The Rick Pitino/Kentucky reunion continues. After making a surprise appearance with his former players last night at Big Blue Madness — Mark Pope’s first as the Cats’ head coach — Pitino stopped by the Joe Craft Center this morning to meet Pope’s team.
UK released a video of Pitino addressing the players on social media. He describes the greatness of the 1995-96 national championship team and how Pope, the captain, was the “glue that kept the team together.” After praising Pope’s attitude and work ethic, Pitino explains to Pope’s players what it means to play for Kentucky, which hits a little harder after seeing the Rupp Arena crowd give Rick, who has a notoriously fractured relationship with the fanbase, a standing ovation.
“You’re all wearing this Kentucky uniform and you’ll feel it with the crowd but you won’t really know how important the uniform is until you come back and leave because it’s special. There are very few places in all of basketball like Kentucky.”
Check out the video below and turn the KSR Pregame Show on right now to hear Pitino’s prerecorded interview with Matt Jones, a sentence I didn’t think I’d ever type.
“It’s special. There are very few places in all of basketball like Kentucky.” pic.twitter.com/uSFH3e3wBs
— Kentucky Men’s Basketball (@KentuckyMBB) October 12, 2024
“I wish you all great success. As you may know, Mark played on probably one of the greatest teams ever to play college basketball. We had like seven guys who played in the pros, but every day that we practiced, our second team could beat the first team. There’s no such thing. And they were all different personalities. Totally different.
“Ron Mercer, who is over here, was a freshman and second-rated player, and we had a young man named Antoine Walker who was the fourth pick in the draft and Antoine was annoying to me every single day because he would come up to me during practice and say, ‘Coach, you better get him off of him, he’s going to lose his confidence.
“And nobody could guard Antoine but your coach was a lot different than the rest of the guys because he was without ego. He was our leader. He was a Rhodes Scholar candidate. He was supposed to be a doctor and he was just the glue that kept the team together. Because you have all these egos and he kept us all together because of one reason: he was the hardest worker. Nobody worked as hard as him. Nobody on the team. Never had a bad day. Brought it every single day. Never was moody. Think about this: everybody has a bad day. He didn’t. He just brought the energy every single day. A unique characteristic of any athlete.
“And you’re all wearing this Kentucky uniform and you’ll feel it with the crowd but you won’t really know how important the uniform is until you come back and leave because it’s special. There are very few places in all of basketball like Kentucky and you look up at those banners and you realize what’s important to them. So you represent more than just being on a basketball team. You represent a state and you represent every Kentucky fan in the world that lives in other states. It means so much to them and it’s going to mean so much to you. But you’ve got to try to match your leader because when I tell you he’s the hardest worker, nobody is like him.”
