Five things on the Billy Gillispie press conference that just ended at Memorial:
- 1. You got the feeling this is a coach who knows his time is short. About this rumored meeting that took place with or among high UK officials this weekend, Gillispie answered that yes there was a meeting, but then quickly said that he has meetings all the time, with recruits, etc. He dodged the question about his future saying he only worried about things he can control. In other words, he can’t control whether he will be back as coach next year.
- 2. When Dave Dan Rieffer of WTVQ asked Gillispie if he had any reason to think he won’t back this year — phrased as, “You don’t have reason to think you won’t be back?” — Gillispie dodged that one, too, again saying he doesn’t worry about things he can’t control.
- 3. The past few press conferences Gillispie has been talking up his team for next year, how they’ve matured since the reality of not making the NCAA Tournament, etc. He again brought up how his team did not play any seniors this year, and that experience was a problem. (Never mind that Kansas lost seven players off its championship team and was playing in the second round of the NCAAs today.) He said he knew that the program had to get back to the elite level, and “I don’t think we’re far away from doing that.” Was he talking to us? Or was he talking to the UK administration?
- 4. Gillispie also dodged any questions about whether he would change things, or whether he had been asked to change his behavior or his perception of the job. “You’d have to ask someone else about that,” he said. When pressed on it, he repeated the same answer.
- 5. Asked if Monday might be his last game, Gillispie said, “I have no control over that.”
(funny, my anti-spam word was TOAST….hmmmm?)
Is there any chatter about a new coach? I don’t see BCG getting the boot unless UK has someone already committed.
Without that in place, I’d think BCG gets one more season.
Yep, Gillispie knows he is a short timer. It just was not a good marriage between the coach and the administration. Billy could be a good coach but he is too stubborn to change his approach and his attitude or even his style to adapt to our program. Best of luck to Billy Clyde, might the Arizona job would be a better fit for him.
Jerry, Why do you always make little stabs at Gillispie or the Kentucky program as you have done here with your note of Kansas making the tournament?? It can also be said that Self has a team made up completely of his own players and, that some of these players were a part of the NCAA championship team from last year.
Your continuing jabs only make you look like a hack.
Sorry, I did not mean to addresss Jerry….of course he is just as bad!! Your both hack journalists.
JPAttaway, hack references aside, I’m not sure the inexperienced argument flies when you start four juniors and a sophomore. As for the “not his own players” fact is Billy’s recruits were not able to beat out the juniors for a starting spot.
John, as always, interesting blog! Sounds to me as if something major is in the works. You know, no one has mentioned this point: perhaps we’d be doing Gillispie a favor by letting him go. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing, for UK or Coach G. He’s proven himself a capable coach before coming to UK. He might do better at a football school or somewhere out west.
I am tired of everyone saying wait until he gets his own players. He never waited at UTEP (2 years) and he never waited at A & M (3 years and gone). The majority of the team this year were “his players” and it did not improve over last years team nor over the course of the season.
I did not think he was a good hire to start with. Sometimes people (Mitch Barnhart in this case) make bad hires. You can try to get them to change and improve or make changes and move on. I don’t consider Kentucky basketball one of those programs where a coach can learn on the job.
Travis Ford, Jim Beilein, Tubby Smith, Bob Huggins, and whoever is the coach this week at Arizona do not have their own players and all made the NCAA and showed immprovement. He has had a chance to get his own players. College basketball does not require the numbers that college football does to institute a change in the program. I did not see a team that improved over the course of this season….instead it got worse….unless there are key injuries, that is the coach.
I also don’ think you have been a hack journalist….you and many others in the media have been more than fair to Billy G.
Why don’t you just quit adding fuel to the fire and let the chips fall where they may. It’s people like you (and Tipton), who report this junk and then try to read into the comments to put your own spin on it, that are the reason people are questioning Gillispies job. I’m really tired of the media making “news” where there never was any. By using words like “you get the feeling’ or “rumor has it” you are basically spreading these rumors even further. If you stick to the facts and concrete evidence instead of rumors, then you would be reporting news.
Also, I usually enjoy reading your stuff, but lately you sure do seem to have an agenda. That agenda looks to me like you’re intentionally trying to fan the flames of Gillispies demise. Just let it go. You’re better than that, I hope.
Honestly, BCG needs at least one more year. Next years team should be much improved with the additions of Hood, Orten, Tucker, Villarino & Pilgrim. And that is if UK doesn’t add another player to the mix.
I’ve seen on multiple boards people saying Pitino this and Pitino that. C’mon, he’s making a nice run this year, but he’s had 4……did you get that? 4 double-digit losing seasons in the 8 years he’s been there. Lets see, he’s been to the Final Four once before, then followed that up with a stellar 21-13 record the next season and a trip to the NIT! Oh, and another double-digit loss record the next season! Rediculous!
The funniest part is going to be watching these couch potato coaches jump back on the bandwagon once all this settles and the W’s start coming again.
And John, don’t even go there with Kansas! Bill Self had the 2nd best recruiting class in the country last year. Four players in the top 100, and another in the top 150. The guy is in his 6th season at Kansas, so yeah, they should be doing that! Seniors or not, he had loads of talent to work with.
Go Cats!
Ben, that is what COLUMNISTS do! They read comments, then give their take. Clay has an opinion and is paid to give it. Give up all this hack journalist crap.
Last I checked, the little Bio in the corner says “columnist” not “reporter”.
John, will you please let us know what Gillispie has done or said to your personally that has made you not like him? We seem to always read the little jabs here and there like there is something itching inside you, but you won’t let it out – be bold!
Personally, I don’t want a coach that comes in and says, “Okay, what do you want me to do?” I want someone that is a little gritty and says, “Here is what we are going to do. It’s my way or the highway.” If decisions are going to be made from someone other than the coach, why pay him the millions to do it?
Of course, you guys probably the best coaches in history were push-overs. Give me a break!
If they get rid of him, it better be because he has done something that is private that was horrible. If they do it because they don’t think he can coach, we are in for a long(er) ride of mediocrity.
John,
I have one players name in mind:
Sheron Collins
He is the differerence between us and KS. It is clear (since we are getting at least two guards and possibly another) that we know this to be the problem.
We were freaking 324th out of 330 in turnovers this season. This was the problem. Yes, BCG should have had a better PG, but how could you know that both Liggins and Galloway would never get it. Yes, we started Harris and Stevenson and Porter, all three of which are Juniors. If we start all 3 next year, then that means something. Hopefully these inexperienced ones (Harrelson, Liggins, Miller, Stevenson, and Pilgrim) will have a year under their belt next year.
I, for one, really hope BCG is back. If he doesn’t improve next year, then maybe fire him. Right now is ridiculous.
This article seems biased if you ask me. Way to once again portray Gillispie in a negative way. Hang out with Tipton much?
It’s just my opinion after having been at the press conference. I’m not saying that Gillispie is gone. I am saying that the feel I got from listening to him is that he knows the decision, if it has not already been made, could go against him.
Sharon Collins is 100% the difference between Kansas and UK this year.
Bottom line is UK’s guards struggle to handle the ball. Galloway and Liggins have been disappointing as first year point guards. I think everyone (including coach) expected a little more of them as far as being able to bring the ball up the floor and get into the offense under pressure without coughing it up. Really that has been our only major problem all year long, and if Kentucky had been left a player that handles the ball somewhere close to the level of Sharon Collins, we’d have been a top 4 seed in the tournament.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, we need to realize that comparing Bill Self’s 2008 recruiting class to Billy G’s class of the same year is comparing apples to oranges. When Billy G got to UK, about half the players from the class of 2008 were already verbally committed to other schools I’m not sure if I’m allowed to post links here, but just take a look at the rivals top 150 for 2010 right now for a similar looking list to what Gillispie had to work with when he first started (http://www.kentucky.rivals.com/viewrank.asp?ra_key=1909). The fact that Gillispie did get commitments from two top 50 players in Miller and Liggins anyway is very impressive to me (obviously you don’t feel the same way, but that is fine).
Bill Self, on the other hand, had the majority of his 2008 class already committed while Billy G was still living in Texas.
Honestly, the way fans and the media have been attacking coach Gillispie over the last month is irrational and embarrassing. I wish it were possible to have some sort of extended debate with you on the subject, because I am positive the cheap shots toward Gillispie are uncalled for, and I am very confident I could sway someone’s opinion on the subject if they were open to listening.
Either way, thanks for allowing me an outlet… even if it is just the comments section under your blog.
Barnhart is destroying this program.
Chris, point is none of this is good for UK. All of this speculation just makes the University look even worse than it already does. The hometown paper feeding that fire sure can’t help. Just when most people had stopped talking about UK “running off” Tubby, now everyone in the nation thinks that because we missed the NCAAs we’re gonna run off another one. The image of UK and its fans is not exactly at an all time high. Can you imagine the PR nightmare of firing a coach not even two years in? Nobody in their right mind would want the job after that.
Big picture, we would be a lot better off if Gillispie was allowed to his job as he see fit. For him to do that he needs absolute authority over the basketball program, and I don’t think he’s been given that. That’s my guess as to why we haven’t seen a signed contract yet.
Comparing a team that just won the championship like Kansas, who returned Collins, to this Kentucky team seems a little unfair. You don’t have to read deep to find out where you stand.
GIVE BILLY G A CHANCE!
I think the rhetoric on Billy is justified. I have never seen a coach at Kentucky so plainly out-coached in all my days. It’s not simply a matter of what players he has.. it’s a matter of how he motivates them and works with them. I agree that the coach should be left to coach the program as he see fits– micro-managing a program from the fan base or the administration isn’t good; however, the fans and administration have the right to expect results and I don’t think anyone was placing unreasonable expectations on him this year. Everyone has been simply looking for improvement, and that has not happened. Combine that with his demeanor and losing players– especially his own recruits– and I think this outpouring of pain is reasonable.
I WASN’T GOING TO REPLY TO THIS!! I WAS JUST READING!! UNTIL I READ BEN SAYING BILLY NEEDS TOTAL CONTROL OF THE PROGRAM!!!!!!!!!!! AND I ABOUT CHOKED TO DEATH ON MY GLASS OF TEA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ARE U SMOKING CRACK!!!!!!!!! IF U ARE CONTENT WITH A RUN OF THE MILL PROGRAM THATS ONE THING!!!! BUT THIS GUY HAS ALL THE POWER HE NEEDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I completely agree with #3
If you go by Ken Pomeroy, Kansas’ returning experience ranked 335th out of 344 Division I-basketball teams. And the Jayhawks won the Big 12. Does Kansas have more overall talent than Kentucky? Probably. But, to me, the experience argument doesn’t make up for a team that went 8-8 in a league so poor it placed three teams in the NCAA Tournament, none of which made it to the Sweet 16 and two of which were beaten in the first round. Lack of experience, on a team that started four juniors, doesn’t explain a March home-court loss to a dreadful Georgia team, and a near 20-point loss at South Carolina, when the Gamecocks also did not make the NCAA Tournament. Not saying that UK had enough talent and experience to win the SEC, but I’m not buying that lack of experience was the reason for the Cats’ collapse in conference play.
He said experience was a “problem”, not the reason they didn’t make the tournament.
It’s pretty simple, we have a point guard of Sherron Collins’ talent and we’re a top 20 team all year long. It has been made quite clear this year how important having a competent PG in college basketball is.
The little jabs here and there at Gillispie are great and all, but they carry no weight. Every team is different, every player fits differently, and every team has certain personality types that can help the team and can hurt them. It’s pointless to compare this team to Kansas just because it’s easy, but we can go all day on the difference between us and them.
I wish all the media would lay back and realize that this program would be worse off than Indiana is right now if Gillispie were ran out of here. Say what you want about his personality, his quirks, and how his teams work, but if you think getting rid of Gillispie is good for the betterment of this program I’m sorry but you could not be more wrong.
The problem is you are comparing Gillispie’s second year to perhaps the best coach in the entire country deep into his career. I think Self did a better job recruiting in the 2008 class than Gillispie did, but could we have honestly expected Gillispie to out-recruit the defending national champion with his first full recruiting class (keeping in mind only half the players were publicly open to be recruited, and even less were privately open).
Yes, Kansas was less experienced than us, but they returned talent/experience at the most important position. Collins and Aldrich both would have started for 98% of all college basketball teams last year. They just were in limited roles because Self (and Williams before him) have had that team consistently at the top for 10 years in a row.
Williams left Self 5 NBA players. Tubby left Gillispie 2 (assuming both Meeks and Crawford actually play at that level which is generous), and those 2 didn’t even play together because of Meeks’ injury.
Also you want to compare Gillispie to Self in a negative way, but you ignore Bill Self’s history with players deciding to leave. Also it happened fairly regular with our former coach… a person I’ve never seen you speak about so negatively.
And yes… our losses to USC and Georgia can both be tied to a lack of experience/talent at the guard positions. That and the fact that college basketball is extremely volatile. If it wasn’t, Louisville wouldn’t have been blown out by Notre Dame, or lost a home game to the team we just beat handily.
Can you (or anyone) honestly say another coach would have taken last year’s team through all of its injury problems and gone 12-4 in conference with a straight face? Can you say our defense hasn’t been fantastic the past two years? Can you say Gillispie wasn’t dropped into a very difficult situation being left with a team severely lacking in talent? Can you say the recruits Gillispie has coming in his first 3 years aren’t a major step up in consistency and overall talent?
Honestly the ONLY reason I can see for Coach Gillispie getting this much crap is if there is something going on off the floor I’m unaware of. Yeah, the way he talked to the sideline reporter, and the way he interacts with local media sometimes leaves a little to be desired, but that would all be erased if he was winning up to the local media/fan’s standards. The problem is those standards are irrational for a coach left with little talent in his second year…
Sorry for writing so much.
Gillispie has poor camera-presence, always seems ill at ease, and doesn’t project warmth, and so the people haven’t taken to him. (A coach whom the people like will find that it can cover a multitude of basketball sins.) But I think the admin and fans need one more year to test the validity of their impressions. I’m not saying that those fears won’t end up being justified. But releasing a b-ball coach like this at a school like UK needs to be provably fair, so that UK doesn’t get a bad rep as a school that demands instant perfection. I have no reason to doubt that Coach Gillispie understands basketball, and if all the kids did exactly what he taught them to do, they’d have had a very good season. Instead, they practically hand the ball over to the other teams on a silver platter, and nobody’s a shooting threat but Meeks and Patterson. It could turn out that Gillispie’s approach and psychological approach just isn’t ever going to mesh, but, barring a total dereliction of coaching dutiy, two years is still too short a time to make a firm determination.
All UK needed was an all-american junior point guard. lmao
Well let’s see, they also needed Jodie to do more than chuck up bad shot after bad shot. They needed him to do things like pass, defend, and rebound.
They also needed a true center, a decent small forward and a halfway decent bench.
They also needed to revolve the offense around the best player(Pat) and revolve the defense around this particular team’s skill-set(light on backcourt experience + light on athletes = zone).
Do I really need to go on or can anyone help me with a few more things that this team needs?
The single most telling quote from Gillispie in his two years that shows his disconnect from what happened to this program is the one where he says(even this week) that the Cats are “very, very close to being a special team.”
That says it all doesn’t it. The guy has no clue. And those of you buying into it are right there with him. Sherron Collins my arse.
A very good sensibe article. I have been following UK for 56 years and know basketball better than most fans since I played and have coached it at the youth and varsity military level. I have even questioned Coach Gilliespie on several things, but he is a good coach trust me. I like his defense, he is doing a good job recruiting, he was left with “not much” to coach this year other than Meeks and Patterson. The others are great kids but most cannot shoot consistently and play a good game now and then, but not game in and game out. If they were better, could shoot, rebound, not make stupid turnover, they would not have lost 9 out of 13 games and be playing in the NIT. They are not that far from being a good team as they are, a player or two perhaps. If they had won just 3 or 4 of the games they lost they would have made the NCAA. So too many people are being overly cirtical of Coach G in my opinion. He will get the job done. The problem with 85% of UK fans is they think they should in the final four every year and that’s not possible. They are so avid, they are unrealistic in their goals. They don’t stop and smell the coffee, all they want is win win win, and if not they get critical of everything especially the coach and that’s not right in my opinion. A lot of it had to do with luck more than anything and not bad coaching. You cannot make chicken salad out of chicken poo poo! And that’s the way it is from an old Eastern Ky fanatic who lives in Middle Ga. I know it hurts, but placing blame doesn’t change a darn thing. Get real and grow up, we will be back and look at it that way not negatively!
Acutally, John, JPAttaway is right – you are a hack who trades in rumor because you have a chip on your shoulder. Getting the cold shoulder from coach has got your panties in a knot. Based on the fact that the H-L and McLatchey are tanking financially, I would put my money on you losing your job before Billy does.
Gilly, I’ll steal a page from John Clay and refer to Ken Pomeroy when it comes to our defense. We haven’t left the top 20 all year when it comes to Pomeroy’s rating for the efficiency of our defense. Beyond that we’ve held teams to within just over 1% of the worst field goal percentage in the country. Our defense has been pretty good this year, and it was most definitely the best overall defense in the country.
I really question the overall basketball knowledge of people that claim we should have been running a zone defense this year. No athletes? Light on Athletes? Size and athleticism were our biggest strengths all season long. We are 3rd in the country in blocked shots!
Also I think if you’ll look I said “If UK had someone that handles the ball somewhere close to the level of Sharon Collins”… I didn’t say we need an All-American point guard.
But it is impossible to deny our turnover problem was our biggest. There were less than 10 teams in the entire country that coughed the ball up more times than UK. Simply solving our problem at the point guard would make us a nationally competitive team next year (keeping in mind the added depth, experience, and overall talent of the recruits we have coming in).
If we get rid of our coach, I think we’re setting ourselves back several years with an empty recruiting class, and that just isn’t the way to go about building a nationally competitive team.
Proof reading has been an issue for me in these posts. I’m used to being able to edit.
I didn’t mean to say Kentucky’s defense was the best in the country. I meant to say it was one of the things we did best this year.
Yup #3 UK is real, real, real close to being a national contender. lmao
The fact is that UK didn’t have the guards to play man-to-man all year. Not Porter, not Liggins, not Galloway, not even Meeks could stay with their man all year. Drive right past, then kick for an open three. Rinse, repeat. EVERY. FREAKING. GAME.
But the real gist of my post was not about defense. It was about how basketball-savvy people like yourself seem to think we’re just a point guard away from greatness when there are clearly many, many, many things wrong with this team.
And on a related rant, is Clay or anybody else going to do a little end-of-season research regarding this basketball god Pomeroy and see if his stats actually mean anything in relation to who the better teams are? I mean we all love quoting lists that have the Cats near the top but it’s hard to take them seriously when they’re such a crummy team.
BCG is gone…BD is in…Done Deal!