Twins Aaron and Andrew Harrison played in two Final Fours for Kentucky coach John Calipari. (Vicky Graff Photo)
Why should Kentucky basketball fans come to Rupp Arena for The Basketball Tournament later this month to watch La Familia, UK’s alumni team that will be chasing the $1 million winning purse?
“It’s going to be an exciting time. Everybody’s going to come out and play hard and try to win this whole thing. So everyone should just come out and support us. It’s going to be fun. We’re gonna win,” said former UK star Aaron Harrison, the latest UK player to sign up to play for the team that will be coached by Tyler Ulis.
La Familia will play 305 Ballers on July 19 at 8 p.m. ET in Rupp Arena on FS2. If La Familia advances to the second round, it will face the winner of WoCo Showtime (Wofford Alumni) and The Nawf on July 21 at 2 p.m. ET on FOX. The Lexington Regional championship game is July 23 at 9 p.m. ET on FS1.
Apparently La Familia will get a chance to practice with and against new UK coach Mark Pope’s team before playing its first TBT game. Harrison said it would be “pretty cool” to do that.
“That’s some good work. Maybe teach a few things, learn a few things,” he said.
Harrison hit three-game winning shots in the 2014 NCAA Tournament to get UK into the national title game where it lost to UConn. He came back for a sophomore season when Kentucky started 38-0 before losing to Wisconsin in the Final Four.
He admitted he has “kept a pretty close eye” on the Kentucky program even while he’s been playing overseas recently. He also admitted he thinks about the Wisconsin loss “pretty often” when UK was on the verge of a perfect season and national title.
“No one really asked me about it (Wisconsin) that often. Maybe once a month, here and there on social media or something. But no one really asked me about it too much,” he said.
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The 2023-14 season was a 10 loss team primarily because Andrew Harrison was playing hero ball trying to improve his draft stock. He had been a shoot first point guard all season long and we paid the price for that. Aaron did hit three 3 point game winners in the Big Dance against Wichita State, Louisville, and Michigan with the assists coming from his brother Andrew. We lost to an inferior UConn team in the final because Andrew could not guard Kemba Walker. If Tyler Ulis had played half of that game, we might have won it, but Calipari’s "pets first" philosophy prevailed.
The 2014-15 team would have gone undefeated and been remembered as the best men’s college basketball team of all time had it not been for Calipari’s refusal to play Ulis the last 5 minutes of the game. We had a 5 point lead against Wisconsin, but Andrew Harrison tries to play stall ball and commits 3 consecutive shot clock violations which gave the Badgers the chance to take the lead and never surrender it. Two national titles lost due to Calipari’s "pets first" bullshit.
Our program went into a downward tailspin with the exception of the 2020-21 team that won the SEC season by 2 games. Covid stopped the tournament and ended Calipari’s chance at redemption. That marked the beginning of the end for Calipari. His refusal to change his approach to recruiting and game strategy doomed our once proud program to becoming irrelevant.
Now, after being run out of town by all of the Calipari haters, which was most of BBN, Calipari says he is going to do things differently. If he had swallowed his pride and checked his ego and done that here, he would still be our coach. I honestly think he is history. He will retire or be fired in 4 years as a result of producing 10+ loss teams that don’t win at tourney time. I am so glad he is gone!
I agree with everything in this post. Hoghead Cal showed what happens when someone gets puffed up into thinking they are the best thing ever! BBN would have celebrated #9 and 10 and maybe #11 if our coach had believed in the name on the front of our uniforms! When he had the kids set during our National Anthem before games stopped me from watching or caring if they ever won another game. I will be back watching and cheering for the Kentucky Wildcats now that the fraud is kissing muddy hogs butts!!