Tubby Smith (official thread)

[OSUBasketballJunkie]

Cincy

6/8/06

Frustrated fans go public

But student paper refuses to run group's anti-Coach Smith ad

BY C. RAY HALL | THE (LOUISVILLE) COURIER-JOURNAL

Richard Cheeks and some like-minded University of Kentucky basketball fans are so distressed that they tried to buy a full-age ad in the UK student paper to air their grievances with coach Tubby Smith.

Cheeks, a Jessamine County engineer and lawyer with two degrees from UK, is an adjunct professor in civil engineering at his alma mater. He's also something you've probably never heard of: a forensic engineer.

Which means: "I investigate foundation failures, slope failures, ground-water problems, and then testify in court."

Cheeks thinks he has spotted enough cracks in the UK basketball foundation to incite him, and others, to speak out.

"There's a group of us - it's hard to say how many, but maybe 500 to a thousand of us - who believe that Tubby Smith is not good for the UK basketball program," he said Thursday.

"We see the program in decline. ... We don't want it to decline the way the Louisville program did in the latter years when Denny Crum was there. We don't want it to decline to the point that the North Carolina program did when Matt Doherty was there.

"So we decided that we were going to begin to get our message out."
Cheeks and a group called Concerned Fans For UK Basketball sought to buy a $1,700 ad in the Kentucky Kernel.

The paper turned down the ad, inspiring Cheeks to alert the media, whose coverage inspired fans to give Cheeks an earful.

One, said Cheeks, is a longtime UK fan from Paris who called "to say he's had similar feelings and he's glad to hear someone speaking up."
Others were less friendly.

"I've gotten a lot of e-mail in the last 24 hours," he said. "Frankly, most of the e-mail has been very ugly. One just had three words: racist Nazi pig. And some of them are threatening."

Cheeks said he has no regrets about going public: "I won't live in fear," he said.

He couldn't get his ad into the Kernel, but he said an editor there has asked him to write an opinion piece for the UK paper.

Smith could not be reached for comment.

UK basketball spokesman Scott Stricklin said: "No one wants Kentucky basketball to be successful as much as Tubby Smith does. Being that he's one of the nation's winningest coaches, he pretty much knows what it takes to win championships, because he's done it here.

"We have a passionate fan base. Any time you have a group of passionate fans, it's not unusual to provoke a minority to react over a season that's not as good as we might have all wanted it to be.

"But that group certainly doesn't represent the vast majority of Wildcat fans who we hear from on a daily basis who support Coach Smith."

[coastalbuck]

IMHO, he's done a hell of a job to last this long there. I'm surprized they didn't run him out of Lexington when his son was there.

[OH10]

Tubby Smith is one of, if not the best, coaches in America. His problem is that he's not like Coach K or John Calipari. He can't bring in these pre-madonna high school kids and have the patience for their egos. He brought in that class of Crawford, Randolph and Rondo, but the kids wouldn't listen and learn. Crawford, in particular, has had a constant chip on his shoulder since the day he walked into campus because Tubby is not going to treat these kids with superstar status like most people do for them in their everyday lives.

Tubby is like Bobby Knight Lite. He's a disciplinarian and a teacher. He's not a hothead like Knight, but he's also not going to take anyone's crap.

[stxbuck]

Tubby Smith is a great coach, and certainly deserves a lot of slack. That said, recruiting has been a problem for him at UK-maybe it is the prima dona thing, maybe it is something else. He has done an amazing job w/ the talent he has had at his disposal, which is certainly a lot less than at other elite level hoops schools.

[coastalbuck]

I agree fully with the coaching stuff. He has done an amazing job. But, to stay at UK, he better be 1 or 2 in the SEC EVERY year, play in the final SEC tourney game, and be seeded no worse than a 4 in the NCAA's. Anything less won't be good enough.

[OH10]

Originally Posted by coastalbuck

I agree fully with the coaching stuff. He has done an amazing job. But, to stay at UK, he better be 1 or 2 in the SEC EVERY year, play in the final SEC tourney game, and be seeded no worse than a 4 in the NCAA's. Anything less won't be good enough.

Last year was the first year he didn't win the SEC title, and the first year under Tubby where they were less than a 2 seed in the tournament - I believe.

[OSUBasketballJunkie]

Not to shabby.....

Smith has led Kentucky to one national championship, five SEC crowns and five SEC Tournament titles, with six Sweet 16 finishes in his eight seasons.

Expectations are sky high in Kentucky......

Kentucky

1997-98 35-4 (NCAA Champ)
1998-99 28-9 (NCAA 8)
1999-00 23-10 (NCAA 32)
2000-01 24-10 (NCAA 16)
2001-02 22-10 (NCAA 16)
2002-03 32-4 (NCAA 8)
2003-04 27-5 (NCAA 32)
2004-05 28-6 (NCAA 8)
2005-06 22-13 (NCAA 32)

Total (9 years) 241-71 (.772)

[Jaxbuck]

Originally Posted by StadiumDorm

Tubby Smith is one of, if not the best, coaches in America. His problem is that he's not like Coach K or John Calipari. .......

I'm from SW Ohio, anyone from there can tell you that even in this day and age don't discount the bias he faces (unspoken as it may be) due to being black. Don't want to turn this into a train wreck thread, I am white for the record, but it at least needs to be acknowledged in any discussion about Tubby Smith catching heat. I don't know the numbers off the top of my head but my initial reaction would be that there are no on the court reasons to be down on Smith. He's won championships and kept UK at the top for a long time now or so it seems to me being a casual bball fan.