RICE: Former Cat Grevey misses Memorial Coliseum

Kevin Grevey has played basketball in most major arenas in the U.S. and some overseas, but his favorite memory is time spent (1972-75) in UK's Memorial Coliseum.

"I miss the Coliseum, think of it a lot," Kevin said recently, speaking from Grevey's Restaurant and Sports Bar in Falls Church, Va. "I can still hear the balls bouncing, the shoes squeaking, the fans sitting close, and the heat from the floor. It was so wonderful, so personal."

The former Wildcat All-America and star player with the 1978 NBA champion Baltimore Bullets also spoke of the frog-gigging session that occurred during his recruitment by the University of Kentucky:

"Coach Hall tried to get me in the Southern style of life. He took me gigging on Stoner Creek. I found out immediately that you did it after dark. After a while, I caught onto it."

However, Kevin made his first major error for Joe B. when he neglected to tie the bag that contained their catch. He apparently was unaware that a gigged frog is not necessarily a dead one.

"Frogs were jumping all over the car. The cops pulled us over, but Joe B. talked us out of it." They parked in Joe B.'s garage, cleaned the frogs, froze them, and later fed them to the team.

Grevey was the antithesis of an outdoorsman. He grew up in Hamilton, Ohio, where the outdoors were not a way of life. His roommate at UK was Jimmy Dan Conner, a native of Shelbyville, Ky., who spent every minute of his spare time "out in the woods."

Kevin "grew to like it" and the Grevey's now live on a 15-acre plot on the Potomac River, where he and his three black Labrador retrievers love to roam.

"I never did a lot of that (outdoor stuff) before, but I do my share of it now" Kevin said. "It goes back to my days at Kentucky."

Kevin was 9 years old when his father Norman installed a goal in their back yard. He gave Kevin a basketball and a pair of tennis shoes.

"Son, I want you to wear these out by the end of the summer," Norm said. "If you do, I'll put you in an organized league."

Norman Grevey had earned All-State honors as a basketball player at Hamilton Catholic High School. He also won basketball letters at Xavier University, so it was a labor of love for him to teach Kevin the game.

"I went ahead and developed my game at an early age, which I think is very important for younger kids who want to be good basketball players," Kevin said. "I learned all my basketball on the playground, at school, and in my own back yard."

He carried 165 pounds on a 6-foot-2 frame as a sophomore at Hamilton Taft High. They needed a small forward and he was "thrown" into that position,

"I developed my game quite fast while playing under a great coach named Marvin McCollum," Kevin said. "He developed my skills and showed me the one-on-one techniques that I used in college."

Kevin was twice All-State and a prep All-America at Taft. He averaged 32.5 points and 17.1 rebounds his senior year. Kevin was named Ohio Co-Player-of-the-Year with Ed Stahl. He received many offers but the main pressure was for him to attend either Ohio State or Miami University at Oxford. Kentucky came into the picture when UK assistants T. L. Plain, and Dicky Parsons visited the Grevey home in early 1971.

He had read about the national power that was UK and about Adolph Rupp, but he never did really consider himself a UK caliber player. He had never seen Kentucky play, but he was awed by the fact that the UK coaches would come and talk to him. That visit made him realize that he was a fine high school player, capable of playing with the best. But he had never entertained the thought that he would be playing at UK.

The thing that sold Kevin on UK during a visit to Lexington was the fact that UK fans took a lot of interest in the players and they were really serious about basketball. Other schools seemed to lack the enthusiasm and encouragement of the UK people.

He also was sold on the fact that UK had a great tradition and that Hall had recruited such fine players as Mike Flynn, Jimmy Dan Conner, Bob Guyette and others. Kevin visited UK again in the fall. Then he met Adolph Rupp for the first time.

"Coach Hall took me to Coach Rupp's home," Kevin recalled, "and Coach Rupp opened the door and said, 'Oh! Mike Flynn! Glad to see you. Come on in.'"

"Oh, my GOD!" Kevin thought, "The head coach and he doesn't even know my name. He thinks I'm Mike Flynn." There was no way Kevin was going to UK. However, Hall explained to Rupp that this was Grevey the recruit and not Flynn the signee. Rupp apologized, and they talked.

"I found out just sitting there five minutes what a unique individual Coach Rupp was," Kevin said. "He sold me on the tradition, the type of basketball players they brought in, and what plans they had for me. That was really a terrifying five minutes in my life. Then I went ahead and signed, and of course I have no regrets."

Kevin remembers well the pressures put on the seven "Super Frosh." "Everybody had us touted as national champions," he said. "That included the coach and us."

They were all high school All-Americans. Mike Flynn thought he was better than Kevin Grevey; Grevey thought he was better than Jimmy Dan Conner. They wanted to prove to each other what type of players they were.

They tried so hard that their practice sessions were super competitive. They would practice three or four hours a day as freshmen, go into the Blue Room, eat a sandwich or two, and then go back out and practice against the varsity. During the scrimmage sessions, Hall would assign Grevey to guard Tom Parker.

"Tom was 6-7, a senior and an all-conference player," Kevin said. "I had never guarded anybody over 6-5. Parker was just eating me alive and Coach Hall would grab me on the sideline and say, 'Kevin, your defense is so terrible, I don't think you could guard your grandmother. You're going to be guarding players like this.' I replied that this guy was all-conference and was supposed to score on me. That's when Coach Hall started making me run up the Coliseum steps."

Kevin decided it was easier to push Tom around than to run those steps, so he developed a mental state of playing good defense. He said the practices were so competitive that there was no way you were not going to improve your game, especially with so many good players around.

He gives credit to Hall for getting the freshman together as a unit that was undefeated in 22 games and ranked No. 1 nationally by a leading basketball magazine.

"People said we would need seven basketballs instead of one because we were all high scorers," Kevin said. "However, we accepted the roles we were to play, realizing that not every-body was going to be the shooter, not everybody was going to be the rebounder."

The Wildcats won 59 of 85 games during Grevey's three varsity seasons. Thirteen of those losses and an equal number of wins came daring Kevin's junior year (1973-74).

His career highlights included:

Sophomore Year (20-8)

® Career high 40 points vs. Georgia.

® Thirty-three points in a 95-93 upset of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.

® Averaged more than 30 points in UK's last six games, including a 40-point performance against Georgia, tying a 13-year UK single game sophomore mark.

® Named SEC Player-of-the-Year with Alabama's Wendell Hudson, first team All-SEC, and SEC Sophomore-of-the-Year.

® Played against a touring Russian Olympic team in June, scoring 23 points from the low post.

® Selected to play on a collegiate team representing the State Department on the first basketball tour of Red China. As co-captain, he carried the U. S. flag in leading the team onto the floor each game. Kevin hit 53 percent of his shots, and averaged 9.8 points in the eight-game series.

Junior Season (13-13)

® Twenty-three or more points in first eight games.

® Thirty-five points in a 91-82 win at Florida.

® Thirty-four points in 65-75 loss to Florida.

® Thirty-two points in 99-97 overtime loss at Auburn.

® Scored in the 30s three times, in the 20s 14 times, hit 50.8 percent from the field and 83 percent from the line. All-SEC.

Downside

® Feb. 11, 1974 – Injured elbows in a failed attempt to jump a bicycle. He scored 21 points to lead the Wildcats over Auburn that night; however, he had two sore elbows when the Wildcats lost to Tennessee two nights later.

The painful condition was still a factor a week later, when Kevin scored only six points in an 81-77 loss to Tennessee. The 'Cats next beat Mississippi State in Starkville. They arrived home at 2 a.m. Sunday morning after a nine-hour bus ride from Starkville.

Joe B. went to the dorm to make sure everyone was alright. He sat down and waited for Kevin. He fell to sleep on Kevin's bed.

"They called me 'Papa Bear,'" Joe B. said. "They said I was sleeping in Little Red Riding Hood's bed."

Joe B. got up at six o'clock, went home, changed clothes, and went to his office. Then he tagged Kevin for a curfew violation and suspended him for an upcoming game with LSU.

Without Grevey, the Wildcats defeated LSU, 73-70. They won only two of the final seven games and finished 13-13, which tied the worst record (13-13 in 1967) by a UK team since the 1927 team was 3-13.

Senior Year (26-5, SEC Champs, NCAA Runner-Up)

® Thirty-two points in opening 97-70 win over Northwestern.

® Thirty-two points in 96-77 win over Georgia.

® Thirty-seven points in 119-76 win over Auburn.

® Thirty-two points in 85-92 loss to UCLA in championship game.

® Scored 20 points or more in 17 other games that season.

® Career high 18 rebounds vs. Alabama.

® Led the Wildcats in scoring (23.6), finished third in rebounding

® All-America, All-SEC, All-NCAA Final Four.

® Drafted overall in the 1st round by Washington.

Downside

® Kevin believes that UK would have won "that game" if John Wooden, UCLA's legendary coach, hadn't announced his retirement prior to the game.

When Kevin saw Wooden at an autograph session several years later, he told the coach that UK would have won that game if Wooden hadn't announced his retirement.

Wooden looked at Kevin and said, "You would have won that game if you had played a little defense." And then he went back to signing autographs."

Kevin's most memorable moment was flying back to Lexington and reflecting on what had just happened. His dream as a young boy was to play in a NCAA championship game and he had just done that. He really felt that he had completed a mission – get to a championship game, play with the best players, and have a chance to display his talents so I could get drafted to play in the NBA. After scoring 34 points against UCLA in the championship game, he knew his basketball career was not over.

Kevin's was a major part of Washington's NBA championship team in 1978. Other prominent members of the Bullets were Elvin Hayes, Wes Unseld, Bob Dandridge and Mitch Kupchak.

Kupchak was the best man at Kevin's marriage to the former Sandy Povinelli, of Millford, Conn. He later became general manager of the Lakers. Kevin took a scouting job with the Lakers.

Kevin's last season was 1985, by which time his restaurant and sports bar in nearby Falls Church, Va., was going strong. It started going stronger when he prevailed upon a local television station to buy the UK television package. In addition to the sports bar, Grevey has served as a television and radio Color Analyst for Home Team Sports and CBS radio.

He and Sandy have three children. Amanda is a graduate of Villanova Law School. Kevin Jr. is a senior Lacrosse player at Green Mountain College in Vermont. His twin brother Andrew is a music major at Lipa College in Liverpool, England. He is scheduled to graduate in the spring. Andrew plays bass guitar with a band that currently is touring in England.