Fire Billy?

Previously, I had hoped that Billy would follow-up with a little more detail regarding Dusty Mills’ comments. Jerry Tipton’s latest article expands on his previous article, and includes more comments from Billy about his coaching style, and more comments from previous players.

I think Billy’s comments were right on — without addressing the players who have left the team, Billy spent time talking about his coaching style and why he thinks it works. The seemingly harsh treatment as stated by Dusty is spun into a tough-love “my way or the highway” approach that is common in college basketball. Coach Gillispie and the PR folks in UK Athletics should be commended for taking this approach instead of either ignoring the issue outright or turning it into a nasty “he said, he said” media war.

There is some other great stuff in Tipton’s article. He interviews Alex Legion and Legion’s mom regarding the coaching environment. Acie Law IV and Josh Johnston, a former walk-on at UTEP who followed Billy to Texas A&M. The whole article is a well-fleshed out version of Tipton’s previous article, and does a great job of showing us Billy from several folks with differing opinions of his coaching style.

I’m not going to go over every little detail of the article here. But I did want to highlight some of the more funny points. Like this quip of another coach complimenting Gillispie:

When Kentucky played Florida International in late December, FIU Coach Sergio Rouco voluntarily defended Gillispie, his friend and former boss, by saying the UK players had to adjust from a “mild-mannered man” (Tubby Smith) to “Baby Saddam.” The intended compliment drew laughter from reporters at the post-game news conference.

Haha, our rivals are going to have a blast with that Baby Saddam nickname. What I think is the best is this description of the coach from the coach himself:

Gillispie likened himself to the character played by Sean Connery in the movie The Untouchables. When Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) tries to add the tough Chicago cop to fight organized crime, Connery has a question:

What are you prepared to do?

“He kept asking that question,” Gillispie said. “I really believe that’s relevant to what we do as basketball players. What are you prepared to do? … Everybody wants to be an NBA player. But what are you prepared to do to make yourself become one of those guys.

“That’s just my whole philosophy, basically.”

(Here’s the scene referenced by Coach Gillispie.)

Honestly, I don’t know if UK Athletics’ PR team came up with this statement, or if Billy did. Its too perfect. It fits his answers for his no-nonsense approach with a reference to a fairly popular late 1980’s violent movie. It fits right in with our tradition of naming teams prefixed with “un”. Honestly, if I was back in college right now, I’d be ordering a new poster to replace my Scarface poster. And I’d be dressing in a sharp suit and taking fake Tommy Guns to the ERupption Zone.

But I wonder if they forgot that Sean Connery’s character gets assassinated? That’s not a good omen, is it? Does that mean Coach Cyp is Eliot Ness or George Stone? I’m so confused.