Clean Gene Whips the 'Cats

They can tell me Clean Gene Bartow stories until I die, but I won't believe that Kentucky lost yesterday.

It just can't be true. Bartow's employer, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has only been fielding a basketball team for three years. Its first NCAA tournament game ever was way back on Friday night, a 93-68 blowout over Western Kentucky. That was Western Kentucky--a noble team, to be sure, but the accent is on the Western. This was the U of K, the fearsome Wildcats, the squad with the longest tradition of quality basketball in the country. UCLA is a come-laiely compared to the Blue and White.

I think it's great to see UCLA knocked off by Brigham Young--good for the sport when those titans lose. And that sure was stirring watching tiny St. Joseph's squeak past big, bed, top-ranked DePaul. But Kentucky? UAB? Gene Bartow?

Those who follow college basketball had to smile when Clean Gene decided the national spotlight was too hard on his eyes a few years back and walked away from the UCLA job. Poor Gene just couldn't stand the pressure of coaching in John Wooden's shadow, of defending all those national titles. He said he guessed it suited him better to start a program from scratch, build it up himself.

We laughed, and said it was a shame that such a nice guy couldn't take the big time, and isn't it too bad that he'll have to spend the rest of his life coaching at some junior college in the middle of nowhere. The University of Alabama at Birmingham? Why, it couldn't beat UCLA's intramural squads.

But Clean Gene did it somehow. He must have had that Glenn Marcus shooting free throws until midnight all summer, probably on some broken-down backboard nailed to a pole somewhere. Imagine a guy hitting 12 in a row from the line in the space of five minutes.

And that defense! How'd he get those guys to play the same swarming, aggressive, steal-the-game-from-under-your-nose defense he taught at Memphis State? I don't get it.

Meanwhile, Joe B. Hall, who's been coaching in the shadow of a legend for years and loving it too, doesn't lose his cool.

Old Adolph Rupp couldn't have handled the Cats better, getting some five minutes out of Sam Bowie with four fouls, and when Bowie finally fouled out, sending Mel Turpin in to do the job. It chokes you up to see how street-smart and worldly-wise the guy is. They say he coached a truly perfect game when Kentucky knocked LSU off just before the tournament.

Downshift

But it just wasn't to be yesterday. The Blazers (Blazers!) were just too hot from the foul line, just too strong at fundamentals, just too well-coached to blow it after hanging in there for so long. And so it's over for Kentucky, 69-62.

And shucks, I guess it's just beginning for Clean Gene, his own man with his own team. The Blazers take on Indiana in Bloomington this week in the regional semi-finals, and if there's anyone as wise as Joe B. Hall, it's Bobby Knight.

Probably the Hoosiers will destroy UAB, send the Blazers home with their tails dragging. And probably Kentucky would have given Indiana a battle--the Wildcats never go down without a battle--and maybe won it, and maybe won again, and maybe gone on to win it all. We'll never know.

I guess it just goes to show that, even though we laugh, a nice guy can win a big one. Good luck, Clean Gene. Good luck, Blazers.