CONCERNED FANS FOR

BASKETBALL

RESPONSE TO COLUMN BY Bomani Jones
ESPN Page 2
December 4, 2006

On December 4, 2006, ESPN.com posted the following article by Bomani Jones calling for Tubby Smith to move on from UK basketball.  ESPN.com subsequently pulled the article from their webspace, without explanation.  However, the entire article has been published at several UK message boards.  For more information about these postings, see the links below.

The entire article is posted here as a service to our Concerned Fans members.

"Tubby's Time has Passed"

By Bomani Jones of ESPN.com
Page 2

CHAPEL HILL , N.C. -- I've defended Tubby Smith against the impatience of the Kentucky faithful for the last few years. He hasn't taken the Wildcats to the Final Four since they won it all in '98, but he wins lots of games. Can't blame Tubby for the way the 2003 season ended, when UK won 26 straight but caught Dwyane Wade on the best night of his life in the Elite Eight.

Kentucky has won at least 20 games every season since Smith got to Lexington . Big Blue surely isn't as good as it was during Rick Pitino's heyday, but what program is? Tubby was doing just fine.

Or so it seemed from a distance. After seeing Kentucky in person during its sloppy loss at North Carolina on Saturday, one thing became clear: Instead of defending Tubby, maybe I should have been minding my own business.

Oh, the loss was ugly, an encapsulation of the critics' most prevalent complaints about Smith's teams. Juniors played like freshmen, and UK's offensive strategy was indiscernible, played at what would be called a "methodical" pace if any method at all had been apparent. Instead, the Cats just looked slow.

After the game, I asked another basketball writer if he'd figured out UK's offensive strategy.

"Get through 40 minutes," was his analysis.

But the pace, Smith said in his postgame press conference, was at least partially by design.

"That was the game plan: control the tempo," Tubby said.

The other part of Tubby's game plan was to get the ball to Randolph Morris early and often. Morris isn't the toughest guy on the block -- the word I heard him called last summer by the father of one of his AAU teammates isn't fit for print -- but he is the sort of long, athletic big man who can give Tyler Hansbrough, Carolina's brutish center, fits.

Morris went 11-for-12 from the field for 23 points. But when a 7-footer is on that much of a roll, 12 shots just aren't enough.

"[Morris] should have gotten about five or six more shots," Smith said.

Kentucky also had problems stopping freshman stud Brandan Wright. Most teams will have that problem against Carolina this year, but it might have been particularly painful for Kentucky, which recruited Wright heavily.

At this point, the only thing that might take the intrigue out of a game of "What If?" for Wildcats fans still despairing that recruiting loss would be watching Joe Crawford, a ballyhooed recruit from Kentucky's 2004 freshman class, commit seven turnovers Saturday. Two were the result of over-dribbling displays in the first half that should have come complete with an off-key rendition of "Sweet Georgia Brown" on the kazoo.

At Carolina, Wright has made strides since the first game of the season. Crawford, a junior at Kentucky now, doesn't look to have improved much since his freshman year. His classmate, Rajon Rondo, didn't appear to have stepped up his game much, either, at UK before he bolted for the NBA. So there's reason to believe that Wright might not be looking as good in a darker-hued uniform as he does right now in Carolina's powder blue, and it has little to do with fashion. If Smith isn't getting much out of Crawford, is there reason to think he'd get any more out of Wright?

And Kentucky wasn't even up against much of a home-court advantage in Chapel Hill on Saturday. The fans at the Smith Center were so dead at one point that Roy Williams personally implored them to get in the game, only the second time in 19 years Ol' Roy says he's felt compelled to do that. Long criticized for having a "wine and cheese" crowd, the Dean Dome had no problem getting up for Ohio State, which is still better known for Woody Hayes than Chad Matta, on Wednesday evening. But it couldn't get hyped against Kentucky, an annual opponent and the winningest program in college basketball history?

So yeah, I get it now. Smith got it on Saturday. Problem is, he didn't get it right. Nor has he consistently had it right for the last three seasons.

It wasn't clear when Tubby was winning 20 games every year. And it was hard to see while I was worrying that much of the heat Tubby takes in Lexington has to do with the fact that he's black, a concern that might not be present if he coached home games in an arena named after Don Haskins rather than Adolph Rupp. As long as Rupp -- who famously referred to Texas Western's black players as "coons" at halftime of the 1966 NCAA championship game -- is the patron saint of Kentucky basketball, it'll be hard to shake the thought that race plays a major role in how Tubby is perceived, fair or not.

But even if some want a change for the wrong reasons, it seems clear after Saturday why Kentucky might need a change at the helm: lack of direction on offense, stagnant player development, sagging recruiting, and the program's diminished profile.

Those are all things that are hard to see from far away, but impossible to ignore from courtside.

So why was I defending Tubby so vigorously before? Just being nosy.

Part of being a college sports fan is being nosy. He or she loves one team, and has an opinion on what every other school should be doing.

Using "SportsCenter" segments and stats as evidence, many fans believe they know what programs need and, more interestingly, what their place in the sports universe should be. The University of Elsewhere should be happy making it to the Punch Bowl every year. So what if the coach can't beat rival Elsewhere State?

How dare fans of Big State U. be dissatisfied with annual tournament appearances that don't last very long! There are starving kids at ol' Wannabe Tech who would love to trade places.

Outsiders shook their heads and wagged their fingers when Nebraska fired Frank Solich after a 9-3 season just two years removed from a BCS Championship Game appearance. People who go to sleep before most UCLA games start couldn't understand why Bruins fans weren't satisfied with Steve Lavin's impressive collection of Sweet 16 appearances. Many outside the ACC were clueless as to why 20-win seasons weren't enough to keep Herb Sendek in the good graces of NC State fans.

But informed fans of each team can tell you exactly why each of those institutions made coaching changes, and most can do so without message-board hysterics.

Reality is that outsiders rarely know enough about another program to say definitively what it should or should not do. Teams don't start from the same place, so records speak only so loudly about the state of a program. Two minutes of highlights don't say nearly enough, either. It's like seeing a man with a pretty wife and thinking he has no reason to complain.

But as reader Bryan Garner of Nashville, Tenn., says, "For every woman you'd bite your leg off to sleep with, there's a man that would do the same to get away from her."

Before Bryan is condemned to sleeping on the couch tonight, let me make it clear that he said that in reference to his favorite basketball team's coaching situation, and he said it on Saturday afternoon with palpable frustration.

He's a fan of the Kentucky Wildcats.

Tubby Smith is a good coach. He's led three different teams to the Sweet 16, which is no small feat. But if Saturday is any indication -- and from what I've been told, it is -- then he's got one less defender than he did last week.

Bomani Jones is a frequent contributor to Page 2. Tell him how you feel at readers@bomanijones.com.

Source of Entire Bimani Jones article, CLICK HERE

Original ESPN Source Link, Now Inactive:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=jones/061204

Richard Cheeks, Concerned Fans For UK Basketball

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Did you know that Coach Smith's best offensive team was no better than Coach Pitino's average?  To learn more, CLICK HERE

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