Tubby Smith resigns, taking Minnesota job

[Soul Daddy]

tup,

That really is the among the funnier fanboy rumors I've ever heard. But now I hope Hell freezes over for two reasons.

[LesJ]

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I think, additionally, that you were way off in your 1980's assertion. Kentucky had several excellent seasons in the 1980's and were obviously considered one of the elite programs during that decade.

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Meh, whatever. Your mother's an astronaut. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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I don't really know how to counter that. You win.
Les

[Soul Daddy]

A couple of supportive pieces from the most prominent KY columnists:

Pat Forde of ESPN.com
Rick Bozich of Louisville's Courier-Journal

[TruFloridaGator]

I would be flabbergasted if Billy D ever went to UK. He's good friends with Tubby & is witness to the pressure. His wife has mentioned never, ever wanting to move to Lexington. He wins another NC or keeps winning at this pace & we will name the court after him. He's building his own legacy at UF without the insane amount of pressure. I see 0 reasons for him to leave.

[mmbt0ne]

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He's building his own legacy at UF without the insane amount of pressure.

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Easy to say when you just won the national championship and are still alive in the tourney.

[TruFloridaGator]

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He's building his own legacy at UF without the insane amount of pressure.

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Easy to say when you just won the national championship and are still alive in the tourney.

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He'd have to do pretty bad for a long time to pick up a lot of pressure. I don't see that happening with recruiting only getting better. I'm not saying there won't be pressure but not UK type pressure.

[bills217]

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I was always kind of indifferent to UK, but after reading this thread, I have moved to an individual who dislikes UK.

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What has turned you against them? Other than bills, the UK fans in this thread have come across as relatively reasonable, in my biased opinion.

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bills,
Seems to represent a large majority of UK fans. Also stuff like Tom Izzo is too good for UK irked me. FWIW you seem like a sane rational individual.

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Can someone point me to the part of this thread where I was unreasonable?

I said ahead of time that Riley/D'Antoni would be longshots, but I think they were at least worth mentioning. Riley played for Rupp. D'Antoni is from West Virginia and has been the subject of rumors surrounding the Kentucky job since well before today's events (although admittedly no more than rumors). The D'Antoni-flying-to-UK thing was mostly intended as a joke.

I will say that I think D'Antoni is a small possibility for a few reasons:

1) If he's not an idiot, D'Antoni probably realizes his success with the Suns depends largely on Steve Nash, who is old and injury-prone.
2) Coaches are hired to be fired in the NBA even moreso than in college - not much stability there. Can anyone tell me who the longest tenured coach in the East is?
3) In a vacuum, the Kentucky position is much more prestigious than the Suns position, and D'Antoni would stand to get a sizable pay raise at Kentucky.
4) If you are successful at Kentucky, you can stay as long as you want, retire here, never pay for anything for the rest of your life and generally be a god-like figure, as Rupp is and as Rick Pitino would have been had he not left for the Celtics and then Louisville (and he is anyway to many). That will never be true of the Phoenix Suns in all likelihood.

If this was the offseason I'd give it a much better chance of actually happening, but I don't see him leaving a Suns team with a title shot in mid-season.

If people think my expectations for the program are unreasonable, well, this is Kentucky. I grew up 30 minutes from Lexington, and my dad played here. We got no pro teams, and frankly there ain't a hell of a lot else to do - we live for UK basketball here. It's a part of the culture as much as horses or bourbon. How many of you have been to an SEC tourney, or to an NCAA site where Kentucky is playing?

If 20 wins and tourney appearances were good enough, the fan base would be happy, and Tubby would still be here.

But it's not, they're not, and he's not.

[bills217]

If I remember correctly, there was an Italian coach who left the NBA in midseason to become coach at Kentucky awhile back. Worked out pretty well.

[tuq]

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If I remember correctly, there was an Italian coach who left the NBA in midseason to become coach at Kentucky awhile back. Worked out pretty well.

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Paging Green Kool Aid, kidcolin, and zorbie. Green Kool Aid, kidcolin, and zorbie please report to the Tubby Smith thread. Thank You.

[bills217]

And frankly, Tubby Smith is vastly overrated as a coach, and it is blatantly obvious to anyone who watches UK on a regular basis, which probably 1 or 2 people in this thread have. I could go into specifics but it would be about 10,000 words long, and nobody wants to read that and almost none of you have watched UK anyway.

He's never been to a Final Four with players he recruited. Ever.

His accomplishments prior to Kentucky were taking Tulsa and UGA to the Sweet 16. Impressive but not incredible. He never would have been at UK if not for his ties to Pitino. Some even say Pitino more or less picked him to be his successor (with less-than-noble motives in mind). In Pitino's books, he has called Tubby lazy, and recounted an incident where Tubby called Pitino crying one weekend because he didn't want to recruit. This rings true with his tenure at UK.

Has everyone forgotten the Saul Smith Era? Big-time point guards were lined up to play at UK since we'd been to three straight title games and all and instead we get four years of Saul Smith and mediocrity. Followed by two good years after Saul leaves, with Tubby winning Coach of the Year both years, and then back to mediocrity.

Tubby is no dummy however. He has currently left the cupboard completely bare at UK. UK did not have an all-SEC player this season, and has not signed a Top 100 recruit for next season. Things look bleak for next year even if Red Auerbach comes back to life and coaches.

Tubby was due a $1.5M bonus on April 1st of this year for being here 10 years. The school gave it to him early (this much is fact, the degree of pre-arrangement of his departure is up for debate), he bolted rather than be fired after missing the tournament next season, and took tons and tons of dough from Minnesota which is just inexplicable to me, that they gave him that much. He is still one of the highest paid college coaches, if not the highest. At UK he made significantly more than (list of virtually all top basketball coaches here). If he didn't want expectations, then he should have requested a 75% pay cut.

So, yeah, Tubby's a hero. A real martyr.