Like all Kentucky coaches, Billy Gillispie likes the idea of practicing in Rupp Arena.
Among his predecessors, Joe B. Hall and Rick Pitino made an issue of not getting as much practice time in the government-owned facility as they would like. Tubby Smith voiced a preference for more practices in Rupp Arena, but he didn’t complain often.
Rupp Arena officials repeatedly — and effectively — countered by pointing out that UK coaches did not use the arena for practice nearly as much as they could.
Gillispie noted that he’s had the team practice in Rupp Arena on Friday, Saturday and Tuesday in preparation for Wednesday’s exhibition game against Pikeville College.
He noted the importance of getting familiar with the layout of a home arena, shooting backgrounds, etc, etc.
Jerry Tipton of the Lexington Herald- Leader has covered Kentucky basketball since the 1981-82 season. That time includes five coaches, five Final Fours, four athletic directors, two interim athletic directors and many memories. Before coming to Lexington, Tipton worked eight years for the Huntington (W.Va.) Herald-Dispatch. He covered Marshall’s basketball team for two seasons before coming to the Herald-Leader.
I respect Billy coming in and taking ownership of the job, doing it his way. Now he needs to show he can have our boys get after on the floor. We haven’t had a really good hustling team in a while.
I think its great that we now have a coach who has creative ideas and is pushing for more innovation
Makes total sense to me. I’ve often wondered why former coaches didn’t do that more often. I also believe this is the reason some games were decided in favor of the opponent and not the Home team because they were not so used to playing on their Home court much like they may have been in the old Memorial gym.
I couldn’t agree more!
I’ve always wondered about this. It seems like as far as shooting is concnerned it would be hard for players to adjust to Rupp after practicing in another gym all week.
I am so glad i didn,t pay their rediculous prices for a horrible upper level seat this yr. considering this rediculous sched. with a very few exceptions it reminds me of a NAIA sched.