Fire Tubby?

Just in case you new readers didn’t clue in on how we do things around here. Let me spell it out for you.

WE. DID. NOT. WANT. TO. FIRE. TUBBY.

This is not a new development, by the way. The webmaster bought firetubby.com after the 2005 NCAA Regional Finals loss. He talks about why he did it, and the aim of this site, in this About page.

Oh, we’ve been frustrated at times with the coach and the results. But in my previous post below, you can see how I feel about Tubby. Webmaster will be along shortly to sum up his experiences.

All in all, this is a pro-UK and pro-Tubby site. Has been, always will be. Anybody who believes otherwise is illiterate, or fell under the old adage of “judging a book by its cover.” Or, specifically, “judging a website by its domain name.”

Also, thank you webmaster, for letting me into this insane place. I’ll see you on the other side.

And for you regular readers, thank you for coming back here again and again and actually arguing with us. It means a lot to us that you took time out of your day to read my crappy writing and then to cut-and-paste that “Tubby Smith is the 1st Kentucky Coach” list into the comments.

In the comments for webby’s pictorial summation of inbounds violation, there was somebody rattling about how we got 20 wins on “cupcakes” in our non-conference schedule. That’s absurd thinking. When I wrote my Safety Dance article, I mentioned that our RPI and strength of schedule was at the top of the rankings, despite our losses. I didn’t mention our non-conference schedule, because, honestly, I thought we Kentuckian “all-knowing basketball fans” understood that the RPI factors a strong non-conference schedule as a benefit.

But since there are evidently Kentucky fans who have lost their grip on the game, let me quote JL Blue from his latest column:

To wit, among the UK non-conference opponents who either made the field, finished atop their conference’s regular season or competed in the conference finals are:

* Miami (OH) - Regular season #2 MAC, NCAA Tourney as Conf. tourney champ
* UMass - Regular season champ (tie), at-large possible
* EKU - NCAA Tourney as OVC champ
* Santa Clara - WCC #2, lost to Gonzaga in conf. finals
* College of Charleston - Lost to Winthrop in conf. finals
* Houston - Lost to Memphis in conf. finals
* Miss. Valley State - Lost to Jackson St. in conf. finals

Take a look. EVERY SINGLE non-major conference, non-conference foe either played for a chance to make the NCAA Tourney or made the NCAA Tourney.

There are no deserts on this tray. So please, when you rattle off reasons about why Ten Loss Tubby should be fired, leave the “20 wins because of cupcakes in 2006-07″ lie out of it. I think you have plenty of other reasons and excuses to use.

Many Thanks to FireRich.com’s own Hefty Lefty for the screencap.

The Wildcat fanbase is aflame after certain “fans” decided to boo Sheray when he entered the game. The overall reaction from the media outlets & teh Interwebs has been negative. The post-game call-in show for Lexington’s 630 AM WLAP started with the commentator assessment with the fans: A grade of “A” for most of the game, until the booing, in which the grade dropped to a “D”. John Clay called the boo-ers “classless” in his blog. Jerry Tipton, who’s been accused of being a Tubby poo-poo-er, played it straight in his Notes column. A Sea of Blue calls the incident “Boo-gate” and remarks on the team’s reaction from Matt May’s Cats Pause piece. Kentucky Sports Radio addressed the issue in their post-game comments section, where it took all of two posts to spin the booing into Tubby’s fault.

You can tell which side of the fence I fall on.

This is the latest example of the biggest problem of the Kentucky Wildcat basketball program: the fans. The national media broadcast teams all allude to the problem. During today’s broadcast, Clark Kellogg said that Kentucky would be having a great season to anyone other than our fans. How many times have we heard that over the years? Doesn’t that indicate a problem with our priorities as fans?

Just because we expect excellence doesn’t mean we have to throw ourselves on the ground screaming like two-year-olds when we don’t win.

In the future I’ll write a column about how we UK fans can be prideful about our program without being spoiled-rotten brats about it. Until then, feel free to criticize honestly the play of our UK Players and Coaches on call-in shows. Talk about how we don’t protect the ball, how we play “ugly” basketball, how our juniors and seniors need to pick up their output. Criticize the game.

But when you get into Rupp — where we have recruits and national television — you back your team and your players. You get on board with the players on the court. The players NEED you to scream after every blown call, to drum up some support during an opponent’s run, to rock the rafters after our big plays. Otherwise, as a poster named “Sheray Thomas” put on the KSR thread: “dont boo us it just makes us not care about the fans anymore”

UK Basketball is not a stage play; you are not there to be entertained. You are there to be part of the team. Otherwise, you are being the malcontent player that poisons the team. We already had Team Turmoil last year; we don’t need it again this year.

Update: Saw that Tipton posted about the boos in his H-L Notes column, so I edited my story to reflect that.