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According to the New Orleans Time-Picayune, The majority of LSU’s head athletic coaches on Friday received new contracts that include pay raises and incentives, with the most significant hikes going to football coach Les Miles, basketball coach John Brady and women’s basketball coach Pokey Chatman.
Recently, the University of Kentucky student newspaper, the Kentucky Kernel, made headlines by refusing to run an advertisement that expressed displeasure with head coach Tubby Smith, and called for his dismissal. While the ad itself didn’t run, the story caught national attention, and the sentiment still managed to get out, leading to the annual “Where is the program headed?” debates that invariably follow each UK season.
Granted, the 2005-06 season was maddeningly frustrating for fans. For a variety of reasons, the team never meshed, and rode a roller coaster all season, as viewers tried to figure out which UK team would show up to play that night. Would it be the team that was pounded by Indiana in December, or the team that knocked off #20 Tennessee on the road in March? How about the team that struggled to put away an over-matched Ole Miss in the 1st round of the SEC Tournament, and then nearly knocked off NCAA Tournament favorite UConn?
However inconsistent, uncaring or dull as they may have seemed through the season, they did finish with another 20-win season (22 to be exact), and did advance to the 2nd round of the Big Dance before losing to a team that was among the most talented in the country. It may not have looked like the dominance that UK fans have come to expect, but the end results weren’t that far off. I know Kentucky isn’t most schools, but I think it’s worth pointing out that 22-13 isn’t the end of the world. It hardly signifies that the program is on a deathbed, or that UK is falling rapidly behind the other elite programs.
Entering his tenth year at the helm of UK, Tubby has won 77 percent of his games, and averaged nearly 27 wins per year. Under him, the Cats have five SEC titles, five SEC Tournament titles, and the1998 National Championship.
Ahh.. the national title. It’s the card that all Tubby supporters love to play, and the one that Tubby-bashers have patented their argument against. “Yes Tubby won a championship, but he did with [Rick] Pitino’s players.” While it’s true that Tubby didn’t recruit the players who cut down those nets, it wasn’t as if he took over the uber-talented 1996 Chicago Bulls. The 1998 team started Nazr Mohammed, Scott Padgett, Allen Edwards, Jeff Sheppard and Wayne Turner- a great college team to be sure, but hardly one that could simply rely on pure talent to overwhelm teams. In fact, the team was nick-named the Comeback Cats, for their ability to bounce back off the mats and pull out tough victories. From the epic comeback against Duke in the NCAA Regional Finals (17 point deficit with nine minutes remaining), to the championship win over Utah (down 10 at the half), the 1998 team showed remarkable character and spirit through the season- a direct reflection on the coach.
True, Tubby can’t live off one national title for his career- especially at a place like UK. But should success only be measured by the trophies? If so, does that mean that UK basketball, for all their glory and tradition, has had only seven successful seasons in their 103-year history?
According to The Oregonian, men’s basketball teams in the Pacific-10 Conference and the Big 12 Conference could become annual adversaries as soon as 2007, if negotiations between the two conferences reach fruition. The conferences are working on a scheduling plan that would have teams play each other in similar fashion to the annual ACC/Big Ten Challenge, according to spokesmen from both conferences.
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