Jerry Tipton on UK basketball

It took two games for a noisy segment of Kentucky fans to change Big Blue to big boo.

Boos and grumbles could be heard repeatedly during UK’s 84-68 loss to Gardner-Webb in Game 2 of the Billy Gillispie era.

As Gillispie noted in his post-game news conference, you could not miss the boos. Gardner-Webb Coach Rick Scruggs certainly didn’t.

“I told my assistant, I’m just glad they’re not booing us,” he said. “It sort of surprised me. It surprised me they left early.”

For even casual observers of UK basketball, it was no surprise. Fans booed Sheray Thomas in one game last season. Joe Crawford heard boos in another.

Not that Kentucky fans stand alone as boo birds. Coming off a national championship, Florida’s football team heard boos as it left the field at halftime against Auburn this season.

But you have to wonder if any other fan group would boo in a game their team won by 29 points. That happened in 1997 when Mississippi State threw long passes over UK’s press for layups on back-to-back possessions.

“That’s about the first time in eight years the fans booed one of my teams,” then-UK Coach Rick Pitino said at the time. “I don’t think it bothered me as much as surprised me. I never heard college fans boo a team. I’ve heard it in professional basketball.”

Pitino sidestepped a question about whether the boos were justified.

Former Kentucky player and athletic director C.M. Newton said college fans are always wrong to boo.

“I don’t care how much the ticket cost or the money you pay for priority seating,” he said. “That, to me, is bush league.”

For the unhappy fan only concerned with victories or defeats, there’s the thought that booing does not help. It might be healthy to vent, but the boos can discourage the team.

“Every time you boo, you’re sort of killing yourself,” Scruggs said. “If they truly bleed blue, they shouldn’t be booing their own players.”

After saying boos do not help, Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim had a second thought. “Maybe it will,” he said. “Maybe it’ll make them mad. Make them mad and they come out and prove something.”

Maybe. Proving something long term is the point. The boo birds should recall that early stumbles do not doom a team to a poor season. One of Tubby Smith’s teams started 6-3, then won 26 straight games.

“There’s great fans there,” Smith said. “But you have to see everything. You’ve got to analyze what’s going on and what has to take place. There’s probably been less practice time than ever.”

ESPN analyst Jay Bilas watched the entire game. He thought the fans were booing the performance, not the players. New coach. New system. He suggested the performance has plenty of time to improve.

“Guys were trying to think their way through it,” he said. “When players have the wheels turning in their head, that’s when problems result. You want to be a thinking player, but it’s an instinctive game, too.

“You hate to go with George W. Bush’s stay the course. He ruined that phrase for everybody. But I really think that’s the right thing.”

‘Mother, friend, sister’

Until being reassigned to tennis last spring, Marta McMackin had worked as men’s basketball administrative assistant for more than 30 years. She retired last week, leaving a legacy of invaluable work as Girl Friday to UK coaches Joe B. Hall, Eddie Sutton, Rick Pitino and Tubby Smith.

Smith, now beginning his first season as Minnesota coach, jumped at the chance to recall working with McMackin.

“I’d love to talk about Marta and how special she’s been to so many coaches over the years, including myself,” he said. “I don’t know how I could have done it without her. I certainly needed her guidance. She’s been like a mother, a friend, a sister.”

Hall likened McMackin to long-time equipment manager Bill Keightley. Each breathed life into the phrase labor of love.

“And it reflected in her work,” said Hall, who originally hired McMackin as a part-timer and then promoted her. “She just took to it enthusiastically and efficiently. She was an obvious choice.”

McMackin saw it all. The highs included national championships (1978, 1996 and 1998). The lows included each loss to archrival Louisville and the national embarrassment attached to NCAA penalties in 1989. She knew the movers, the shakers, the snakes, the fakes and the humble scribes of the press corps.

Smith noted her loyalty and, in an interesting choice of words, her protectiveness.

“She meant so much to me in the transition,” Smith said of his arrival as coach in 1997. “You want to know where all the land mines are and who everyone is. There are so many things you could be doing. (She’d say) ‘This is important, Coach.’ ‘This is not important.’ ‘You need to call them back.’

“She could handle so many things. I put so many things on her shoulders and she always delivered.”

Pure joy

UK basketball seldom experiences pure joy. The Cats are supposed to not only win, but dominate as a dynasty.

So it was fun to watch Gardner-Webb enjoy winning. The joy included:

• Media attention. Coach Rick Scruggs said he did interviews on Thursday from 8:15 a.m. until 11:15 p.m. “I don’t see how guys at the level like Kentucky and North Carolina stand the media blitz all the time,” he said. “I took a throat lozenge so I could do the interviews. It was great.”

As a reporter from the New York Times interviewed the coach, about 2,000 fans watched a replay of the game next door. “You could hear them cheering like the game was going on,” Scruggs said. “It was the best day of my coaching life.”

• Former UK coach Joe B. Hall called to congratulate Scruggs. Then Hall put the call on a speaker phone so those with him at a church luncheon could ask questions. “A gentleman, I don’t remember his name, said they were all going to pray for us and they also were going to pray that we never play Kentucky again,” Scruggs said. “I thought that was funny.”

• Scruggs guessed that about 150 calls and 75 e-mail messages came his way on Thursday. Among those who called were Bob Knight and every coach in the Atlantic Sun (Gardner-Webb’s conference) and the Big South (the conference the Runnin’ Bulldogs will enter next season).

That “four or five” UK fans called with congratulations made an impression. “I know how Kentucky fans are,” said Scruggs, who once coached at Pikeville College. “Either they appreciate you or (pause) they don’t appreciate you.”

• Scruggs’ cell phone rang at halftime as he began to speak to the players about adjustments for the second half. He’d forgotten to turn off the phone. “Should I answer it or not?” Scruggs asked the players. “All I can say is we’re winning by 11 at Kentucky and I don’t have time to talk.”

The players laughed. “I think that broke the ice,” Scruggs said.

A former player of Scruggs was calling to congratulate the coach and team on the first half.

• The victory meant Gardner-Webb will play Tuesday at home, then go to New York for games Thursday and Friday, then play at Radford on Saturday.

“The only way to approach it is to stay positive,” Scruggs said. “If we’re ever going to the conference tournament finals, we’re going to have to play three nights in a row.”

• Reflecting on beating Kentucky and the reaction that followed, Scruggs said, “It’s something I’ll never forget. It’s something I’ll take to the grave. I know that.”

Firebilly.com

Those who established the Web site firebilly.com are trying reverse psychology.

“Do We Really Want To Fire Billy? Nahhh,” the homepage says. “Seriously, we do not want to fire University of Kentucky men’s basketball head coach Billy Gillispie.

“So why is the name of the site firebilly.com, you ask? To keep it away from some crazy UK fans, we answer.

“You see, approximately 95 percent of UK’s fanbase are just awesome. They cheer hard for great effort on and off the court, they are proud of the history of the program and support it with undying love. But that other 5% are either too passionate or are just plain nuts. They’re the folks who call in on local radio sports shows and decry the coaching staff and players, even after a win. They’re the ones who jump online and make terrible videos calling for a head coach’s dismissal.

“And when Coach Billy Clyde has a tough loss — those tough losses come to everybody — they’ll be calling in talk shows and writing hateful Internet posts. And one of them might want to do something stupid like buy firebilly.com and make an actual hate site against the coach.

“So, we buy firebilly.com and make it a pro-UK and pro-Gillispie site. Take that, Crazy 5 percent!”

Army brass

In whipping the Cats into shape, Billy Gillispie held a much-discussed pre-season “boot camp” and now conducts tough practices the day of games.

After the loss to Gardner-Webb, fan Jewel E. Copeland wrote to say how Gillispie should have been tougher on the former and now go lighter on the latter.

“The bottom line, the Cats were not in shape,” Copeland wrote in an e-mail. “The coach might want to re-evaluate his boot-camp drills. You cannot gain endurance in two weeks at boot camp. If he wants to see what boot camp is about, he should go to Fort Knox. I am a retired Army (sergeant major) with 28 years of training soldiers physically and mentally.

“Full hard practices game days is not good. A mule will get tired. Billy G needs to forget about what he did at Texas A&M and concentrate on winning games at UK.”

Copeland, 64, who lives in the Atlanta area, concluded his e-mail with, “GO BIG BLUE.”

Attention Paintsville

An exhibition between Arkansas and Campbellsville last week made for a reunion of former Paintsville High teammates: Arkansas Coach John Pelphrey and Campbellsville Coach Keith Adkins.

“He’s a special guy to me in my life,” Pelphrey said. “He was a teammate of mine in high school in both baseball and basketball. He’s a smart guy. The reason I say that is, he understood as a sophomore his job was to throw me the basketball. So he did that well. He was a good player.”

Adkins’ father coached Pelphrey in baseball for Paintsville High.

Pelphrey laughed when asked whether the Arkansas-Campbellsville game would command the attention of Paintsville.

“That’s a good question,” he said. “I don’t know (laughs). Is Kentucky playing? If Kentucky’s playing it probably won’t be that big of a deal. There will be a few people who know what’s going on.”

Signs

Prospect Garrett Stutz, a 7-footer from the Kansas City area, saw Kentucky’s loss to Gardner-Webb as a divine hint. He cited the loss as a factor in committing to Wichita State over Kentucky and SMU.

“I was like, Wow, I think God is trying to tell me something here,” Stutz told the Wichita Eagle. “I think that was the final sign. God was leading me to Wichita State.”

Stutz visited UK during Big Blue Madness weekend. Another sign, this one secular: Kentucky had not offered a scholarship.

By the way, the weeklong fall signing period begins Wednesday with all eyes on forward Chris Singleton, who expects to sign with either Kentucky (which offers tradition) or Florida State (which offered a scholarship to a close friend).

‘Classy move’

UK Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart made a good impression on Gardner-Webb Coach Rick Scruggs. After the Runnin’ Bulldogs beat Kentucky, Barnhart sought out the coach and offered his congratulations.

“It was a very classy move,” Scruggs said. “He could have ignored us and I wouldn’t know who he was if he walked by me.”

Happy birthday

To UK freshman A.J. Stewart. He turns 19 on Wednesday.