Concerned Fans Press Release #1

CONCERNED FANS FOR

BASKETBALL

RESPONSE TO COLUMN BY MARK STORY

The Concerned Fans For UK Basketball released their first Press Release on the evening of June 6, 2006. The first media outlet to pick up the story was WLEX - 18 in Lexington, and WLAP 630, but due to Sports Journalist Alan Cutler's interest in the story. Victoria Sun wrote a piece for the Cincinnati Post on June 8, and Ray Hall followed suit in the Louisville Courier-Journal on June 9, 2006. The Courier-Journal story was picked up by the Assoicated Press, and the story rapidly spread to a national scale.

In each of these cases, the journalist involved sought the views of representatives of the Concerned Fans before going with their stories. However, the Lexington Herald-Leader took a different tact on June 9 with a Mark Story column, written without talking to any representative of Concerned Fans. On Friday evening, June 9, 2006, Mr. Cutler spoke with Mr. Story on Mr. Cutler's WLAP radio program. Following this program, I sent the following rebuttal of the Mark Story column to Mr. Cutler

Alan,

I read with interest Mark Story's column, and listened to him tonight on your show. He essentially took each of the criticisms leveled against Tubby and found one successful coach who shares that same flaw, and then concludes that the sharing of that single flaw made the comparative coach unacceptable by the standards we suggest within our criticism of Coach Smith's record.

He did this with the following coaches:

Tom Izzo over the number and frequency of 10 loss seasons
Mike Krzyzewski due to the poor NCAA tournament performance over the last 5 years
Rick Pitino two failures to even make the NCAA, and failing to win the NIT twice over the last 5 years
Roy Williams and Lute Olson for failing to make the final four as #1 seeds
Billy Donovan for his failure to simply get it done in March.

These arguments are intellectually flawed. Coach Smith is the only one of the group that is flawed in each and every category that Mr. Story selected for the comparisons. That is very selective and presents a biased case. Perhaps that was Mr. Story's intent, I really can't say, but it is certainly what he did, intent or no. If you listed all of those flaws, and asked folks which coach has all of these things in common, I believe the only honest answer is Coach Smith.

Add to that select list, poor/ineffective recruiting, poor or non-existent player retention, you get a lose of national competitiveness, which is the core of Mr. Story's comparisons.

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