The University of Kentucky Invitational Tournament is one of nation's top sports events, and participating teams have opportunity to win national acclaim as well as lucrative dividends.
Published in Sports Review Magazine, January Basketball Edition, Vol. 18, No. 1 pp. 30-32.
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| Kentucky Coach Adolph Rupp (L) is congratulated by Illinois Coach Harry Combes after Kentucky beat Illinois in championship UKIT game last year |
by BILL SURFACE
KENTUCKY Coach Adolph Rupp admired the mammoth trophy in the school's equipment room and painfully joked: "That's an awful big piece of hardware to buy for somebody else."
That was December 1, 1954, and the trophy was for the first renewal of the University of Kentucky Invitational Tournament; and Rupp's quip seemed, at that, a very secure prediction.
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| 1955 UKIT action shows Kentucky's Bob Burrow (50) out-jumping Tom Gola, La Salle (15) to score two points. |
A month later the trophy had been polished, removed from the equipment room for the presentation ceremonies, then returned to the same spot after the tournament. The only thing La Salle and the others received was a lucrative $9,902 paycheck for the two nights work.
La Salle twice tried for the U.K. Invitational title during the same years it easily annexed the NCAA crown. And on each occasion, fell before Kentucky's home-floor mastery. But the Explorers left each year with their biggest dividend.
Illinois and Southern Methodist, ranked third and fourth respectively in the national polls, entered the Kentucky Tournament last year with stainless worksheets, but returned home with somewhat less glossy records and an $8,511 compensation.
Disaster for the basketball hierarchy and whopping dividends for all have been the trademarks of this popular tournament, which has been built into one of the nation's foremost by Athletic Director Bernie Shively.
The average take-home pay from the two-night affair has been $9,756, a figure that entices any invited team and goes almost unmatched in similar tourneys.
The meet's fourth renewal is schedules December 20-21, and the participants, selected a year ago, again rank with the nation's finest.
Besides the host Kentuckians, who lost only starter Gerry Calvert from last year's third-ranked outfit, are: North Carolina, unbeaten 1957 NCAA champion; West Virginia, rated No. 7 in the final poll, and Minnesota, which ended up third in the tight Big Ten race.
The dividend growth of $8,243.77 the first year to the record-high $10,647 two seasons later left few skeptics of the tourney's stature. Other returns were $9,902 in 1955, and $8,511.87 last year, a drop mostly traced to the competition furnished the same night by the nearby Louisville-Notre Dame game which attracted 14,000.
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| Loose ball bounces in front of Kentucky's Vernon Hatton (2) and Illinois' Don Ohl (44) during UKIT championship game last year. Although Illinois didn't win the tournament, they received $8,511 compensation for their efforts. |
Conducted in the school's picturesque Memorial Coliseum, the tournament was started in 1953 to bring the basketball-conscious people of Lexington, Ky.. its first tournament of national importance, and to prove that tourneys can succeed in college-controlled arenas.
Each year a precise and careful selection process of the tournament participants insure that three high-ranking teams will be clashing with the host Kentuckians for the title. And geographical location is also taken into consideration for a more interesting lineup.
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The first two years of the tournament saw Kentucky win against this same high-type competition, with only Dayton's fine 1955 team ever to defeat Kentucky and remove the trophy from Lexington. The Flyers did this against a crippled U.K. team - one without All-American center Bob Burrow, but Dayton won in such convincing fashion that the addition of Burrow probably couldn't have changed the outcome.
In both 1953 and '54 the host Wildcats whipped La Salle in the finals, and beat Illinois in last year's championship game. Duke and U.C.L.A. rounded out the first U.K. Invitational lineup, while Southern California and Utah, besides La Salle and U.K., were in the 1954 pairings.
The 1955 visitors were Utah, Dayton and Minnesota, with Illinois, Dayton, and S.M.U. taking part last winter,
While still young in comparison with other athletic events, the University of Kentucky Invitational Tournament is building up the same high nobility in the basketball world as the Kentucky Derby has in the turf world.
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| Kentucky players (L to R) Ed Beck, Gerry Calvert, and Vernon Hatton show delight in winning 1956 UKIT by hoisting beautiful championship trophy |
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| Nashua, famous race horse, is paid visit by coaches attending UKIT. L. to R.: Groom Al Robertson, Utah Coach Jack Gardner, Minnesota Coach Ozzie Cowles, and Jack Curtice, Utah athletic dir. Photo made on Claiborne Farm. |
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