The turning point: UK 79, Vandy 73
By Travis
Saturday’s double-overtime victory against No. 13 Vanderbilt was more than just Kentucky’s first meaningful win of the Billy Gillispie era. It was more than just a win over a ranked opponent.
Hopefully it turns out to be more than just one of a handful of wins for the Wildcats this season. More than a few have already speculated that maybe this will be the turning point for this so-far disappointing UK team.
And that’s what I choose to believe. We’ve been waiting for a seminal moment. There’s bound to be one, eventually, and why not Saturday?
There’s the fact that it’s the best the Cats have played all season and for long stretches, even despite some of the same bone-headed miscues. They threw away a 16-point lead in regulation — one that was four points with less than a minute — and were burned in the final 20 seconds in both regulation and the first overtime.
They lost Derrick Jasper — again — but still overcame adversity. The defense — even in spite of some terrible breakdowns on backdoor cuts and Shan Foster’s unconcious shooting — was at its best this season.
Joe Crawford, a player I’d almost written off because of his apparent unwillingness to give 100 percent on defense, was terrific. I’d nearly filed him in my least favorite Cats category along with Rodrick Rhodes, Antoine Walker, Antwain Barbour and Marvin Stone. But he played inspired and unselfishly on Saturday. Even though Foster made shot after shot in Crawford’s face, Joe was all up on Foster on nearly every shot. It wasn’t for lack of effort and wasn’t for lack of execution. Foster’s jsut a really good player who made really tough shots.
More than anything, this feels like a signature win because of the effort the Cats gave and the intensity with which they played — an intensity that seemed to both fuel the crowd and feed UK’s performance.
I spent five years in Lexington and attended about 80 percent of the home games and virtually all the major games from the fall of 1998 through the spring of 2003. I can remember four games that elicited the kind of emotion on display Saturday: 1998 vs. Maryland, Traitor Rick’s return to Rupp and two Florida games.
So, for all the criticism UK fans have received all season for not accepting mediocrity (or worse), they’ve still packed a 24,000-seat arena and still cheered the Cats when given something to cheer about. I saw 20,000+ show up for a game against an also-ran (Florida International) on New Year’s Eve when the best football team in the school’s last 30 years was playing a bowl game on the same day. Florida would be lucky to get 7,000 under similar circumstances.
UK basketball is still alive and kicking. And hopefully Saturday will be a defining moment in turning the tide toward reclaiming its rightful place in college basketball.