TENNFOLD1974
Vol in Madison TN.
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2008
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1. Kentucky is arguably the best basketball program in college history.
2. We are an historically mediocre (at best) program. Most years we're just simply nowhere near as good as they are.
3. The home field/court/ice advantage is probably bigger in college basketball than any other sport.
Thus we hardly ever win up there. It seems fairly simple to me.
You have to admit, though, that if Mears wouldn't have had to retire because modern medicine was 11 years away from the breakthrough he needed, things with UK and UT may/would have turned out very differently.
Yeah, might have, except for that '78 NC team at UK. 79-82 were lean for UK, and LSU and Bama were the class of the SEC then, so yeah, definitely, if Mears had been around, they would have made some noise.
Then again, if Bear Bryant had stuck around at Kentucky....
There's also an actual rivalry between UK and UT in basketball, albeit a bit one-sided, but UK vs. anyone is pretty one-sided, historically speaking. Remember, UT owns more total victories over UK than any other school. It's a border war, as well. The Big Blue Nation gets motivated, even when their team is subpar, when the Big Orange roll into town. And you know the Cats were motivated; it's not every day that you get the #3 team in the country on your home floor.
In short, all the ingredients for the "trap game" were in place, and that's exactly what it was.