Calipari reignites Kentucky fans' passion

Calipari reignites Kentucky fans' passion
http://www.ajc.com/sports/uga/calipari-reignites-kentucky-fans-270913.html?cxtype=rss_news_128746

By Jennifer Smith

For the AJC

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- The sky hasn’t been as blue over Kentucky during the past few basketball seasons.

With the team failing last season to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time in nearly two decades, sports talk-radio hosts were making the transition to radio psychologists.

“There were fans who had this tone in their voices like they believed there was no hope, that it would never, ever get back to where it was,” said Dick Gabriel, a sports talk-show host in Lexington who has covered Kentucky for nearly 35 years.

The Kentucky teams that had advanced to three consecutive national championship games, winning two in the mid- and late-1990s, seemed like distant memories of Big Blue past.

Slowly, Kentucky faded from an annual national contender to a nobody, falling out of the Associated Press Top 25 for the first time since 1990. It no longer was at its once-comfortable spot atop the SEC.

“Kentucky fans had to square up to the fact that their program wasn’t really relevant,” Gabriel said.

It certainly made the sky seem less blue.

“Right or wrong, basketball is what Kentucky people ... hang our hat on,” said Carol Behr, long-time manager of a bookstore near campus. “There have been some years here lately where there’s been nothing to hang our hats on.”

Enter John Calipari. Enter blue skies. Enter Kentucky at 15-0, heading into Saturday's game against Georgia.

In less than nine months, Calipari has taken an NIT team and turned it into an undefeated, third-ranked team in the nation. Kentucky’s start is its best since the 1969-70 season.

The former Memphis coach brought in the country’s top recruiting class, headlined by freshman phenom John Wall, who graces the cover of Sports Illustrated this week.

As promised in his more than 15-minute speech to the 23,500 fans who packed Rupp Arena for the first practice of the season, Calipari has put Kentucky “back to the rightful place atop the mountain.”

Cats fans aren’t needing talk-show hosts to play shrinks anymore.

“They’re back to their swagger, their arrogance,” Gabriel explained, “their chests are all puffed up again.”

Tom Leach, radio play-by-play announcer for Kentucky, said the first time he realized that the Cats were back was when he looked around Rupp Arena after a blowout victory and saw that early 10,000 people had stuck around to hear Calipari’s comments after the game.

“The fun is back,” Leach said. “It wasn’t a lot of fun the last couple of years, but now the fun is definitely back.”

That “fun” comes in many forms. It came for the occupants of the more than 400 tents who waited for nearly a week in the rain and frigid temperatures to get tickets to the first basketball practice. In less than 40 minutes, the more than 23,000 tickets were gobbled up by fans hungry for a new season to begin.

It has meant thousands making daily stops at Calipari’s paid Web site and hanging on his every Tweet.

When Kentucky defeated Drexel on Dec. 21 and became the first team in NCAA men’s basketball history to reach 2,000 victories, it created merchandise mania.

Black “UK2K” T-shirts the players donned after the game became the must-have gift for every blue Christmas.

“We keep selling out,” said Behr, the bookstore manager. She said her store and Web site have sold more than 10,000 of them.

Behind that shirt, the store had its best December sales in history.

The same shirt also was a hot seller at the competing University Bookstore down the street, across from Memorial Coliseum.

“It’s much like the level of T-shirts being sold after a national championship,” said manager Sally Wiatrowksi.

Both said they are planning in their respective stores for a Kentucky trip to the Final Four.

“The fans are so excited,” Wiatrowski said. “They feel like the program is back, back where it should be.”