Past Coaches were given as much if not more time.  We ought to give Coach Gillispie another year or two as well.

Anybody who has ever played any kind of organized sport at a high level knows that a coaching change is never easy for a program, and that includes players, fans, as well as coaches.  The University of Kentucky, prior to Coach Gillispie's hiring, had been under the charge of one coach for ten seasons.  As such, a coaching change the likes of which took place in 2007, with Coach G.'s being brought on, is not a transformation that can result in wins overnight.

Case in point is my own Collegiate Sports experience.  I played NAIA football for a program that had been under one coach for its entire 11-year existence up to that point.  While the founding coach had garnered winning seasons and Conference Championships, as well as having VERY talented players, by the time of his last year (my first year as a player), the program was going in a direction that was less than satisfactory.  That year, this founding coach's last season, we went 2-8.  At the end of that season, the founding coach resigned, and another coach promoted from within.  Under the new coach, our football team went 3-27 in his first three seasons.  There were some who doubted his hiring, wondered if our team would ever become winners.  Then, in the new coach's fourth year, our football team went 6-3-1, and received its first-ever bowl apearance.  The next year, the team went 8-2-1, and entered the playoffs for the first time in school history.  This coach later went on to have teams that won three conference championships, and appeared in three more playoffs and two more bowl games at the end of the next six seasons respectively.

All this to say that a coaching change is never easy, especially when the new coach is taking over for a tenured former coach.  Results should not be expected overnight, nor even in the first two years.  Coach Gillispie is doing his best with players -- as was written in a previous artivcle by A Sea Of Blue's Staff -- who seem to not be following his instructions, and are, at best, very immature.

Give coach Gillispie another couple of years.  Giving him two more years will allow the Freshman class recruited by his predecessor to mature, and will allow his first recruting class to do the same.  It will also give his players the full gammut of his coaching philosophy, something that cannot be attained in just two years.

I for one believe that Coach G. will do the job expected of him.  I believe that he is the right choice, the right pick, and the right coach for the University of Kentucky Basketball Program.  He has turned around two schools that were mid-level and mid-range at best, and made them contenders.  Kentucky is so much better.  Imagine what he could do with UK Basketbal if given the time?  To fire him, in my humble opinion, would be a colossal mistake.

If he does fail and flop in the next year or two, I will be the first in line to eat my words, and to take a good dosage of crow.