you,” the player said.
Happy birthday
To Eloy Vargas. He turned 34 on Thursday. … To former Tennessee coach Don DeVoe. He turned 81 on Friday. … To Aminu Timberlake. He turned 49 on Saturday. … To Bernadette Locke-Mattox. The former UK women’s coach and the first female assistant coach on a Division I men’s team turned 64 on Saturday. … To Irving Thomas. He turns 56 on Sunday (today). … To Randolph Morris. He turns 36 on Sunday (today). … To former UK president Charles Wethington. He turns 86 on Sunday (today). … To Steve Bruce. The former UK walk-on who became a Baptist minister turns 55 on Monday. … To Cheryl Miller. She turns 58 on Monday. … To Isaac Humphries. He turns 24 on Wednesday. … To Tyler Ulis. He turns 26 on Wednesday.