January 11, 20188 yr I'm stiil trying to forget this starting point guard. [ATTACH=CONFIG]65197[/ATTACH] Maybe that's when fans starting turning on these coaches, when they put their kids on the team lol.
January 11, 20188 yr Tubby is my all time favorite UK coach. I always thought that his inability to recruit top 10 type talent led to his falling out of favor with some UK fans. I also believe that his personality just would not allow him to cater to 18 yr old kids and also had a hard time connecting with them, which in turn help create his recruiting problems. Coach Cal and Pitino had better overall results, but they both tended to get on my nerves a lot.
January 11, 20188 yr It was mentioned earlier in the thread and it pretty much sums it up for me as well. The biggest difference between Tubby and Cal is that Tubby inherited a program that was on top of the college basketball world at the time. He had a Championship caliber team handed to him in his first year and he coached them to a Championship. At that time it looked like the ball was going to keep rolling as he was actually still pulling in top recruits at the time, but then came the problems. Kids like Jason Parker, Rashaad Carruth, Desmond Allison, Adam Chiles were all highly regarded recruits coming out of high school, All Americans in some cases. However Tubby never could get a handle on them and it turned into team turmoil, which seemed to cause Tubby to give up on recruiting elite players and settling for projects that he knew he could control their ego's. Eventually the lack of talent caught up with him and Kentucky was essentially a well coached team with mediocre talent. Tubby honestly did a fantastic job of getting decent results out of teams that really didn't have much talent. However to do so, the Cat's had to start playing what Kentucky fans refer to as "Tubby ball" which was essentially a slow it down methodical game that relies on long possessions and good defense to keep the opponents score down, all the while giving UK a chance to win the game. It was a Big 10, first one to 50 wins the game and the fans absolutely hated it, considering Kentucky was always known for fast paced, high scoring games. All of these things combined is what ultimately caused Tubby's demise at UK. Tubby is a great coach and is seemingly an even better person, but it takes a special kind of coach to coach UK as well as have the fan base embrace them, Tubby just wasn't that guy. Cal on the other hand walked into a complete dumpster fire, put the fire out and cleaned up the garbage. He literally saved the program from becoming what Indiana has become, because anyone that was paying attention could see it coming, had UK not made a good hire at the time. Top recruits started coming in immediately, the Cat's started playing up tempo "Kentucky basketball" immediately and the fans loved it. Cal also embraced the media spotlight and essentially brought back the Kentucky brand that had been missing for many, many years. Then came the final fours and Championship games. As mentioned before, it takes a certain type of coach to coach UK as well as have the fan base embrace them and Cal fits that model to a T. That said, if he doesn't get to another Final Four or Championship soon, you'll start hearing some rumblings from a certain segment of the fan base. Essentially both are great coaches, but Cal built his success at UK, while Tubby inherited his and then things started to drop off a bit. IMO, that alone tells which coach is/was more successful during their time at UK. I loved Tubby though and still watch his teams whenever I get the chance, he was just never a right fit for the UK job.
January 11, 20188 yr Joe Hall was castigated and yet he won a title and had Two other Final Fours. Add an NIT and two elite eights. Many were glad when he was gone.
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