I’d use my iPad to blow up the pictures and see the little details. So, I was looking at a lot of pictures and deciphered what year they were taken to see what changed and when.įor example, in the old Alumni Gym, I pieced together the changes over time from clues. Because I was learning about old arenas that had changed so much over the years, a lot of what I garnered was visual. I couldn’t have done it if I couldn’t have conducted this research virtually. The fact that these things are online - I couldn’t have done this book without them. I spent what seems like a lifetime looking at pictures on the UK Libraries Special Collections Archives website. Oscar Combs had a podcast that I listened to, with hour-long interviews with players going back to the 1940s. But there is a wealth of recorded oral interviews on the UK website - a lot of them done by former player Kyle Macy. Hall a couple times, for example, asking him things. UKNow: What kind of research did you do for this book? Were any UK resources helpful?Ĭook: I personally talked to a lot of people. Growing up, I always followed it while living in different places. I eventually went to the University of South Carolina for Navy ROTC but my home and heart is always first with UK basketball. Radio was sort of hit and miss depending on where we lived - though we could usually pick up Cawood Ledford calling the games. Back when I was growing up, there weren’t a lot of games that we could see on TV. We would come back and get really involved in the Big Blue Nation. But we would come back to the Lexington area for a year - such as when I attended Asbury College for a year. We moved around in the military - to Hawaii, Virginia, California, etc. I was the third of four brothers and growing up, we all loved basketball. My dad, who played basketball in high school, really enjoyed listening to that season on the radio and reading about it in the papers and became a big UK basketball fan. He came here to Asbury Seminary back in the mid-1960s, the year of "Rupp’s Runts." I was 1 year old at the time. The way that I originally got connected to UK is through my dad, who was a Navy chaplain. UKNow: What is your connection to the university and UK men’s basketball?Ĭook: I live in Wilmore, in Jessamine County. We spoke with Kevin Cook, Kentucky basketball fan and author of the soon-to-be-released “ House of Champions: The Story of Kentucky Basketball’s Home Courts,” published by the University Press of Kentucky, to learn more about the history of the spaces the UK men’s basketball team has called home. But what about the venues that have housed the games - the floors and halls that have echoed the sights and sounds of this historic team over the years? How does a space contribute to a fan base’s culture and history? Others have seared into memory the team records, score boards and stats. Some devotees can recite the names and numbers of every blue and white jersey that has adorned the UK men’s basketball team. Nonetheless, Big Blue Nation is made up of a fierce and loyal community dedicated to cheering on the Cats. Many of these devotees have grown up with UK basketball while others may have found their way to fandom as adults. 14, 2022) - Thousands of Wildcat fans will pile into Rupp Arena tonight to attend Big Blue Madness - a time-honored tradition for the Big Blue Nation.
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