Tubby Smith former Head coach of Kentucky Wildcats declared his intention to fully rejoin the team…..

Kentucky basketball is full of historic success, and it stretches beyond just a few eras. Adolph Rupp built the program into a national contender and won several national titles while John Calipari continues their success years later. We can’t forget the greatness that came between these two Hall of Famers.

After Rick Pitino departed Kentucky to coach the Boston Celtics in 1997, the Wildcats hired Tubby Smith as their next head coach. He became the first African American head basketball coach at Kentucky and inherited a program that had won the national championship just twelve months earlier.

Kentucky basketball is full of historic success, and it stretches beyond just a few eras. Adolph Rupp built the program into a national contender and won several national titles while John Calipari continues their success years later. We can’t forget the greatness that came between these two Hall of Famers.

After Rick Pitino departed Kentucky to coach the Boston Celtics in 1997, the Wildcats hired Tubby Smith as their next head coach. He became the first African American head basketball coach at Kentucky and inherited a program that had won the national championship just twelve months earlier.

Smith had previously served as head coach at Tulsa and Georgia and had experienced success already in his head coaching career, though his time at Kentucky was far more prosperous. He led the Wildcats to a national championship in his first season and would lead the program for ten years in total. Between his hiring in 1997 and departure in 2007 there were plenty of memorable moments for Kentucky basketball.

Smith wasn’t perfect as Kentucky’s head coach and never got the program back to the Final Four after that initial season, but he still had quite the legacy in Lexington. That decade saw a number of significant figures play for the Wildcats, racking up 263 wins across that ten-year period.

Today, we’ll be looking back at some of those players and teams from Smith’s tenure and identifying the all-time lineup from that era. Specifically, we’re going to name two players at every starting position who shined under Smith for the Wildcats. We’ll begin with the sixth men, which is just a couple of players we couldn’t fit into the starting rotations who definitely made an impact at Kentucky.

One final important thing to note is that we’re considering players for inclusions based on how they performed under Smith’s leadership. Someone like Jodie Meeks, who became a star after Smith’s departure, will not be on this list even though he was a major contributor at Kentucky. With that in mind, let’s get into the players.