 |  |
 |
| Monday, December 9 The 'Cats Meow By Curry Kirkpatrick ESPN The Magazine |
|||||||||||||||||||
|
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- They were Team Soaps. The Young and The Restless: If some familiar suspects weren't transferring on their own, they were being dismissed from the place anyway. As The World Turns: Grades, injuries and assorted other bogeymen had turned the starting lineup into a world of chaos. The Guiding Light: After his underachieving charges lost an exhibition game and were booed off their own home court, the coach himself might have been justified in Franchioning his sorry bunch right then and guiding himself to the Atlanta Hawks' job rumored waiting for him.
But no. Orlando (Tubby) Smith of Kentucky has stayed the course, withstood an alarming compilation of disciplinary problems and surprising exoduses, and brushed off that embarrassing trifecta drought against Virginia in Hawaii a couple of weeks ago. Obviously, what he noticed on the horizon was an annual gimme against North Carolina and his personal pigeon, Matt Doherty. And now, emboldened by another easy victory against the Tar Heels on Saturday -- the 98-81 decision was the third rout in a row for The Tubster over Doherty-led Carolina -- the embattled coach has his weird but wily Wildcats right back in the national hunt again. "I like the way our team is starting to come together. (But) we're still a work in progress," Smith said after the 'Cats, minus two starters, had torn apart the Smith (no relation) Center -- ironically mirroring the severe ice storm that struck here a few days previous and left sections of Chapel Hill without power through the weekend. Powerless, too, were Tar Heel freshmen Sean May and Raymond Felton after the home team took a 43-40 halftime lead only to virtually surrender defensively when the two got in foul trouble within seconds following the second-half tip. That's when Kentucky's 6-foot-9 senior center, Marquis Estill, who seldom has been a marquee Marquis, began to erase his scoreless first 20 minutes by lumbering inside for easy baskets against May. And when Kentucky's 6-3 junior point guard, Gerald Fitch -- emboldened after Felton went to the bench with his fourth foul at 17:05 -- starting lighting up sub Melvin Scott ... once, twice, three times straight on outside bombs. The 'Cats clawed for 12 consecutive points to take a 58-45 lead. "Our defense was nonexistent" said Doherty. And the once vociferous crowd might as well have departed right away. Their homes would be less frozen than the cold-cocked 'Heels. "We wanted to make a statement to the country," said Kentucky's Souleymane (Jules) Camara, the dangling drink of water from Dakar, who did not specify whether that nation might be Big Blue, Senegal or just which. "The nation was doubting our heart," said 'Cat forward Chuck Hayes, who called December "Respect Month" for Kentucky. "We wanted to get some respect. Now I doubt if people can doubt us." Smith may have been doubting his own sanity for certain stretches of the past year when:
As if Tubby's tubful of personnel problems weren't enough, naggers pointed out that for the first time in 100 years Kentucky had lost 10 or more games in three straight seasons, and for almost that long had gone those three without beating at least 75 percent of it's opponents. In the face of all this, Tubby closed the locker room to local media. (A first, going all the way back to Ruppian times.) Then he bitched that Kentucky is the only SEC team unable to shoot around on its own home court. (Officials at Rupp Arena told the Lexington Herald that they'd offered the coach the floor 58 times last year but he'd only accepted the offer five times.) What's more -- or less -- when Kentucky dropped that preseason exo to Team Nike, then shot that infamous 2 for 22 from trifecta-land in a shocker to Virginia, the Commonwealth's airwaves were actually abuzz as to who would be the next Wildcat coach -- Bill Self (of Illinois), Tom Crean (of Marquette), Mike Brey (of Notre Dame) or, Lord Save Us, Pitino again. Surely, Big Blue Nation was additionally unappeased when, instead of Ashley Judd jumping out of the birthday cake celebrating Kentucky's 100th year of basketball last month, came 75-year old equipment manager, Bill Keightley. "Fooled 'em all," said "Mr. Wildcat" last Saturday.
About the only thing the foolish, front-running fandom in Kentucky hasn't blamed Smith for is not finding any weapons of mass destruction with which to blow up the enemy. But then Tubby's always had Doherty. In their teams' trio of meetings Kentucky has now outscored the Tar Heels by 54 points. In these two winningest basketball schools' history -- Carolina leads the series, 16-9 -- that other Smith, guy named Dean, was 13-3 against Adolph Rupp (whose all-time coaching victories record, of course, he broke) and his successors in Lexington (including 3-0 vs Pitino). But Doherty has been unable to add to that, and on Saturday he could do little about the winners' current advantages in inside height, bodies to work with and sheer experience. Kentucky brashly reversed it's shooting woes by draining 10 of 16 threes and reaching a field goal percentage of 60 percent for the second game in a row. The Wildcats' strategy followed the same pattern Illinois had used to thrash infant Carolina at Champaign three nights earlier: pound the ball down low, where May and forward Jawad Williams are woefully undersized in matchups, so that everybody else has to help out. Then take all those looks that open up outside. "That was the game plan in the second half," said Estill. "Get the ball to me, attack the basket, go right at May and get him in foul trouble. He's a good young guy. But I think I'm quicker and stronger. He couldn't jump with me. I thought I could get some easy ones." Result: Estill scored Atwill against a helpless, fouls-strapped May -- "The guy buried me," admitted Carlolina's baby-faced rookie -- tallying nine baskets in the second half. The converted two-guard Fitch, freed from coping with the speedy Felton, added 20 points of his own. And Carolina-killer and erstwhile All-American Keith Bogans, who still acts as though he thinks he should have left school long ago for The Association, chipped in with another 20. "We were just feeling it all day," said Kentucky's Chuck Hayes, who helped limit Carolina's other freshman star, Rashad McCants (22 points) to two buckets in the second half. (Why Doherty felt the need to leave his trio of prime frosh in for the duration, allowing McCants to slip on a wet spot and twist his ankle in the final 40 seconds, was an unanswered question.) But, as for another peculiar episode in Kentucky's history of playing better away from Kentucky: "They got real nice rims out here, nice to the touch," laughed Hayes. "But we saw this as an opportunity, a big step in Respect Month. If we go undefeated the rest of the month, we should be OK." You think? The 'Cats' December started with them beating Tubby Smith's alma mater, High Point. If they finish December beating Tulane, Michigan State, Indiana and Louisville, the team will be at a separate, considerably higher, point.
Bounce Passes Still Roaring:How heartwarming is it to see Huggy Bear back hugging his Cincinnati Bearcats? Or, rather, a hardly subdued Bob Huggins -- having survived a severe heart attack three months ago -- grabbing one of his cringing players by his Cincy jersey and nearly tearing it off as the home team was going down to bitter crosstown rival, Xavier. Welcome back, Hugs. But pay attention to the doctors, lose the cigars, calm the rage and stay with us forever. Smiling Eyes: It looks like Notre Dame will be a BCS player after all. Nah, not Tyrone Arrogantham's gridiron grinders. Mike Brey's hip hoopsters. With upset victories over Marquette, Maryland and Texas, and with one of the best point guards in the country in Chris Thomas, the Irish are basketball's own BCS (Big Court Surprise) of the early season. Hi-Light of the Week: When Oregon freshman forward Ian Crosswhite found his shoelace untied in the Ducks' revenge victory over Kansas in Portland, he simply sat down on the court and took his time tying it. Trouble was the game was still going on. But what does Crosswhite know? His last big game was for Lake Ginnindema against Paradise for the national schools championship in, you guessed it, Australia. So his teammates simply waited for him as they set up the offense at the other end. After Crosswhite dawdled ... then paused ... then took some more sweet time jogging to the top of the circle, he set a nice screen, flared to the side, was passed the ball and systematically drained a long 3-pointer as if that was the strategy all along. His basket barely beat the shoe clock. Curry Kirkpatrick is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espn3.com. |
| ||||||||||||||||||
