As a coach and a salesman, don't sell Rick Pitino short

Sporting News, The, March 17, 1997 by Lonnie Wheeler

Maybe, for a team with so much turnover, the 'Cats were overscheduled, especially early. The next game, for instance, was in the Great Alaska Shootout against Syracuse, the other finalist in the 1996 NCAA championship game.

So Pitino took a deep breath and started Mohammed. When he took Mohammed out, he put in Magloire. In 28 minutes, the freshman had 16 points and eight rebounds. With the big guys lurking down low--and lurking so unbelievably well--Mercer and Anderson, et al., were able to bring their athletic ability to bear on both ends of the floor. Syracuse was a spectator. "They have a chance to be as good as last year," said Jim Boeheim, the Syracuse coach. Clemson was ancient history.

For the next month, there wasn't a hotter, better team in the nation. Kentucky beat the College of Charleston by 27 to win the Alaska Shootout, with Mercer receiving the Most Valuable Player trophy that should have gone to Anderson. "Now I feel terrific about our basketball team," said Pitino, who two weeks earlier had felt quite the opposite. "It's been astonishing." Mercer scored 30 as Kentucky beat Purdue by 14. Anderson, whose game is both creative and complete (there isn't a more entertaining player in college basketball), scored 23 in the first half as Kentucky beat Indiana by 34. Notre Dame fell by 24, Georgia Tech by 29, Louisville by 20, Tennessee by 34. Even Pitino--most of all, Pitino--was incredulous that Kentucky's margins of victory were the equal of last year's. Mercer was a regular on the SportsCenter highlight clips, usually dunking on a lob from Anderson. Anderson was on his way to being selected by a Chicago Tribune sportswriter as the top player in the country over the first half of the season.

The 'Cats had won 12 consecutive games when Mississippi State visited Rupp Arena on January 7. The game started much like the previous 11, Kentucky dominating from the opening tip with ubiquitous full-court pressure. The lead reached 10 within minutes, as it so often had, but this time an odd thing happened: It didn't expand. Midway through the second half, Mississippi State began to score consistently on floor-length passes over the press. When it happened twice in a row, a smattering of boos could be heard from a loud few in the vast Kentucky crowd, their expectations apparently having been raised to unreasonable proportions. The unprecedented reaction caught the Kentucky players off guard and put them on at the same time, stimulating a 22-1 run that led to yet another in the string of overwhelming victories, this one by 29.

Circumstances conspired to end the streak two games later at Mississippi. One of the circumstances was that Mississippi was an emerging team with a chance to break into the Top 25 for the first time if it could upend the defending national champions. The other was that Anderson had strained his back in the most recent blowout against Canisius. With Anderson playing 10 ineffectual minutes, Kentucky lost its first conference game in a couple of years, 73-69.