Why-do-we-suck-at-rupp?

[Sudden Impact]

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.

ditto

 

[VolsRule]

UK refs.

 

[cotton]

I'm sure there are plenty of Cat fans who grew up watching them beat us in football...then the same nasty shock.

They must have grown up in the 50s, when Kentucky was 6-3-1 against us and 2-2-1 in Knoxville. UK had 2 wins against UT in the 80s, 2 in the 70s, 2 wins and a tie in the 60s, a tie and a win in the 30s, and none in the 40s, 90s, or 00s.

 

[Slov]

I do remember UK losing to some pretty pitiful UT teams at our home court a few times.

I go with the three games in 6 days theory. No one for UT seemed to have it all together offensively. Lofton got some points, but the last six were only to save face.

 

[jsc1973]

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.

He would have had an off-season in '78, because the cupboard was bare, but not the Houstonesque season that we ended up having that year.

The five years after that were probably, to this day, the high-water mark of UT men's basketball. If Mears could have recruited as well as Don DeVoe did, and I have no doubt he would have done much better, the program probably would have taken off then. Eventually Mears would have retired and passed the program off to a hand-picked successor, and the names Houston, O'Neill, Green and Peterson would have never meant anything to a UT hoops fan. Also, teams like Ohio U., Fordham, UA-Anchorage, Arkansas-Little Rock and Western Carolina would just be cupcake wins from the early 1990s in the Vols' record book.