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Kentucky Still Has Plenty Of Work To Do

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By JOE HENDERSON

jhenderson@tampatrib.com

Published: March 12, 2009

TAMPA - The name still says "Kentucky" across the shirt, but the record says something else.

The Wildcats are 19-12 overall, which in a lot of places might be pretty good. That can't be Kentucky, though, because it doesn't settle for pretty good. That won't cut it at this place. The 50th Southeastern Conference men's basketball tournament opens today at the Forum. The Wildcats have won the tournament 25 times.

Now? Kentucky needs the same kind of miracle run that, gulp, Georgia had last year just to make the NCAA field. That's what it has come to - Kentucky looking to Georgia for inspiration. But then, why not? Georgia won three conference games this year, but one came last week at Rupp Arena - on Senior Night.

That was the third of the four consecutive losses that UK drags into today's game against Ole Miss, which beat the Wildcats in January.

Are these the Wildcats who won 11 of 12 at one point this season and started 5-0 in the SEC? Or is it the Kentucky that gave up 111 points in losing to VMI? The inconsistency makes people crazy.

Fun fact: Kentucky has endured two losing streaks of four games during Billy Gillispie's two seasons on the hottest coaching seat in America. You have to go back to the 1989-90 season, when Rick Pitino took over a probation-decimated team, to find even one streak that matches the current one.

"Every job is different, no matter how similar it is to your last one, but I've got the best job in the world," Gillispie said Wednesday inside the UK locker room at the Forum. "We've got the best fans, we've got the most fans, we have great resources."

Great Expectations

Those blueblood fans have certain expectations, though. And they don't include losses to the likes of Gardner-Webb, Houston, UAB, San Diego, and did we mention VMI? All those teams have beaten Kentucky during Gillispie's tenure.

That brings us to where we started, and the name spelled out in blue block letters across the jersey. Kentucky has more wins than any program in college history, more NCAA appearances, and trails only UCLA in the number of national championships.

"I have so much respect for the passion, for the lineage, for the history. When you see Kentucky, that's a special opportunity," Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy said.

It has always been that way. Even when schools like Florida, LSU or Tennessee ramped up and became powers, Kentucky was usually in the fight. So where we see a scuffling team, Kennedy is wary.

"I think they're a wounded animal. They're a very, very dangerous team," he said. "They're a desperate team."

Well, this would be the first time in 18 seasons that Kentucky misses the NCAA Tournament. That should bring a certain level of desperation. But the problem at UK seems to go deeper than that.

Pressure Comes With The Turf

Everybody knows Gillispie was the second choice for the job two years ago when Tubby Smith finally had enough of the Lexington meat grinder and ran off to Minnesota with his 263-83 record.

Smith's remarkable 10-year run included a national championship, but somehow it was never good enough - which tells you basically how much slack Gillispie is getting these days.

"Nothing said outside this locker room matters," UK standout Jodie Meeks said, but Gillispie's two-year record of 37-25 has the locals grumbling. Another season like this and they'll do more than gripe. They'll be reaching for their checkbooks.

"Other people get a lot more caught up in the things that go on outside than the coaches and the players do," Gillispie said pleasantly. "We try to work every single day. If you work well enough, coach well enough, and recruit well enough, you're going to have a good team. The outside things don't really affect me because I don't believe in wasting a lot of energy on those things."

At a certain point, though, the "outside things" can become a problem. A championship run this weekend might calm things down a bit, but there is still much work to be done to get back, as someone once said, to where they once belonged.

The name on the shirt still says Kentucky, but everything else about the Wildcats right now is hard to recognize.

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