Glory Road

Graduated from UK and will always love the Cats. I wouldn't worry too much about how KY is portrayed in the film. KY is not the main focus of the film, the Texas Western team is. At that time UK was no different than the majority of other NCAA BB teams. I am looking forward to seeing the film.

 

But my Wildcats are looking like kittens now and I think Tubby needs to be like Haskins did and let his team play some of their way or if not I think Tubby should be let go.

Agree, except for letting Tubby go. I could not believe the game today. TWO LOSSES at RUPP in a row!!!! We need to get some outside shooting going on. Morris always tends to get into foul trouble, we cannot count just on him. What happened to Sparks this year?

 

I haven't seen the Glory Road movie yet. I haven't made up my mind if I will or not, but here is a few thoughts on the 1966 NCAA championship game.

1. Kentucky was not 100% in that game. Just last week our local news station interviewed the wife of the late team physician for the 1966 UK team. She said her husband had treated several of the Kentucky players for the flu just a couple of days before the big game. Also Cawood Ledford, the famous Kentucky radio announcer in his book "Hello Everybody, This is Cawood Ledford" says Pat Riley, one of UK's starting forwards hurt his foot in the semi-finals game against Duke. Now there is no question that Texas Western was more athletic than UK, but the fact is UK was not at 100% in this game. This was a very good Kentucky basketball team that had three starters that had long careers in the pros.

2. Cawood Ledford also says in his book that the race issue was not a big deal in that game. To quote him, "Later, a lot of sports writer made a big deal out of the fact that an all-black team had defeated an all-white team, but that wasn't much of an issue at the time."

3. One final note on the movie itself. I noticed in an online interview between one of Kentucky starters from this game and the director of the movie. I think the player was Larry Conley. He was allowed to see a sneak preview of the movie. Apparently in the movie there are fans behind the UK bench waving confederate flags. Conley told this director that there were not rebel flags in the stands during the game. The director just smiled and said, "That's Hollywood." I have to wonder how much more of the movie is not true as well.

 

I lived in KY for 8 years while in seminary, so i heard a lot about Rupp's legacy and that infamous 1966 game...and being in Louisville, it was a bit slanted at times too.
Anywho...i do want to see this movie, but i will watch it with a grain of salt because i know it is coming from Hollywood.

Regardless of what this movie portrays though, Adolph Rupp will always be remembered as one of the greatest CBB coaches ever and will he always be placed on a pedastal by those who bleed Wildcat blue, while being hung in effigy by those who bleed Cardinal or Hoosier red.
You gotta love rivalries!

 

Saw the movie. It was good. I recommend it. Yes, they probably did take some creative license with the film, but what do you expect, it is a movie. With that being said, regardless of the merits of UK's '66 team, they lost. No point in resurrecting ancient history. Texas Western was a better team during that game. Besides the movie does give Rupp credit as recruiting UK's first black player. It also mentions Tubby being hired as the first black men's basketball coach at UK. Finally it mentions our winning legacy. What more can we ask?

Regardless of what this movie portrays though, Adolph Rupp will always be remembered as one of the greatest CBB coaches ever and will he always be placed on a pedastal by those who bleed Wildcat blue, while being hung in effigy by those who bleed Cardinal or Hoosier red.
You gotta love rivalries!

Amen!

 

If anyone is interested there is an audio link HERE (about half way down the page) of Coach Adolph Rupp being intereviewed after the 1966 game. His use of the term "boys" was interesting, especially since he was taling about his own players.

It is my understanding that the final cut of the movie was much kinder to UK than had originally been planned.

 

The Dallas Morning News had an interesting article about this movie. The following is quoted from Kevin Sherrington's article:

As many critics note, blacks had already made their mark in college basketball by '66. Bill Russell and K.C. Jones had won a pair of national titles for San Francisco a decade earlier. All-America teams were dominated by blacks. Chicago Loyola's four-out-of-five black starters kept Cincinnati from its third consecutive title in '63.

But here's the distinction: The '66 championship was the first ever by a black starting five over a white starting five.

And if you don't understand the difference, maybe you didn't grow up in the South.

The movie gets more than a few things wrong, but not this: an edict that you couldn't start more than one black player at home, two on the road.

And Haskins didn't start a single white player? People were counting, all right. They did it then, and to some degree they do it now.

Haskins knew they would, and he didn't care. He wasn't making any social statements. As he has insisted all along, from '66 all the way through the closing credits of Glory Road, he simply started his best players, the most eloquent defense any civil rights advocate could make.

And what did he get for it? A throng of 10,000 to welcome him at the El Paso airport and 40,000 pieces of hate mail from all over the South.

Media reaction wasn't always a lot kinder. Two years after the upset, Sports Illustrated made Texas Western the centerpiece of a three-part series on the exploitation of black athletes.

Lead voice of the dissenters: Adolph Rupp. In a 1975 interview, the Kentucky coach called the loss the biggest disappointment of a legendary career because his team had been beaten by "a bunch of crooks," players kicked out of junior colleges and bailed out of prison, a collection so foul that the NCAA put UTEP on three years' probation.

Not a word was true. But the stories got around. And for many, it was easier to believe than a Cinderella tale.

How bad did it get? In the late '70s, Haskins said, "If I could change one thing about my coaching career, I'd wish we came in second in 1966."

His bitterness had mellowed by the time our Barry Horn visited him in El Paso for a 20-year reunion of the title team. Horn was the only reporter invited. He'd written about the '66 team, and Haskins liked the story so much that he framed and hung it in his home.



And that was 17 years after Cinderella's dance. Now it's 40 years later and critics still carp.

You could argue details. Call it formula. Question whether it's really the most important basketball game ever played.

But even if the hype oversells, history hasn't. Time for a makeup call, anyway.