Should Coach Gillispie change to please us?

I think it would serve him well to try harder at the PR game. It doesn’t have to be for the fan but for himself. I don’t think any coach wants a reputation as surly and difficult outside of the gym. Once a coach or athlete gets a certain reputation that is percieved as negative, it is very hard to change that perception whether it is warranted or not.

Kentucky had to know this going in, or had some sort of delusional “we can change him” attitude. I love the guy, and I really believe if we have more wins, this becomes moot.

He will be better with the press, the boosters and others in a position to change his, but ultimately, this guy is not into being somebody’s puppet. We should reevaluate our own feelings about Gillispie when he starts making Kentucky into a national powerhouse again. Well, that’s if we give him enough time.

We of the BBN care about wins. If and when BG starts producing acceptable results we’ll be much easier to please. If one compares him to Rupp, who made many enemies in his years at UK through his perceived arrogance, then one can see that BG is really not that bad. And Rupp was loved because he could back up his arrogance.

So, maybe it is we who should, in the short term, change for BG. I have no problem with his arrogance (except as it regards any disrespect for UK history and tradition, that is a different matter) as long as he backs it up. If he fails to back it up, out he goes.

100% effort, a couple appearances at the booster functions to make nice and not getting the university into any kind of NCAA trouble.

He isn’t a butthead as evidenced by the stuff he has done for people in the past. He is brusque but is that a sin? The PR game is just that….a game. I think coach should worry about the basketball game and not the PR game. On another thread someone posted that wins would take care of everything. Look what it did for Knight. I don’t want another Knight at UK but I don’t want my coach changing who he is just to appease others. Here’s and idea for coach….one word answers. LImits what questions will be asked and/or answered.

so as fans we either embrace his will to stick to his guns,or fault him for not being flexible.I thought he would definately come back next year,but personally not as sure as I once was.

Billy Said all he does is work, when asked if Monday is his last game.

That doesn’t sound good…

… but I think that is both unfair and inaccurate.

Every person in a position like the Coach occupies must learn and change every day. He has seen that his prickly public persona does not work well for him or the school in this position, and even though a good season would have made his comments far less of an issue, I think he owes it both to himself and his employer to examine his behavior in light of the best interests to the school as well as his own id and ego.

A minor compromise would surely be welcome — a little less bluntness in interviews and a little more coachspeak. Granted, we all know that’s not who he is, exactly, but then again, what I write on here is not exactly who I am, either. As the song says, “I’m so much cooler on line.” We all wear our masks, and I think we have seen Gillispie unmasked last year at Dance Blue and at other times, and when we do, he comes off as the kind of genuinely caring person that more of us probably wish we could emulate, rather than the boorish bumpkin some, particularly in the media, have decided to pigeonhole him as.

I think we can reasonably expect for Coach Gillispie to work with us in creating an image for UK basketball that at least doesn’t include rude or unpleasant behavior to the media when they are genuinely being non-controversial. Even though Jeannine Edwards’ questions to him were naive and slightly offensive to a person who lives and dies a team game, they certainly didn’t offend the majority of basketball fans. Coach should know by now he could have handled that better, and I expect to see him avoid such faux pas in the future more often than not.

Change is part of the human condition, and stubbornness, “lack of balance,” or an obsession with basketball is no excuse for a failure to try to become a better person and a better coach. If Gillispie refuses to acknowledge the realities of his job, even the ones he doesn’t like, he will not survive. If he refuses to change for the better, he will not survive. I expect that he will do both, and do just fine.

All this talk is depressing, distressing and distracting. Since we don’t know and won’t know, I want to focus on a game. FWIW

I have seen his answers to Edwards, and I’ve read some of the other instances of “short” behavior with others. I interpret these cases as more irritation than arrogance. Some can compartmentalize their frustration, some can partially do so, and some can’t do so at all, if the irritation is intense enough. Case in point of the latter is Bobby Knight’s well-reported outbursts.

As far as Coach Rupp was concerned, he certainly was confident in his own abilities and in his place in basketball history. Call it arrogance if you will. It may have been. The difference is that I cannot recall him ever being short with media interviewers. I’d be interested to hear if Forty, or Wild Weasel, or oldcat’70, or kykat51, being among our senior members, can recall such instances. I specifically remember hearing him discuss games with both Cawood and Claude Sullivan, and while his frustration was evident, he always was able to control his emotions to the point that he could produce meaningful “coachspeak” that laid out the problem and what needed to be done about it.

I also never heard him disparage the overall fan base. He might get short with a particular fan if that person intruded into what Coach Rupp saw as his responsibility, but he was generally careful to point out how much the support of the fans meant to him and the team.

I will again propose to my fellow fans that total coaching is a combination of several areas: recruiting, strategic planning (your "system"), tactical planning (a game plan for a particular opponent), in-game decisions (so-called “floor coaching”), representing the program to media, and dealing with the fan base. Like it or not, a coach has to operate in all these areas. He or she doesn’t have to excel in all of them, but there are responsibilities in each of these arenas. My assessment of Coach Gillispie doesn’t mean squat all, but I think he has done pretty well in some of these sub-categories and not so well in others.

As Tru pointed out above, change is part of the human condition. Which of us are the exactly the same as we were five years ago? For that matter, which of us likes every single aspect of our jobs? But we deal with the more unpleasant parts for the sake of those parts we like. I would hope that Coach Gillispie grows as he matures in the job.

I don’t have any sources, and I don’t know much about how the Athletic Department operates, but I do know this: it is totally counter-productive for the overall good of the program to engage in mindless and groundless speculation when we, as individuals, don’t have a damned thing to do with whether Coach Gillispie goes or stays. “Far Billy” now probably comes from the same fringe element that wouldn’t fully accept Coach Smith because he was black, or Coach Pitino because he was a Yankee. People should get a grip and let the process work. Sheesh!!!!!!

Tru, this may violate the prohibition on venting. If so, I’m sorry, but it really is tiresome to constantly read all the rumors. Sorry.

I only remember what my Dad instilled, that Coach Rupp despite his faults was the greatest, and that was back when I was growing as a teen.

My Dad loved UK basketball and football as he was an athlete in both his grade school and high school years. He attended St. Leo’s in Dade Co., Fl in high school and from there to St. X in Cinci.

But my Mom and Dad were in love and ended their college years, had 7 kids, and I am a product of the UK love for sports.

That birth control back then was forbidden by the Catholics. That is why I have 6 siblings, and all UK fans, that range in age from 58 to 51 (well he will be 51 in Sept).

Something I haven’t seen written about is how the Politically Correct mindset is now prevalent in today’s media. What once was “brusk” and a sign of strength (at least in males) is now completely offensive and our media saturated populace raises their collective hackles.

IMO, it’s much ado about nothing.

If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that Barnhart told Coach Gillispie when he was hired that we just needed a basketball coach – rebuild the product on the court and everything else will fall into place. And if that were the case, I can certainly see where he would act accordingly.

I will admit that coach can be gruff at times, but I have yet to see a credible report that he has been rude to a common fan or big money booster. Quite the contrary, I have heard very credible reports that he never turns down an autograph request, photo or short talk. As a matter of fact, one report just last week came from a teenager staying in Lexington for the Sweet 16. According to the kid, who belongs to a good friend of mine, Coach Gillispie went out of his way to greet a group of kids shooting hoops near Memorial. And the kid brought back pictures to prove it.

I really can’t say what kind of access people had to the program prior to his arrival, but everywhere he has ever coached, he has kept things close to the vest. And despite the rabid hunger for knowledge from fans, it is in the program’s long term best interests to keep as much of that sort of thing out of the public eye as possible.

If he is let go after the season ends, it will be because of cowardice on the part of Barnhart and Todd. And, although it pains me greatly to say this, I hope he would end up at a Georgia or Alabama and come in to Rupp to hand us our asses once a year just to show the elitists that their ire was sorely misplaced.