A Few Words in Defense of Our Program...

They say the dynasty has fallen, that the University of Kentucky Men's Basketball team is the worst we've ever seen. They say expectations are down, that losing games has become OK. They say the hiring of our new coach was a bad decision and that his players have quit on him. They say our recruits just aren't good enough, that the talent on the floor doesn't match up with everyone else. They say that Rupp Arena, that fabled hall and home to so much tradition, is a hollow shell where shadows of the former fan base appear from time to time to hang their heads at what they see now and try vainly to remember what it was like in '48, in '49, in '51, in '58, in '78, in '96, and in '98. They say so many things and have said them so often, even a boy like me, a child of eleven at heart, has begun to believe some of them.

I can't begin to tell you if what they say is true. All I can say is that I've been to the mountain top, and the sun still shines there, the sky is still blue on the other side. I saw there a group of young men who had absorbed the identity of their coach, a hard nosed nail of a man from nowhere, Texas. They remembered what the eight letters on their chest meant, and what the seven banners hanging in the rafters meant, and what the untold numbers of cheering spectators meant. They grabbed each other and pulled with everything they had, making solid once again their hobbling and broken teammates, unwilling to stop bleeding for each other. I saw a Senior who could barely walk, who the masses have called a quitter, a showoff, a letdown, coaching his squad, looking into the sea of blue all around him and smiling because he remembered how it feels to wear the name Kentucky in that place in a moment like that. I saw a coach who has been written off, a has-been before he ever got to be, salute the reinvigorated throng, telling them with his eyes what they all wanted to hear: that this is what it will be like now and forever. I saw for one night the house that Rupp built transformed once again into irrepressible shrine that it ought always be, the greatest place there is to watch a basketball game, Cameron Indoor be damned.

I cannot prognosticate upon the future of this group, but I knew when the buzzer sounded at 23,000 stayed to sing "My Old Kentucky Home," that they had done something to win over so many of the people who have cursed them for more than two months. We are not a program of moral victories. Close losses are of no use to us. And so tonight we can remember what we may have forgotten.

Kentucky is the home of the greatest tradition in college basketball history, and as the late Al McGuire said, "They had it before you, they had it during you, and they'll have it after you."

As I stood behind the Kentucky bench tonight and marveled anew at the names of Hayden, Jones, Groza, Issel, Macy, and Mashburn, I could retrieve only one thought from my brain: This is still Rupp Arena, and we are still Kentucky.