Backtime Dateline: Rupp Arena

There are better venues for college basketball: Allen Fieldhouse and Cameron Indoor come to mind. But for imagery, color, and pure fanaticism, it's the Big Blue Nation at Rupp Arena hands down.

Twenty thousand Kentucky fans go to the game, and half of them stay to hear Coach Calipari do the radio postgame show afterward.

And unlike the aforementioned basketball museums, Rupp is still a multi-purpose facility. Last night I wheeled into Lexington and the area was swamped because of the Rascal Flatts concert.

So after I finished my prep for the game I went over and checked out the teardown at Rupp, they only had 16 hours to get the house reset for hoops.

I wonder if they have hockey games here because they had one for Saturday's Auburn-Kentucky game, without the ice. It was a chippy foul-fest that featured a couple of technical fouls, some cheap shots, and one ejection.

But Kentucky kept their composure and what once looked like a lost season is turning into a very good one. The Wildcats now have won 5 straight to go to 8-2 in the SEC, and are headed to Gainesville for the conference game of the year Tuesday against Florida.

Kickin' It in the L-E-X

This is always a cool trip. Football has taken over the south, but in a couple of states basketball is still king.

I sometimes wonder about that. Why are some states "football" and some states "basketball?" I'm not sure I get it. Why is Ohio a football state and Kentucky a basketball state? Why is North Carolina a basketball state, while South Carolina's a football state?

Whatever the reason, I'm glad that Lexington is basketball-crazy and that it always will be.

When you're sitting in Rupp Arena, it's not quite as nostalgic or awesome as Allen Fieldhouse or Cameron Indoor Stadium. But the fanaticism is what makes the experience so memorable. Rupp Arena is connected to a hotel which is connected to a mall and food court. And everyone wears blue. It's hard to do the scene justice.

About 20,000 (an early-arriving crowd) go to the game and about half of them stay after the game for John Calipari's postgame radio interview. They are here for the action, not the party (for the most part) and the Big Blue Nation is what makes makes the event more memorable than the venue.

Of course I can't sponge in the experience since I'm locked in away from the action. But there are worse views.

Some things fit right...

...Others don't.

Kentucky fired Coach Gillispie today. And most think it wasn't an X&O or W&L issue. It's because he wasn't the right "ambassador" for the blue-blood Wildcat nation.

Billy Clyde Gillispie is 49 years old, and spent most of that time in small towns and isolated cities in Texas. He grew up in Graford, pop. 494, and was part of a high school graduating class of 20.

After six years as Bill Self's main assistant at Tulsa and Illinois, Gilliespie took the UTEP job. Year one: 6-24. Year two: WAC champs.

For those who think BCG lacks interpersonal skills because of a couple of dismissive TV interviews, the late great coach Don Haskins said just a couple of years ago, "If I had a recruiter like Billy Gillispie on my staff, I'd coach in a wheelchair."

Gillispie went to Texas A&M to turn around a team that was 0-16 in the Big 12. Year one: 8-8. Year two: NCAAs. Year three: Sweet 16.

College Station is where the suit fit the best. A small-town Texas guy had built up tons of relationships in the Lone Star state, and he was the savior of Aggie basketball. As a single guy, he could sit on a barstool and not be harassed.

Kentucky, after the departure of Tubby Smith, and a couple of fiascos trying to bring in someone bigger, reached down to Texas A&M and grabbed a can't-miss-rising-star head coach.

But they didn't think about whether the blue suit would fit. They didn't see the 2-hour late-season practices that surely wore his team down come tournament time. They didn't expect the curt treatment of the media. They didn't imagine that he wouldn't embrace the rabid fan base.

I was at Coach G's last two games this week: at Creighton and at Notre Dame. His team was in good spirits, they practiced loose and with lots of energy. They hustled their asses off. If they were playing for a lame-duck coach, you couldn't see it on the floor.

It's hard to call Gillispie's two-year term at Kentucky a failure. More like an incomplete, since the plug was pulled before the term was up. Now, where does Kentucky go from here?

It's got to be back to Billy Donovan. Coach D turned down Kentucky during his 2007 NCAA Championship run at Florida. After back-to-back titles, he may be bored with his back-to-back NIT appearances. Oh yeah, and he could be a little miffed that Florida only sold out one of their 20 home games.

If the former Kentucky assistant for Rick Pitino says "no thanks" to Kentucky again, the Wildcats will be back where they started, looking for the right "fit".