Allen Edwards Overwhelmed by Return to Rupp Arena

Allen Edwards, right, with his 1996 national champion teammates in Rupp Arena. (Vicky Graff Photo)

Allen Edwards certainly was not one of the stars on Kentucky’s 1996 national championship team that was honored last weekend when the Cats beat Tennessee.

Edwards was one of the stars on the 1998 national championship team but to UK coach Mark Pope he was also a very important player in 1996 when Pope was there.

Edwards and several other 1996 teammates joined the UK Radio Network postgame show after Pope’s Cats beat Tennessee for the second time this season. The Kentucky coach appreciated what Edwards, a Florida native, had to say.

Edwards worked on UK coach Tubby Smith’s staff during the 2002-03 season before joining Kyle Macy’s staff at Morehead for three years. He went on to coach at Virginia Commonwealth, Towson, Western Kentucky and Wyoming before becoming the head coach at Wyoming in 2016 for four seasons before losing his job. He went to Loyola Marymount as an assistant and now is associate head coach at UMass.

Edwards had not been back to Rupp Arena because of his schedule but worked out a way to get there for Saturday’s celebration and was thrilled that he did.

“I want to talk about BBN because I was sitting next to (former teammate Anthony) Epps, and I was just observing the crowd, and I kept looking around, and I said, ‘Man, this is crazy.’ And we got to talking, and I said, ‘When we were here, we were so focused on basketball that we never really paid attention to the crowd, per se,” Edwards said on the UK Radio Network postgame show.

“But I’m sitting there, and I’m looking around, and I said, this thing is packed all the way to the top. I saw people way at the top, and I said, ‘Man, this is unbelievable.’”

Edwards, never a big talker as a player, was just getting warmed up.

“I don’t want to speak for them, but I don’t know if I truly appreciated that when I was here, because with Coach (Rick)  Pitino and even Coach Smith, it was about the game and doing what we needed to do to win, and obviously putting ourselves in position to compete for championships,” Edwards said.  

“But as you grow older in life, and you have this conversation about experiences, and I thought today, just sitting there and just cheering for these guys and watching the crowd cheer for them, and people coming up to you and just talking to you and introducing a lot of faces I hadn’t seen in 20, 30, years, that was just unbelievable.

“I just enjoy being here, and I’m glad I had an opportunity to enjoy this experience with the guys again, and watching our brother Pope coach.”

Pope made it clear on his weekly radio show Monday night that he listened to what Edwards said and appreciated the comments.

“He played in Rupp for, I don’t know, 100 games, you know, 70 games, give or take something,” Pope said about Edwards. “He was just so shocked to be in the building where he could just take the time to look around and see the people sitting at the very, very top of the upper deck and and really take in people’s reaction to great plays or bad plays, and smell the food and see people, just see the ambiance of the gym, and you don’t really take that in as a player.

“I thought it was special for our guys (on the 1996 team). It’s crazy to think that some of our guys haven’t been back in this gym just to take in a game that way. But he left, and he was really in awe. He’s like, ‘Man, I can’t believe I got to play in this gym and do that in front of this crowd’ and it’s even more special than once before because he actually got to see what was happening.”