"When you see Kentucky's fans, you just wonder. You think how wonderful it would be to go to their school. You wish you could trade places for a day, just so you could experience that feeling."- UCLA player Kris Johnson
Ever since I was a little girl I have always been a big fan of the Kentucky Wildcats, now I’m not saying that I knew all of the players’ names and numbers and watched every game like I do now, but I knew that I was not a Hoosier fan like my mother. When people ask me why I am such I diehard fan, it is hard to explain, so maybe this paper will help. If you are a true fan you would never have to ask me this, you would know the feeling I am talking about and understand. Just like the quote above, I think you have to experience that feeling to truly understand why we are such devoted fans, why we camp out to camp out to buy tickets to Big Blue Madness (The first official practice of the basketball season.) because they sell out in less than a day.
Why am I a fan of the Kentucky Wildcats? Well let’s look at all of the things they have accomplished. They have 7 national championship titles. In addition to that, Kentucky also has won the National Invitation Tournament in both 1946 and 1976. (Kentucky is the only school to win multiple NCAA and NIT titles.) We also have a NCAA record of 42 Sweet-16 appearances and an NCAA record of 33 Elite-8 appearances, and 14 Final four appearances, including last year. Kentucky is also the only school with four different NCAA championship coaches (Adolph Rupp, Joe B. Hall, Rick Pitino, and Tubby Smith)
Going to Rupp Arena for the first time is very surreal, you don’t really know what you’re walking into, but once you get there you realize that it’s a pretty special place. The first thing you will notice is everyone is wearing the same color; Royal blue and white, and that you are like a fish in a huge sea of blue. The next thing that will dawn on you is the atmosphere, everyone in there has a good attitude and is ready to see one thing; Basketball, and when the game finally does start, the fans go wild. You feel like you are hanging out with 23,000 of your closest friends.
I haven’t even begun to talk about the things we have conquered the past few years. To start we were the first college team to reach 2000 wins back in December of 2009, after this we got the logo UK2K and it became very popular on hats and shirts. At the end of this season we fell short of our goal of making it to the final four but still made it to the elite eight. We became the team with the most first round draft picks and got the nickname “The Draft Cats.” That year there were 5 players drafted in the first round, they go by the names of John Wall, Patrick Patterson, Demarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe, and Daniel Orton.
In our 2010-2011 seasons we continued our streak of winning and took out the number one seed in the NCAA and advanced to the final four in Houston, but sadly that was where the streak ended because we were halted by UCONN. Enes Kanter, Brandon Knight, Josh Harrelson, and De Andre Liggins were drafted to various NBA teams which lead to 9 Cats making the NBA draft in the past 2 years. With a past two years like that its hard not to think about what John Calipari might have in store for us this year!