UK alum Tom Leach has been the play-by-play “Voice of the Wildcats” for the football Cats for 12 years and nine years 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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This year marks the 40th anniversary of one of the legendary shootouts in Southeastern Conference basketball history and it took place in Baton Rouge, La., where the Cats are headed this weekend.
On Feb. 21, 1970, Kentucky outgunned LSU 121-105 despite the 64 points of “Pistol Pete” Maravich. UK’s Dan Issel countered with a 51-point day.
“Pete wasn’t a great shooter — he was a great scorer because he could get himself in position to take shots,” Issel told me in an interview for coachcal.com. “He was the best ballhandler and passer I ever saw.”
In the six games between Kentucky and LSU when Issel and Maravich were in school, Pistol Pete averaged 52 points per game but the Cats went 6-0 in the series. And Issel says coach Adolph Rupp’s strategy was to let Maravich get his points but make sure his LSU teammates were held in check.
“Ray Mears at Tennessee and some of the other SEC coaches were trying to devise these defenses to stop Pete and you couldn’t stop him. We played Pete one-on-one,” Issel said. “Poor Jimmy Dinwiddie and Terry Mills and Stan Key, who had to cover him. They didn’t have much fun.”
Issel is arguably the Cats’ best big man ever and he is really impressed with the improvement of DeMarcus Cousins from the start of the season.
“The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that he has gotten more patient,” Issel said. “When you’re a young player, you get in a hurry. You get the ball in the low post and you want to make a move and shoot it. What he’s doing (now) is he reads the defense and then he takes what the defense gives him. And when he decides to go after an offensive rebound, there isn’t anybody that’s going to stop that.”
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Kids dream of tossing the game-winning pass or grabbing a miracle catch in the back of the end zone to cap a thrilling comeback. But even this is pretty heavy stuff for former Wildcat star Jacob Tamme.
“I don’t know if I ever dreamed of doing this,” Tamme said. “As a kid, I don’t know that I could have dreamed this far. I credit God because he’s blessed my life in so many different ways. It’s just an amazing feeling (to be here).”
In just his second season, former Tamme is getting ready to play in Super Bowl XLIV with the Indianapolis Colts. And since Tamme plays on every special team but the field goal block unit, he will be on the field for the first moment of action this Sunday night in Miami.
“There’s a certain amount of nerves in every game but when you prepare the right way, you don’t have any of the bad nervousness,” Tamme told tomleachky.com. “This is the biggest game in the world so it’s a special kind of feeling I suppose. If you just focus on doing the same things you’ve been doing and doing your job, you’ll be all right.”
Peyton Manning’s work ethic is legendary and Tamme appreciates even more having gotten the chance to see it first hand. Before the last Super Bowl, Manning watched every game of his opponent from that season and got a report on the preseason games and the ones from the previous year, looking for any edge he could find.
“It’s a challenge to everybody,” Tamme said of Manning’s preparation. “He prepares harder and longer than anybody. It pushes everybody to excel.”
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Head coach John Calipari all but shrugged off John Wall’s postgame comments early in the week.
“The pressure, the squeeze, all that’s on everyone of these kids, they’re learning to deal with it,” Calipari said. “Early on, as they learn, they’re not going to deal with it as well. When they understand, they’ll play better. What I’m telling John to do is run our team. He’s going to be fine. He’s the least of our worries. He’s not a machine. He’s a normal, 19-year old kid.”
That’s how Calipari handled the story that emerged from the post-Vandy game interviews in which Wall vented about being frustrated.
Wall seemed to be back to his old self in Tuesday’s win over Ole Miss. Calipari says one thing they’re working on with him is develping more of a mid-range game, to make opponents have to play him there when he drives. Cal says Derrick Rose did that after he encountered some of the same defensive approaches in his season at Memphis and that did the trick to open things back up.
