UK alum Tom Leach has
been the play-by-play “Voice of the Wildcats” for the football Cats for 12
years and 9 year’s for men’s basketball. He is a four-time winner of the Kentucky
Sportscaster of the Year award. Tom offers an entertaining and insightful perspective
into UK athletics. Column entries will be posted twice per week through April.
Read Tom’s full biography
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“I think there are some similarities because of talent. And they’re so mature right now that you can almost compare them to us. Watching them, it’s almost like watching us–just a younger version (of our team).”
The speaker is Derek Anderson, a key member of Kentucky’s 1996 34-2 national championship team aka “The Untouchables.” Anderson is currently producing a documentary on that ’96 season (details at “untouchablesofkentucky.com”).
The talent is obvious but Anderson also likes one of the current UK team’s intangible assets.
“How they fight to win. They know their roles and they accept them. The only thing they’re missing is having a little more fun. I think they’re so worried about that pressure to keep winning. As much as we worked, we enjoyed it. I think they’re so young,” he said, ” they don’t want to mess up.”
“We hung together. We went bowling–all 15 guys. When we went to the movies–all 15 guys. It didn’t matter who got the points. It was all about winning,” Anderson added.
After transferring from Ohio State, Anderson–a Louisville, KY native–played in two games in the annual rivarly game with UofL in which the Wildcats were dominant. Those games provide him with some special memories.
“Me being from Louisville, I think it was more of a personal issue for me. I just wanted to be them real bad. If we could have scored 200 points, I would have run the score up on them,” he said.
And does Anderson think the freshman-laden Cats of 2009-10 are ready for the atmosphere they’ll encounter this Saturday at Rupp Arena?
“They have no idea,” he said, “what it’s going to be like.”
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We’ll soon find out whether or not Rich Brooks is coming back for another season as coach of the Kentucky football team. Should he choose to retire, his longtime friend as well special teams coach, Steve Ortmayer, is confident Joker Phillips is ready to assume the challenge of leadership.
“The one thing that characterizes Joker is preparation. He’s a 20-hour-a-day guy,” Ortmayer said on WLXG’s “The Sports Huddle” Wednesday night. “The thing that you can’t ever really put on your resume until you have it is experience. Joker has been fortunate to experience a number of real good coaches. One of the things that distinguishes Rich is his ability to be a big-picture guy. You have to put a program together with the scope of the mountain you’re going to climb and I’m sure Joker has had a feeling for that and it will be invaluable to him.”
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Here are a couple of stats from 2009 that speak to Phillips’ skill as a playcaller:
On fourth downs, UK converted 17 of 23 attempts. And in the red zone (inside the opponent’s 20-yard line), the Cats scored a touchdown 70 percent of the time (30 of 43), which ranked third-best in the SEC, behind Arkansas and Auburn.
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You’re probably not surprised to learn that NBA2k10 is John Wall’s favorite video game. The Cats’ super frosh says it’s his favorite off-the-court activity.
So who’s the best gamer on the UK team?
” Best gamer, I’d probably say, depends on what type of game,” Wall told tomleachky.com “If your talking about a fighting game, you’d say Pat (Patterson) or a shooting game, it would be Pat. But basketball, you’d say me or Eric (Bledsoe).”
