As part of the rampup for Kentucky’s Big Blue Madness, I have asked different Kentucky Wildcat basketball writers to share with us their favorite UK Basketball Memories. Today, Glenn Logan from A Sea of Blue shares his memories:
Kentucky basketball has given us so many moments and stretches of time that will be forever etched in our minds, and for many of us it is the championship games, major upsets, or games in which Kentucky did something particularly memorable — a play, or a score, or a comeback. Picking a favorite, for me, is always difficult. Charlton Heston said it best as Moses in The Ten Commandments; “Can a man choose from among the stars of the sky?”
But if choose I must, my pick would be a fairly nondescript game that has no nickname (even though the team does) and no real lore about it. It is often forgotten among the other accomplishments of this particular team, like roaring undefeated through the SEC schedule, including the SEC tournament, something no SEC team had ever done in the modern 12-team era. I am speaking, of course, of the 2002-2003 Kentucky Wildcats, known to Kentucky fans as the Suffocats.
The Suffocats were, in my opinion, Tubby Smiths best team. The 1998 championship team that Smith took over included a lot of players that Rick Pitino recruited, but by 2003, they had all moved on to the next level, or to other post-collegiate pursuits. In fact, Reggie Hanson, a member of Pitino’s first Kentucky team, was sitting beside Smith as an assistant coach.
The 2002-03 team started out very badly with a shocking loss in the second exhibition game to Team Nike that I attended. The defense against Nike was so poor that I left Rupp Arena wondering if Kentucky would win 20 games that year. Then UK dropped another game to an average Virginia team in the Maui Classic, and limped into the conference portion of the schedule having lost 3 counting games and 1 exhibition, including a loss to the Louisville Cardinals.
Kentucky escaped with close wins at Tennessee and vs. South Carolina, then ventured down to Nashville to take on the Vanderbilt Commodores in Memorial Gym, an unlikely place for Kentucky to find itself. Vanderbilt big man Matt Freije was an inside-out threat, and the Commodores had been very tough at home that year, dropping only one home game to UConn, and having just defeated #4 Alabama by a point. The Wildcats (not yet the Suffocats) limped in to the odd configuration of Vandy’s home floor on three paws.
Every Kentucky fan who had seen the Wildcats play so far that year could have called what happened in the first half. Vanderbilt dominated the game in every aspect, rushing out to a 25-11 lead on Kentucky, who looked every bit the team that lost to a cobbled-together Team Nike in exhibition. Kentucky then recovered to make the game at least marginally competitive, going into the locker room at half time down eight to the Commodores, who hit a bit of a dry spell in the second 10 minutes of the half. But nobody, not fan, not coach, not pundit, not soothsayer, could have foreseen what happened next.
Kentucky came out in the second half like a Balrog straight out of a Tolkein novel — shadow, and flame. They consumed the manhood of the Commodores and left torn wreckage in their path, rampaging through the hapless Vanderbilt defense and refusing to let Vanderbilt advance the ball past half court on offense. Kentucky stole the ball from Vanderbilt 12 times in the second half alone, and allowed them to make only 4 field goals in the last 20 minutes. The game ended with a score of 74-52, but anyone who saw the contest would tell you it wasn’t nearly that close.
History will record that game as the birth of the Suffocats, one of the best defensive teams (and an underrated offensive team) ever to don the Blue and White. They went on to win every single game on the SEC schedule, including a similarly uncompetitive manhandling of then #1 Florida in Rupp Arena, and easily win the SEC Tournament as well. The Suffocats entered the 2003 NCAA tournament as a #1 seed, eventually losing in the Elite Eight to Dwyane Wade and Marquette.
But it was in the smoldering cauldron of Vanderbilt’s Memorial Gym where the Suffocats were born, and that’s my favorite Wildcat moment.
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