What If UK Hadn't Fired Billy Gillispie?

Originally Published: April 20, 2010

Time to play the "What if?" game

By Eamonn Brennan
ESPN.com
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The 2009-10 college basketball season is behind us. We're in the process of figuring out which underclassmen will return to school, which will stick in the NBA draft and where the remaining crop of big-time recruits will play their potentially short college careers.

But before we bury the 2009-10 season into the annals of history, let's drag through it once more and comb for the best historical hypotheticals -- or what-ifs, if you prefer.

With apologies to ESPN.com's Bill Simmons, here are a few of the biggest what-ifs of 2009-10. What if Dewey did defeat Truman? Let's find out, college hoops-style:

What if Kentucky didn't fire Billy Gillispie?

Kentucky's decision to fire Gillispie in March 2009 qualifies as the biggest moment of the 2009 offseason. Say UK decides to give Gillispie another year to straighten things out. While Billy Clyde tries to get his life on track, Memphis coach John Calipari stays with the Tigers and takes the Derrick Rose-related sanctions on the chin or, fearing NCAA penalties, leaves to fulfill his NBA dreams yet again.

The Wildcats don't land DeMarcus Cousins or Eric Bledsoe, instead getting the solid but unspectacular recruiting class Gillispie put together before his dismissal. With Patrick Patterson, the Cats maybe make the NCAA tournament; if not, Kentucky goes looking for its coach this year.

If he chooses the Memphis route, Calipari is still a viable candidate but not nearly as viable as before the Rose eligibility fracas. There's a reason Calipari wasn't hired over Gillispie before any of this started, and some Kentucky boosters don't want to sink their money into a guy coming off an eligibility incident, direct implication or not. Eventually, UK goes in a different direction, and the Calipari era is over before it begins.

Before that, though, John Wall eschews Big Blue Country and recently penalized Memphis. Instead, he follows his AAU coach, Dwon Clifton, who was hired by Scott Drew during Wall's recruitment, to Baylor. (For more John Wall what-ifs, read this fun story from SB Nation's Andrew Sharp.)

Wall's arrival gives the Bears a head-shakingly disgusting starting five of Wall, Tweety Carter, LaceDarius Dunn (both of whom see so many Wall-created open looks that they can barely believe it) Quincy Acy and Ekpe Udoh. By midseason, the Baylor Bears are a legitimate threat to unseat Kansas at the top of the Big 12 and enter the NCAA tournament as a No. 1 or No. 2 seed. If they play Duke, they probably don't lose. Drew's career leaps into the stratosphere, not that it hasn't already. Tennessee wins the SEC, which has a down year almost as bad as the Pac-10's. All because Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart decided that Gillispie deserved a fourth year to try to stem the school's sudden proclivity for the NIT. How compassionate.

That "what-if" story sucked!!!! If Billy Clyde had stayed 1. PP would not have come back, 2. Orton would have been the most dominant Big Man in UK history, 3. John Hood would have stepped up and done things not seen by a white guy since Rex Chapman, 4. Liggins would have left school mid summer and ended up playing pro-ball in china, 5. Miller averages 30 pts a game 6. Wall & Cousins go to UNC but get injured in a pick up game before season (both still turn pro at end up season and never actually play a game in tar heel uniform) 7.Ramon Harris & Perry Stevenson lead the Big Blue into the NCAA tourney where the CATS make it to the final four and Billy Clyde signs 10 year contract.
LAST but not least Coach Cal beats UK in the final four and signs mega deal to coach the NETS.

I read this story this AM on insider. Decided it was crap.

UK would've played UNC in the NIT.