1966-67

From Harry Lancaster's "Adolph As I Knew Him":

We knew we were really going to miss Larry Conley and Tommy Kron from the "Runts", but we felt we were going to have a good team in 1966-67 with three starters back. Dampier and Riley had made All-American and Jaracz had a year's experience behind him. We got our first shock as soon as school opened. Riley was suffering from a back injury from a water skiing accident during the summer. We probably should have held him out and had surgery performed, but we were almost desperate for him. We were bringing in one of our best groups of freshmen and we needed Riley badly that year. It was one of several mistakes Adolph and I made through the years. Pat was just not the same ball player his senior year. He hurt so badly so much of that year.

When a team begins to go bad it seems to just snowball. Adolph got into it with Bob Tallent, one of our starting guards, down at Knoxville, and kicked Bob off the team. We played in four overtime games that season and we lost all four. We were always proud that one of our trademarks was that Kentucky wins the close ones. We didn't that year and we wound up with the closest thing Adolph ever had to a losing season. Thirteen wins, thirteen losses. Dead even.

The silver lining to that dark cloud of 1966-67 was our freshmen team. We had recruited Dan Issel, Mike Pratt, and some others that looked like they could help us. I secretly thought Issel had the makings of the best big man we had ever had at Kentucky and I had been here when we had some great ones. Joe Hall had recruited Dan and Mike Pratt. I had recruited Casey; and I thought Mike was the kind of player who could win us a lot of the close ones. I coached that freshmen team and we won 18 and lost only two.

At the end of the season, UK had not only had a 13-13 record, but it's performance within the SEC was a disaster. The Cats won only eight of eighteen conference games and tied for fifth place in the final standings. Hated Tennessee won the SEC championship. Furthermore, the Vols as well as Vanderbilt and Florida swept their two-game series with the Wildcats. During the season UK was routed by Cornell (92-77), Florida (89-72), Tennessee (76-57), Alabama (81-71), Auburn (60-49), and Vanderbilt (110-94).

Serious suggestions were advanced that it might be time for the Man in the Brown Suit to consider retirement. The sixty-six year old Rupp, of course, would hear none of it. He was well aware that Hall had collected an excellent crop of players. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that the Issel-Casey-Pratt group could bring Rupp his fifth NCAA title before they completed their elgiliblity at UK, especially if Hall continued to stock the UK teams with choice athletes. And Hall certainly fulfilled that responsibility.

Hope you enjoyed...KBIT