J.D. Shelburne still remembers how gracious Tubby Smith was when he a student at UK and Smith was UK's head coach. (Alex Otte Photo)
County music singer J.D. Shelburne of Taylorsville was a student at UK when Tubby Smith was head coach at Kentucky. Shelburne played high school basketball and often a former high school teammate came to UK to visit. They would always play pickup basketball games during the visit.
“One day we went to Memorial Coliseum and the doors were open. The gym was dark, but we went in,” Shelburne said. “They (UK) had just finished practice. We went out on the court and shot. We were hitting everything we shot. Nobody came to kick us out.”
Eventually, the lights in the area behind the basket where UK had a weight room came on. Shelburne said players Chuck Hayes and Keith Bogans were watching along with other teammates. So was Smith.
“Tubby came out and rebounded for us for about 20 or 30 minutes. He talked to us and never kicked us out. We stayed another hour. That was the first time I met him and he was as nice as he could be,” Shelburne said.
That was almost 20 years ago and Shelburne, who now lives in Mt. Juliet, Tenn., remembers it like it was yesterday.
“I was so nervous. Tubby was king of Kentucky,” Shelburne, an avid UK fan, said. “He was the biggest thing in Kentucky and he was rebounding and talking to us. I will never forget that story.”
Joe Dicker has the same type of memory from his encounter with Smith. Dicker worked UK summer football camps for years when he was the head coach at Elizabethtown High School and one morning some camp coaches were eating breakfast in the Commons Area of Kirwan Tower on the UK campus.
“There was nobody but us in there eating when (then UK basketball) coach (Rick) Pitino came in and told us we had to move because we were sitting in the basketball area. We asked if players were coming in and Pitino said no but we were in their area. So we got up and moved a few tables over,” Dicker said.
The next year would have been Smith’s first as UK’s head coach. The football camp coaches were not sitting in the “basketball area” when Smith came in one morning and actually asked if he could join them.
“We laughed and told coach Smith that this wasn’t the basketball area but he was welcome to join us. We told him the story from last year. He just laughed and said he didn’t know the basketball players had their own area,” Dicker said.
“We had breakfast with coach Smith for the next two weeks. He had some great stories and we asked him a ton of questions. He was a true gentleman.”
