It is Kentucky against Tulsa on Saturday in a second-round game of the East Regional–and it is much more than that. It is also an affair filled with enough story lines for an endless soap opera.
Kentucky coach Tubby Smith got his first head coaching job when Tulsa hired him in 1991. He guided the Golden Hurricane for four seasons and twice took them to the Sweet Sixteen. Now he must go up against this school he remembers fondly.
“It’s always tough, it’s always emotional, when you play a team where you once worked,” he said. “People there were really nice to Donna (his wife) and me. It will be really challenging to play them, but I have to stay focused.”
There is, for another example, the focus of his fourth-seeded Wildcats, who spent this season steeped in so much chaos they came to be known as Team Turmoil. They played with unity and passion in their opening-round rout of Valparaiso, but this year they have followed a superlative outing regularly with a stinker.
So what happens now against an easily-underrated foe?
“Coach just talked to us about one year he was there they played UCLA (in an opening-round game) and were up by 34 at halftime,” Wildcats guard Keith Bogans said. “He told us UCLA didn’t know anything about Tulsa or what conference it was in. . . . We know in the past we’ve played good games and then had letdowns. We’re all consciously aware of that, which will help. . . . We know we’ll have our hands full.”
Said Smith: “They’re going to come in with the same attitude (as the team that defeated UCLA). They want to show the world that they can beat a program like Kentucky.”
Which swings this soap to the 12th-seeded Golden Hurricane. Tulsa earned this match because it upset Marquette on Thursday. It is quicker than the Wildcats, but far smaller and without any of the NBA prospects that litter the Kentucky roster.
“That’s something we’ve dealt with before, playing against bigger teams,” said Greg Harrington, its senior leader and guard. “It just means we have to play that much harder, step it up a little bit.”
“I think our guys enjoy the fact that they’re playing guys who are nationally well-known,” Tulsa coach John Phillips said. “It gives them a chance to see how they stack up.”
Phillips, 55, is the Golden Hurricane’s third coach in three years, an Oklahoman who labored at high schools until current-Illinois coach Bill Self hired him for his Tulsa staff in 1997.
“I’m begging him to play us,” Phillips said of Self.
“He says these players (some of whom Self recruited) have to graduate first. But he’s just like a lot of big schools. Afraid to play Tulsa.”
Then came a pause for effect, and finally: “If you write that, put `ha, ha’ in there.”
