Sepia Saturday
is
Big Blue Saturday in Kentucky
There is an amazing situation going on in Ky or rather New Orleans this weekend.
Alan's theme is work.
Well these are just basketball games but believe me there is a lot of work going on here.
From the players to the coaches.
Sorry this is all I can think about as we wait for this history making Final Four game tonight.
Just a little history
Rupp coached the
University of Kentucky men's basketball
team from 1930 to 1972. There, he gained the nicknames, "Baron of the
Bluegrass, and "The Man in the Brown Suit". Rupp's Wildcat teams won
four
NCAA championships (
1948,
1949,
1951,
1958), one
National Invitation Tournament title in 1946, appeared in 20 NCAA tournaments, had six NCAA
Final Four appearances, won five
Sugar Bowl tournament championships, captured 27
Southeastern Conference regular season titles, and won 13
Southeastern Conference tournaments. Rupp's Kentucky teams also finished ranked #1 on six occasions in the final
Associated Press college basketball poll and four times in the
United Press International (Coaches) poll. In addition, Rupp's 1966 Kentucky squad (nicknamed "Rupp's Runts") finished runner-up in the
NCAA tournament and Rupp's 1947 Wildcats finished runner-up in the
National Invitation Tournament. Further, Rupp's 1933 and 1954 Kentucky squads were also awarded the Helms National Championship.
In his 41 seasons as UK coach, Rupp coached 32 All-Americans, chosen
50 times, 52 All-SEC players, chosen 91 times, 44 NBA Draft Picks, 2
National Players-of-the-Year, 7 Olympic Gold Medalists, and 4
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame
members. He was a 4-time National Coach-of-the-Year award winner, and a
7-time Conference Coach-of-the-Year award winner. Rupp was inducted
into the
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame,
College Basketball Hall of Fame, Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame, Kansas Athletic Hall of Fame, University of Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame, and
Helms Athletic Foundation Hall of Fame. Further, since 1972, the
Adolph Rupp Trophy,
considered one of the nation's premier basketball awards, has been
given by the Commonwealth Athletic Club to the top men's college
basketball player. In addition, the University of Kentucky retired a
jersey in his honor in the rafters of
Rupp Arena, a 23,500-seat arena named after him, dedicated in 1976.
[5]
Rupp was forced into retirement in March of 1972, at the age of 70.
At the time, this was the mandatory retirement age for all University of
Kentucky employees.
John Calipari (born February 10, 1959) is an American
basketball coach. Since April 2009, he has been the men's head coach at the
University of Kentucky.
Calipari is the former head coach of the
University of Memphis Tigers, the
University of Massachusetts Minutemen, and the
National Basketball Association's
New Jersey Nets.
He is the only coach to direct three different colleges to a No. 1 seed
in the NCAA Tournament, although two of those appearances (1996 at
UMass and 2008 at Memphis) have been officially vacated by the
NCAA.
Calipari is also one of only two coaches to direct three different
schools to a Final Four (1996- UMass, 2008- Memphis, 2011, 2012-
Kentucky), with the UMass and Memphis appearances later being vacated by
the NCAA. As a result, he is the only head coach to have a Final Four
appearance vacated at more than one school, although Calipari himself
was not personally implicated by the NCAA in either case.
[1]
As a college coach, Calipari has 18 20-win seasons (17 official), 8
30-win seasons (7 official), and has been named National Coach of the
Year 3 times.
Rick Pitino (born September 18, 1952)
[1] is an American
basketball coach. Since 2001, he has been the head coach at the
University of Louisville. He has also served as head coach at
Boston University,
Providence College and the
University of Kentucky, leading that program to the
NCAA championship in
1996. He has coached on the professional level for the
NBA's
New York Knicks and
Boston Celtics with mixed results.
Pitino holds the distinction of being the only men's coach in NCAA
history to lead three different schools (Providence, Kentucky, and
Louisville) to a Final Four. (
John Calipari
did the same, but two of his Final Four appearances were later vacated
by the NCAA.) Pitino is also only one of three coaches ever to take his
school to the Final Four in four separate decades. In addition, Pitino
has achieved a measure of success as an author and a motivational
speaker.
All info courtesy of Wikipedia.
For more Sepia Saturday to
here
Will be off the radar for the next two days.
Will be back to visit others later.
WooHoo
Go Cats Go
We are all blue crazy and we know it.
Whom ever wins tonight it is still
the state of Kentucky in the finals.
Can't beat that.
