Fire up the trumpets…start pounding on the drums…get the celebration parade ready.

Tubby Smith has finally left Lexington, Kentucky and now I can start cheering for my alma mater again.

I still am surprised by the support that Tubby Smith receives from non-UK fans that say that he deserved more time.

10 seasons is plenty of time.

Three out of the last four years Kentucky has been beaten in the second round of the tournament. That is not acceptable at UK. Most fans demand Final Fours at Kentucky. We can’t even get to the Sweet Sixteen.

People say that Kansas is a #1 seed or Connecticut is a #1 seed so it isn’t a shame losing to them. That is correct. But UK shouldn’t be such a mediocre team that they are seeded poorly enough to have to play #1 or #2 seeds in the second round. Kentucky shouldn’t have to deal with a #1 or #2 seed until at least the Sweet Sixteen if not the Elite Eight. Kentucky should be a program that is at least a #4 seed or higher every year.

Let’s just face the facts. Tubby Smith is a horrible recruiter. The talent level is not going to get any better at Kentucky. Tennessee and Florida are being led or helped greatly by players from Kentucky that the “great coach” Tubby Smith didn’t even offer scholarships to so they had to leave the state…go to other SEC schools…and of course lead them past Kentucky in the standings. UK finished fourth in their division this year! FOURTH. That is pathetic. That is unacceptable.

People that defend Tubby point out that Duke and Arizona had down years this year too and ask if that means that Lute Olsen and Coack K should be fired as well. They had ONE bad season and I don’t think anyone is thinking that Duke will be a mediocre team next year too. Duke has talented players but they are young. Kentucky has been on a downward slope the past 4 seasons. If Duke and Arizona suffer through the same four year bad stretch, I’m sure their fans will start to get restless as well. The difference between Olsen & Coach K from Tubby Smith is that they have proven to be capable of winning championships and getting to the Final Four WITH THEIR OWN PLAYERS so fans can have faith that they can rebound from a bad season.

I can’t remember the exact number, but on ESPN when they were talking about Kentucky the other day, they said that Kentucky didn’t have a single recruit ranked in the top 150 (I think that was the number but it was definitely over 100) coming in next year. So we will have kids coming back from the previous two years of mediocrity and add lackluster recruits to them and the results are only going to get worse.

10 years is more than enough. Kentucky has never been in a bigger drought from the Final Four and it isn’t going to change in the next couple of years with the players that are on this team or recruited to come in next year.

The second thing that defenders of Tubby always say is that he won a national championship in his first season at UK.

Tubby Smith won a national championship with Rick Pitino’s players that had already won a national championship and were coming off a runner up finish. While he may have recruited some of the freshman on the 98 team, it was not the freshmen on that team that carried them to the title. It was the Wayne Turners and Nazr Muhammed’s and the rest that had been there the previous two years.

What has Tubby Smith accomplished with his own players at UK?

Here is the answer: taking over a team that was rivaling DUKE for team of the 90s with Final Four appearances in 1993, 1996 and 1997 and Elite Eight in 1992 and 1995 and was consistently in the TOP 10 of the country and now where is UK? UK goes most of the last couple of seasons without even being ranked and instead of 5 losses a year, they are getting 10 or 11 losses a year.

Then people want to complain that he is treated unfairly or that expectations are just too high at Kentucky.

If a 2.1 million dollar salary, all the endorsements you can handle and a top notch practice facility isn’t treating a coach fair enough then I guess no coach in American college sports is getting treated fairly by his school.

What a load of crap.

It isn’t unreal expectations to expect one of the top college programs in the HISTORY of college basketball to get to the Sweet 16. It isn’t unreal expectations to expect one of the top programs in the history of the game to not be losing 10 games a year EVERY YEAR when it used to take 3 years to get that many losses as little as 10 years ago.

It isn’t unreal expectations to ask a coach to MAINTAIN the level of the program.

I got into an argument on the message boards with a Tennessee fan that said that I was too harsh on Tubby and expecting too much to stay near the top of the SEC. Here was my response to him. I asked him how Tennessee would respond if they had several 7-5 seasons in a row and were losing in the Independence Bowl. He responded by saying that he supported Fulmer during the Casey Claussen years when the Vols were almost like that and finishing in third in the SEC behind Florida and Georgia.

Here is my response to that.

Here is something for you to consider going along with what you said about Fulmer getting time to turn it around…he had won a national championship with his own players so he had proved to everyone that he could do it.

Tubby hadn’t proven that he could get the program recovered. You point out Georgia and Florida being great teams and that it was alright to finish behind them. I want you to consider this point though…Florida and Georgia are programs that are just as storied as Tennessee. You know going into the season every year that there is a chance that you can finish in third because of those two programs.

Kentucky fans know that they can finish in second in the SEC East because Florida is a proven program of late. However, under the leadership of Tubby, Kentucky has been CAUGHT by Tennessee and Vanderbilt. Look at UK’s history in the SEC. Up until the past 10 seasons, they had OWNED the regular season titles and conference titles.

They are now in dogfights just to finish in the top half of the division.

If Kentucky, South Carolina or Vanderbilt was to overtake or at least catch up to Tennessee in football, it would create an unbelievable amount of pressure on Fulmer because it would be viewed as decline and falling back on the Vols part.

That is what has happened at UK concerning basketball. We have digressed. We have been caught by the pack and that is just something that the coach is going to have to deal with.

You admitted in your post that a lot of fans wanted Fulmer gone due to the failures of the Claussen years. That is just what goes with the territory of being a coach at the best schools. You know it going into the job and the best thrive on that pressure…the others choke on it.

Ask yourself this…do you think that Fulmer was motivated by the criticism and that he used it to motivate himself to get back to the top so it maybe was helpful in turning things around or do you think it hurt matters and that he ignored it all and turned things around in spite of it? I would like to know your feelings.

Well he let me know that I had won him over in this argument. The best coaches respond to the pressure and turn things around and keep their jobs. The good to above average coaches tuck their tails in between their legs and run out of town as fast as their feet can carry them to a job with no pressure where 20-12 would be a great season and merely making it to the NCAA tournament is viewed as a successful year.

Yep, I couldn’t be happier that Tubby Smith finally left. I just hope that he didn’t leave the team in such a shambles that the next coach can’t recover in a few years.

I’ll at least be watching since I won’t be bored to death by the slow boring basketball coached by Tubby.

Good luck UK.