Shouldn't we have gotten a couple of recruits out of that.
Greatest UK Commits To Never Suit Up
- Thread starter wcc31
- Start date
Im going to reach here and say Wes Unsel. I could be wrong , but thought i seen a interview that said he was interested in uk , but got upset because rupp did not recruit him personally. If true then its gotta be him. I believe it would come down to him and Ralph, with Wes having a better NBA career giving him the edge.
Guys who signed but never played would be only one. Kemp. No comparisons.
To the poster asking about Garnett. He was a South East guy. Virgina i think. He got in some trouble and felt like his white coach sold him out, so i think he left for Chicago to finish school. But up until then i think Gtown was really in on him.
Guys who signed but never played would be only one. Kemp. No comparisons.
To the poster asking about Garnett. He was a South East guy. Virgina i think. He got in some trouble and felt like his white coach sold him out, so i think he left for Chicago to finish school. But up until then i think Gtown was really in on him.
Leonard Washingtonnot the one from the chappelle show lol. I remember this board was pumped for the possibility of this unknown gem to suit up for UK. Either he went to usc or got kicked out of there. He's up there with pilgrim and Bigfoot
Willoughby was a fantastic leaper. Like a David Thompson/Sidney Moncrief type, He would have mad plenty of highlights for sure
I was thinking of Willoughby, big time recruit, Didn't last too long in league. Should have been a Wildcat!
McGrady did make a verbal commit. I have a distinct memory of Dick Vitale talking about it during an early season 96-97 game- either the opener against Clemson, or the Great Alaska Shootout game vs Syracuse. He never, signed, though, and by January 97 it became pretty obvious that he would be entering the draft.
No.
Garnett was a mortal lock for Michigan, but was likely going to have to sit out a year for academic reasons. Which is why he turned pro.
UK was the likely destination for Jermaine O'Neal. Pitino held out a long, long time for him, then finally signed Magloire.
Ralph Stick Sampson blew me away when he went to Virginia .Ralph and Sam Bowie would have been awesome together. After following recruiting so closely I've never put that much emphasis on any other recruit after loosing Sampson. That one hurt my friends. IMHO
Can't imagine Sampson, Bowie, Hurt, Hord, Minniefield and Master. Probably undefeated.
McGrady never verballed. I know what you're talking about though. FIrst game of the year in 97 against Clemson Vitale started talking about how great a player McGrady was and he had heard he was going to commit to Kentucky. He never did an of course put his name in the draft.
Don't forget would have had a couple years with Kenny Walker and Melvin Turpin too!!
Unseld had every opportunity to come to UK but chose not to.
Rupp personally went to Unseld's house for a scheduled recruiting visit. He spoke with Wes Unseld briefly before Unseld left for another event. So Rupp mainly talked with his parents.
FWIW, this was not unusual for Rupp. He oftentimes would only speak to a recruits parents.
After the meeting it was said that Unseld was supposed to come to Lexington for a campus visit but I don't think that ever happened.
Unseld has more recently said that he got upset at Rupp for being critical of him in the newspaper for not staying for the visit. I have yet to find this news article, and as I mentioned it wasn't unusual for Rupp just to speak to the parents so it would seem odd that Rupp would make a big deal out of it to the media.
Others who recruited or tried to persuade Unseld to come to UK included the President of UK, the governor of the state and many local black leaders.
As it turned out by going to Louisville (which at the time was a member of the Missouri Valley Conference) Unseld did not have to travel into the historic Deep South during his collegiate career.
I personally think that probably had more to do with his decision than anything Rupp did or didn't do. I know if I were in his shoes it would be an important consideration.
If Sampson verballed it must have been one of those infamous "secret" verbals, because I don't think anything like that was ever mentioned in the press.
JPScott that would make you right. Sampson never publicly gave UK a verbal. I got tied up in the moment for a player I wanted to attend UK and we were right there with him till the end.
Yes. But he decommitted after Tubby left. Seems he didn't wanna play for ole Billy G.
In retrospect that decommit may've been a blessing in disguise. Draymond might've made those Gillispie teams just good enough to prevent us from firing him so soon and thus we might never have gotten Cal.
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yeah just eking their way into the tournament as a 12 seed might have bought that nut another year
all the guys tubby reached for, and the one guy he was right about never plays for the cats
This one's bending the rules a bit.
I'm going with Jason Parker, because after the midnight madness injury, we never saw the real player that he should have become. He could have been BEAST.
I'm going with Jason Parker, because after the midnight madness injury, we never saw the real player that he should have become. He could have been BEAST.
People love to say that, but he had one fully healthy season, and he wasn't that great. Especially when you consider that he was already 20 years old at the time. Couldn't shoot a lick, not a huge presence on D, fouled like a maniac. Very powerful in the lane, and a good offensive rebounder, but not as good an overall player as Marquis Estill.
The same thing happens with Dwight Anderson, BTW. Anderson was a big talent, but the idea that he was a potential all-time great is totally overblown. Anderson was, like a ton of other HS superstars, an immense physical talent with flaws in his abilities that got exposed at the college level (in Anderson's case, that he wasn't a tremendous ballhandler, or a consistent enough shooter to be a big-time perimeter threat).
Parker and Anderson share the trait that their personal habits derailed their talent to greater or lesser extents, but I think the level of that actual talent gets exaggerated in retrospect.
![[thumb2]](https://ct.yimg.com/mr/uploads/891/1684387.png "Thumbs Up 2 [thumb2]")
I defer to Jon Scott on all UK basketball history matters.
Following is how I recall (or misremember):
Regarding Wes Unseld:
As mentioned above, Coach Rupp made an in-home visit with the Unseld's.
At this time there had never been an African-American athlete playing in the SEC or ACC. In the deep South -- in particular, Alabama and Mississippi -- restaurants and hotels (even public restrooms) were segregated. Black professional minor league baseball players often had to eat on the bus and stay with local families.
Wes's mother asked Coach Rupp if he would guarantee her son's safety, particularly when traveling in the segregated South. Coach Rupp would not give her his guarantee.
By the way, Unseld was the first NBA player to win MVP and Rookie of the Year in the same year.
Regarding Butch Beard:
(Some of you are probably not familiar with Butch.
He was Kentucky Mr. Basketball in 1965. His Breckinridge County team won the Kentucky state championship in 1965, and was runner-up to Unseld's team in 1964.
He was good enough to average 9+ points over 10 NBA seasons.)
There was a lot of discussion that Butch had the courage and temperament to be the first AA player in the SEC.
I believe that Butch agreed to attend UK at that year's UK Relays and shook hands in agreement with Coach Rupp. He later reneged.
Following is how I recall (or misremember):
Regarding Wes Unseld:
As mentioned above, Coach Rupp made an in-home visit with the Unseld's.
At this time there had never been an African-American athlete playing in the SEC or ACC. In the deep South -- in particular, Alabama and Mississippi -- restaurants and hotels (even public restrooms) were segregated. Black professional minor league baseball players often had to eat on the bus and stay with local families.
Wes's mother asked Coach Rupp if he would guarantee her son's safety, particularly when traveling in the segregated South. Coach Rupp would not give her his guarantee.
By the way, Unseld was the first NBA player to win MVP and Rookie of the Year in the same year.
Regarding Butch Beard:
(Some of you are probably not familiar with Butch.
He was Kentucky Mr. Basketball in 1965. His Breckinridge County team won the Kentucky state championship in 1965, and was runner-up to Unseld's team in 1964.
He was good enough to average 9+ points over 10 NBA seasons.)
There was a lot of discussion that Butch had the courage and temperament to be the first AA player in the SEC.
I believe that Butch agreed to attend UK at that year's UK Relays and shook hands in agreement with Coach Rupp. He later reneged.
Kemp for sure. He would have been amazing here. In the very close category I'd say Ralph Sampson. The story I always heard was he didn't know until the moment he picked up that UVa hat.
http://articles.philly.com/2012-03-...kentucky-louisville-kentucky-s-tv-adolph-rupp
As is usually the case, there's more than one version of the story ...
Adolph Rupp had nearly as many dislikes as career victories. Somewhere high on the longtime Kentucky basketball coach's list, perhaps between suits that weren't brown and people who were, was the University of Louisville.
During a 42-year career (1930-72) at the basketball-mad state's largest university, he never scheduled a game with the second-largest, preferred not even to mention its name.
While Kentucky and Louisville would meet three times during Rupp's tenure, those games couldn't be avoided. Two came in NCAA tournaments, the other in an Olympic trials matchup at MadisonSquareGarden in 1948.
http://articles.philly.com/2012-03-...kentucky-louisville-kentucky-s-tv-adolph-rupp
The historian Ronald Oakley wrote that in Kentucky there is "a strong belief in an orderly and hierarchical society, with everything and everybody in its place."
And Louisville's place, Rupp firmly believed, was not on the same court with his mighty Wildcats.
Before those two schools meet in Saturday's NCAA Final Four semifinal, the historic Kentucky-Louisville feud figures to get more air time than Geico's lizard.
And while he alone is not responsible for the enmity, Rupp, more than anyone, helped institutionalize it, something that became apparent when I was researching a book on the historic 1966 NCAA title game between Kentucky and Texas Western.
Rupp's Wildcats dominated - in the state and nationally - for decades. His teams would win 896 games, four national titles. They were such an overpowering presence that 83 percent of Kentucky's TV viewers tuned in each Sunday night to watch Rupp's show.
The "Baron of the Bluegrass" had his pick of the state's best players - its best white players anyway - and he wasn't about to start sharing with Louisville.
Rupp looked down his nose at Louisville, believing the university and the city were no match for Kentucky and Lexington. To even acknowledge that the Cardinals existed, Rupp felt, would be granting them a level of attention they didn't deserve.
The relationship worsened in the 1960s when shifting social attitudes and new federal mandates began breaking down segregation's walls.
Rupp had never had a black player and, by all accounts, was in no rush to find one. When in 1963 John Oswald, a northerner who would go on to become PennState's president, was named to that position at Kentucky, he began prodding the coach.
"Rupp, in his very first discussion with me, sounded like a bigot," Oswald would recall in an interview for the university's oral history project. "I told Rupp . . . that I had heard so much about his success in basketball. But that it seemed to me that one of things facing us as a border-state public institution at that time was clearly the recruitment of some black athletes."
The coach didn't like anyone, let alone a liberal Yankee educator, telling him how to run his program. He returned to his office and complained to an assistant: "That son of a bitch is ordering me to get some [African-Americans] in here. What am I going to do?"
The Oswald-Rupp battle would continue for years with no change in Kentucky's racial makeup until 1970.
No better package
Meanwhile, sensing an opening, Louisville began recruiting the state's best black players, youngsters such as Butch Beard and Wes Unseld, both of whom would go on to long and distinguished NBA careers.
Rupp, in part to appease Oswald, made token gestures toward each, particularly Unseld, the powerful 6-foot-6 center who had led SenecaHigh School to consecutive state titles in 1963-64.
"Not only was Unseld the best high school player in the nation, but he was also more brown than black," Russell Rice, the former Kentucky sports information director, wrote in his Rupp biography. "Rupp couldn't have asked for a better package."
But blacks had an understandable unease about Rupp and his intentions. To ask a teenager to be a racial pioneer at Kentucky, in the Southeastern Conference, a coach was going to have to build trust. Neither Unseld nor Beard felt that from Rupp.
Beard visited Kentucky, escorted around campus by one of Rupp's stars, Pat Riley. Rupp even traveled to Beard's home in Hardinsburg, Ky.
"We decided that Rupp was under pressure to recruit a black player, but he really didn't want one," Beard said in 1997.
Rupp also went to visit Unseld, but it came on a night when the player, who had a speaking engagement at a nearby reformatory, wasn't home. Despite more urging from Oswald, the coach wouldn't return. Finally, the school president himself, accompanied by an assistant coach, traveled to the Unseld home.
"The mother and father were very gracious to me, and he was too," recalled Oswald. "He said, 'Thank you for coming, but I've already decided to stay in Louisville.' "
Rupp was so angry with Unseld and Louisville that at one point he told reporters he was thinking about going public with the "real story" of how Louisville landed him, implying something underhanded had occurred.
'Always some excuse'
By 1966, Oswald was still pushing, Rupp still resisting. That year the focus of the university president's integration dreams, if not Rupp's, turned to Perry Wallace, an A student and basketball star from Nashville.
Frustrated by Rupp, embarrassed that even Louisville had integrated first, Oswald grew more determined than ever. He appointed Robert L. Johnson, an aide with no sports background, to oversee the athletic department. Johnson's principal mission was to get Rupp to recruit a black.
"The feeling among a lot of people at the university was that Adolph was a racist who was never going to bring blacks on to the team," Johnson said in 1998. "He would keep saying, 'The last thing we want to do is sign somebody who never gets off the bench. Then we'd be accused of tokenism.' . . . But there was also a double standard in that they'd picked a lot of white kids who were probably going to sit on the bench, too."
On March 24, 1966, Rupp invited several recruits to Kentucky's annual basketball banquet. All were white. The coach insisted he had asked two blacks - including Wallace - but that both were unable to attend.
"There was always some excuse with Rupp," said Unseld.
The snub prompted a stern memo from Johnson to athletic director Bernie Shively.
"I would like to be assured that we are indeed recruiting Negro student-athletes," Johnson wrote. "I have already had several individuals make it a point to tell me that Coach Rupp will never have a Negro basketball player and the University is being hypocritical when it says it is trying to recruit such men."
Shortly thereafter, two Rupp assistants went to see Wallace and his parents. Rupp stayed home.
"Both were very nice," recalled Wallace, an AmericanUniversity law professor who in April 1966 became the SEC's first black athlete when he signed with Vanderbilt. "But I was always concerned that Rupp never came. It left you with concerns about the attitude of the head man. Later, when I had dealings with Rupp, he was always very polite and nice to me. But of course I was 'a good boy.' I spoke well and was polite."
Wallace took a recruiting trip to Louisville, where he said the anti-Rupp, anti-Kentucky sentiment was palpable. Suddenly, black players all across the state were rallying around Louisville as well as other in-state schools Rupp had snubbed.
"Whatever Louisville had been about in the past, it enthusiastically recruited those guys," said Wallace. "All of a sudden they went from saying, 'We don't want you here' to 'We want to recruit you, and we want to show you an enthusiastic face.'"
Reacted with glee
Louisville, with overwhelmingly African-American rosters, would win two national titles in the 1980s.
Rupp never played against an integrated Louisville. The series, which had stopped in 1922 after just nine games, resumed four years after his death in 1977.
Blacks across the state reacted with glee when, at the 1971 Mideast Regional, in the first meeting of the schools, Western Kentucky thumped the Wildcats, 107-83. Western started five Kentuckians, all of them black. Kentucky, by then, had one black player.
Rupp had been infuriated when he heard Western star Jim McDaniels suggest the NCAA pairings favored Kentucky.
"I doubt that he has the intelligence to comprehend how the NCAA brackets are made," Rupp fumed. "And you can quote me on that."
History had to delight in the irony of Rupp's last game, the 1972 Mideast Regional final. Kentucky was eliminated by Florida State, 73-54.
Though the rest of the SEC was integrated by then, Rupp's last team was all-white.
And FloridaState started five black plaayers.
As is usually the case, there's more than one version of the story ...
Adolph Rupp had nearly as many dislikes as career victories. Somewhere high on the longtime Kentucky basketball coach's list, perhaps between suits that weren't brown and people who were, was the University of Louisville.
During a 42-year career (1930-72) at the basketball-mad state's largest university, he never scheduled a game with the second-largest, preferred not even to mention its name.
While Kentucky and Louisville would meet three times during Rupp's tenure, those games couldn't be avoided. Two came in NCAA tournaments, the other in an Olympic trials matchup at MadisonSquareGarden in 1948.
http://articles.philly.com/2012-03-...kentucky-louisville-kentucky-s-tv-adolph-rupp
The historian Ronald Oakley wrote that in Kentucky there is "a strong belief in an orderly and hierarchical society, with everything and everybody in its place."
And Louisville's place, Rupp firmly believed, was not on the same court with his mighty Wildcats.
Before those two schools meet in Saturday's NCAA Final Four semifinal, the historic Kentucky-Louisville feud figures to get more air time than Geico's lizard.
And while he alone is not responsible for the enmity, Rupp, more than anyone, helped institutionalize it, something that became apparent when I was researching a book on the historic 1966 NCAA title game between Kentucky and Texas Western.
Rupp's Wildcats dominated - in the state and nationally - for decades. His teams would win 896 games, four national titles. They were such an overpowering presence that 83 percent of Kentucky's TV viewers tuned in each Sunday night to watch Rupp's show.
The "Baron of the Bluegrass" had his pick of the state's best players - its best white players anyway - and he wasn't about to start sharing with Louisville.
Rupp looked down his nose at Louisville, believing the university and the city were no match for Kentucky and Lexington. To even acknowledge that the Cardinals existed, Rupp felt, would be granting them a level of attention they didn't deserve.
The relationship worsened in the 1960s when shifting social attitudes and new federal mandates began breaking down segregation's walls.
Rupp had never had a black player and, by all accounts, was in no rush to find one. When in 1963 John Oswald, a northerner who would go on to become PennState's president, was named to that position at Kentucky, he began prodding the coach.
"Rupp, in his very first discussion with me, sounded like a bigot," Oswald would recall in an interview for the university's oral history project. "I told Rupp . . . that I had heard so much about his success in basketball. But that it seemed to me that one of things facing us as a border-state public institution at that time was clearly the recruitment of some black athletes."
The coach didn't like anyone, let alone a liberal Yankee educator, telling him how to run his program. He returned to his office and complained to an assistant: "That son of a bitch is ordering me to get some [African-Americans] in here. What am I going to do?"
The Oswald-Rupp battle would continue for years with no change in Kentucky's racial makeup until 1970.
No better package
Meanwhile, sensing an opening, Louisville began recruiting the state's best black players, youngsters such as Butch Beard and Wes Unseld, both of whom would go on to long and distinguished NBA careers.
Rupp, in part to appease Oswald, made token gestures toward each, particularly Unseld, the powerful 6-foot-6 center who had led SenecaHigh School to consecutive state titles in 1963-64.
"Not only was Unseld the best high school player in the nation, but he was also more brown than black," Russell Rice, the former Kentucky sports information director, wrote in his Rupp biography. "Rupp couldn't have asked for a better package."
But blacks had an understandable unease about Rupp and his intentions. To ask a teenager to be a racial pioneer at Kentucky, in the Southeastern Conference, a coach was going to have to build trust. Neither Unseld nor Beard felt that from Rupp.
Beard visited Kentucky, escorted around campus by one of Rupp's stars, Pat Riley. Rupp even traveled to Beard's home in Hardinsburg, Ky.
"We decided that Rupp was under pressure to recruit a black player, but he really didn't want one," Beard said in 1997.
Rupp also went to visit Unseld, but it came on a night when the player, who had a speaking engagement at a nearby reformatory, wasn't home. Despite more urging from Oswald, the coach wouldn't return. Finally, the school president himself, accompanied by an assistant coach, traveled to the Unseld home.
"The mother and father were very gracious to me, and he was too," recalled Oswald. "He said, 'Thank you for coming, but I've already decided to stay in Louisville.' "
Rupp was so angry with Unseld and Louisville that at one point he told reporters he was thinking about going public with the "real story" of how Louisville landed him, implying something underhanded had occurred.
'Always some excuse'
By 1966, Oswald was still pushing, Rupp still resisting. That year the focus of the university president's integration dreams, if not Rupp's, turned to Perry Wallace, an A student and basketball star from Nashville.
Frustrated by Rupp, embarrassed that even Louisville had integrated first, Oswald grew more determined than ever. He appointed Robert L. Johnson, an aide with no sports background, to oversee the athletic department. Johnson's principal mission was to get Rupp to recruit a black.
"The feeling among a lot of people at the university was that Adolph was a racist who was never going to bring blacks on to the team," Johnson said in 1998. "He would keep saying, 'The last thing we want to do is sign somebody who never gets off the bench. Then we'd be accused of tokenism.' . . . But there was also a double standard in that they'd picked a lot of white kids who were probably going to sit on the bench, too."
On March 24, 1966, Rupp invited several recruits to Kentucky's annual basketball banquet. All were white. The coach insisted he had asked two blacks - including Wallace - but that both were unable to attend.
"There was always some excuse with Rupp," said Unseld.
The snub prompted a stern memo from Johnson to athletic director Bernie Shively.
"I would like to be assured that we are indeed recruiting Negro student-athletes," Johnson wrote. "I have already had several individuals make it a point to tell me that Coach Rupp will never have a Negro basketball player and the University is being hypocritical when it says it is trying to recruit such men."
Shortly thereafter, two Rupp assistants went to see Wallace and his parents. Rupp stayed home.
"Both were very nice," recalled Wallace, an AmericanUniversity law professor who in April 1966 became the SEC's first black athlete when he signed with Vanderbilt. "But I was always concerned that Rupp never came. It left you with concerns about the attitude of the head man. Later, when I had dealings with Rupp, he was always very polite and nice to me. But of course I was 'a good boy.' I spoke well and was polite."
Wallace took a recruiting trip to Louisville, where he said the anti-Rupp, anti-Kentucky sentiment was palpable. Suddenly, black players all across the state were rallying around Louisville as well as other in-state schools Rupp had snubbed.
"Whatever Louisville had been about in the past, it enthusiastically recruited those guys," said Wallace. "All of a sudden they went from saying, 'We don't want you here' to 'We want to recruit you, and we want to show you an enthusiastic face.'"
Reacted with glee
Louisville, with overwhelmingly African-American rosters, would win two national titles in the 1980s.
Rupp never played against an integrated Louisville. The series, which had stopped in 1922 after just nine games, resumed four years after his death in 1977.
Blacks across the state reacted with glee when, at the 1971 Mideast Regional, in the first meeting of the schools, Western Kentucky thumped the Wildcats, 107-83. Western started five Kentuckians, all of them black. Kentucky, by then, had one black player.
Rupp had been infuriated when he heard Western star Jim McDaniels suggest the NCAA pairings favored Kentucky.
"I doubt that he has the intelligence to comprehend how the NCAA brackets are made," Rupp fumed. "And you can quote me on that."
History had to delight in the irony of Rupp's last game, the 1972 Mideast Regional final. Kentucky was eliminated by Florida State, 73-54.
Though the rest of the SEC was integrated by then, Rupp's last team was all-white.
And FloridaState started five black plaayers.
With all due respect, Frank Fitzpatrick is a complete hack. (not to mention a known liar)
Some of the things he mentions are legitimate, but he is so completely one-sided and leaves out anything positive with respect to Rupp, that he can not be considered a reliable or legitimate source IMO.
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