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Thursday, March 1, 2007
Tubby’s wobbly status at Kentucky
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
There once was a guy from Maysville, Ky., who was accused of trying to get a Kentucky coach fired. I know. I was the guy.
Joe B. Hall was the coach, and some of things I wrote in the Lexington Herald-Leader so angered Joe B. that he and his supporters seemed rather elated when I, of my own volition, left on March 1, 1984, to take the job I still have.
Long story short: Joe B. wound up retiring, of his own volition, a little over a year later. And the last few times we’ve seen one another, we’ve gotten along rather famously. Time and distance, you understand.
Today there’s another guy from Maysville, Ky., who could wind up bringing down the current Kentucky coach. His name is Chris Lofton, and he’s the best shooter in college basketball. He plays at Tennessee because he wasn’t recruited by the Big Blue, despite having led Mason County to the state championship on UK’s own hallowed floor.
Maysville is 64 miles from Lexington, and it used to be as solid a Big Blue bastion as any in the commonwealth. (I know because my family numbered itself as the only Louisville fans in town, my dad having graduated from U of L’s dental school.) But Tubby Smith’s failure to recruit Lofton, and Lofton’s subsequent rise in Knoxville, has left more than a few Maysvillians wearing the once-hated orange. And now, with Kentucky having lost nine games on the heels of last season’s 13 losses, the pressure is on Smith as never before.
And I hate this. I have more respect for Smith as a man than any college coach I’ve ever known, and I still believe he’s one of the best tacticians working. That said, there’s no excuse for Kentucky ever lacking talent (which it clearly does), and there’s no excuse for not offering Lofton a scholarship. He’s a terrific young man who would have energized a fading UK program the same way he has galvanized the Vols.
On Monday, Kentucky AD Mitch Barnhart released a statement expressing his disappointment with the Wildcats’ season and stopping far short of any vote of confidence in Smith. On Tuesday, Lofton led Tennessee to an upset of Florida, the team that has usurped Kentucky’s spot atop the SEC.
I’ve always been the holdout who believed, despite ample rumors to the contrary, Smith wasn’t leaving Kentucky for any other job anywhere, but now I don’t know. When the AD can’t publicly support the basketball coach, is it time for the coach to go?
And if Tubby departs, won’t Lofton — a Maysville guy, of all things — be remembered as the player who opened the door?
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