Big Blue Nation not such a happy place these days
Not sure how many of the UK-paraphernalia-wearing Wildcat fans around here are aware of it but there’s a great deal of under-the-radar unhappiness with the UK athletic program right now and it’s not just the 14-loss basketball season, the 19-point NCAA tournament loss, the off-the-charts $22 million NIL budget for a basketball team that could neither defend nor run an offense nor looked like it wanted to, nor even a football program so mired in mediocrity it had to fire its long-time, highly paid coach and hire a relatively unknown first-timer.
Nope, it’s about how the University, facing budget shortfalls and cutbacks over the next two years of some seven percent in its academic mission, recently created an off-the-books, somewhat-secret $950,000 a year job for its retiring AD.
And what is that job, you ask. How about the “Executive in Residence, UK Sport and Workforce Initiative.”
Say what? Exactly. It’s as if in his 24 years as a highly paid UK employee, former AD Mitch Barnhart hasn’t been able to prepare for retirement and needs a boost from some part of the UK budget. It’s not going over well.
UK athletic department employees can’t possibly welcome their former AD sitting right down the hall doing who knows what. And big boosters, like Brett Setzer, who recently committed $3 million to the athletic program before firing off an extremely critical letter the other day to the Lexington Herald-Leader, are calling for UK to immediately cancel the Barnhart deal.
Setzer’s conclusion: “UK administrators’ first priority is to take care of themselves, using other people’s money.”
UK’s only response thus far is they’d like to talk to Setzer about “his concerns.” The only problem for UK, Setzer’s not alone. Lots of folks have lots of concerns about lots of things about UK athletics’ premier two programs – and its leadership — right now. This latest job for the ex-AD is just one of them.
One and done, one last look back
OK, we promise this is the last time we’ll talk about it. But as a former high school coach who faced the long lookbacks after having a really good team ousted in a one-and-done postseason tourney format, we can’t help revisiting Covington Catholic’s first-round, first-game loss in the Kentucky State High School Boys’ Basketball Tournament to a hot-shooting Louisville St. Xavier team.
And while we normally would call the KHSAA’s season-ending tournament by its more popular name, the KHSAA has advised us that we may not call it the “Sweet 16 ®” or the “Sweet Sixteen ®” without including the trademark logo. “Even on social media,” the KHSAA says. “This term may not be used without permission,” they warn.
And that just looks clunky in a headline or in the text of a story or column, even a tweet, we guess. But we know how dead serious the KHSAA is about this. They’ve required the NCAA to cut a deal with them in order to be able to use those expressions for the ongoing NCAA tournament that’s heading into that sweet place this weekend where there are only 16 teams left.
And while having that trademark on a packaged basketball or some such merchandise for sale, might be appropriate, it just doesn’t work here. So, we probably won’t use it much anymore.
Now, back to that CovCath-St. X game where the Louisville school knocked down 12 of their 18 three-pointers to beat the Colonels by double digits. So how did a runner-up St. X team shoot it from long range the final three games?
Well, they did hit another 12 three-pointers. But that was on 54 attempts in the three games– exactly three times as many shots as they took against CovCath. Think about that: Against at least two teams that didn’t defend as well as CovCath, maybe all three, St. X hit three times more shots. Had St. X shot the same percentage against CovCath and knocked down just four three-pointers, missing 14, CovCath would have won in a walk. As it was winning after a 24-17 first-quarter lead before St. X began hitting all those threes.
And then St. X brought on sub Brice Johnson who hit four straight threes – more than four times better than his season average — in the second quarter to turn the game completely around. So how did he do the rest of the way?
Johnson was one of five in St. X’s last three games. But in the only game that counted for CovCath, he was perfect. And CovCath’s season was over almost before the Kentucky State Boys’ High School Basketball Tournament had gotten started.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X @dweber3440.