The Spectre of Defeat

All is not well in the House of Tubby. And yet it's nothing a good win would not overcome.

After suffering the ignominy of making Mike Davis look like a good coach, Mr. Smith gets the pleasure of welcoming onetime mentor and current tor-mentor Rick Pitino to Rupp Arena. Lest anyone believe the coachspeak that this game is merely about "winning the next one" or some such blather, be assured that -- at least on the Kentucky end -- the stakes have been raised, as if that were either possible or necessary.

As I and many others have noted, Kentucky's rabid fanbase is a blessing and a curse. The same love that makes the SEC's annual tournament a semi-habitual Big Blue coronation ceremony (OK, so we loaned the last one to Florida) can also fill the airwaves and cyberspace with enough kneejerk vitriol to power a presidential race. Yin, meet Yang.


But Kentucky fans, while noteworthy, are certainly not alone in this attitude. Much to my chagrin, the team the Wildcats are most often compared to is baseball's Yankees. And Yankee fans are not much different. Flush with the best team (on paper) money can buy, anything less than a World Series title is considered blame-worthy. Some have even begun to talk of firing Joe Torre, the man for ten years before whom the Bronx Bombers were more like Bronx Bums. Such is the taste of spoiled fruit.

But one thing seperates the Kentucky faithful: the constant spectre of defeat. [Ed. note: I know that 'spectre' is the Brit spelling, I just like it better. Sue me.]

By this, I do not mean that defeat is just around the corner, though, much as folks are wont to admit it, there is always a 50-50 chance of losing; no more, no less. I mean that what Kentucky fans get so riled up about and spend so much of their energy on is the idea that their beloved Wildcats will be ordinary. Check any message board or call-in show and the topic inevitably comes back to status. "Are we still a top tier program?" asks one, while another doesn't bother to pose it as a question, merely stating supposed facts about 'The state of the program.'

But what these and other similar sentiments are really getting at is the sense that the one thing in Kentucky fans' lives that always allows them to puff their chests out a little more than usual -- unadulterated victory -- could be snatched from them at any moment. And it was once, when a series of scandals reduced the mighty Kentucky juggernaut to a wimpering, battered 10-pound weakling.


Enter Pitino, whose coaching acumen and outsized ego could not have been better suited to the bruised souls of the Big Blue Nation, who embraced the Yankee car salesman's pitch with open arms. And it worked. Eventually, as salesmen tend to do, he took his pitch elsewhere, to Boston and to his own ignominious end ("My self esteem is not walking through that door.").

Enter Smith. Flush with midmajor rep and the intangibles befitting a winner, all the man did was take the Cats to the big house in his first year, setting a bar so high that he has yet to approach it. The mark dogging Tubby most is his inability to return to the tournament's final weekend since, a fact that perhaps only he truly understands the signifance of, despite the hysterics of a fanbase whose chests are starting to hurt from so much puffing. A 26-game winning streak, three Elite Eights and enough SEC regular season and tournament titles to put an Alabama coach's name on the arena floor can't keep the dogs from snapping at the head man's shoes. And whether that's abominable or simply the reality of the job depends entirely on whom you talk to about it.

Pitino's Final Four appearance last season and his lofty (and untested) ranking entering Saturday's showdown only add to the load on Smith's shoulders, though many fans would surely be upset to learn that their crying hissy fits aren't exactly foremost in the coach's mind. Defense and a little team chemistry are.

The myriad of ridiculous suggestions floating around reached a fever pitch midweek, with no creampuff game to offset the fantasies of fans out of touch with reality. Jared Carter and Adam Williams, despite being unknown commodities, are not going to answer the needs of this team. And despite some clear talent gaps, the Wildcats' role players are more than talented enough to field a better, and possible Final Four-caliber team, given the top shelf talent in the UK backcourt. While acknowledging how atrocious the Cats looked against Indiana, only the foolhardy and the shameless turn their back on those they love in times of trouble, especially given Tubby -- and the Cats' -- track record for bouncing back.

While the spectre of defeat has not subsided, looming over Saturday's showdown like a vulture over a wounded horse, Kentucky's boys can still be thoroughbreds, whether they take down Slick Rick's Cardinals or not. The question is whether that sense of overriding doom, and the fans' fears of losing their so beloved stature, will turn what is a distressingly slow start to the season into a behemoth on the backs of Tubby and his young Wildcats.