OPINION

By Mike DeCourcy

updated 4:37 p.m. ET Dec. 21, 2007

Mike DeCourcy

If it really seemed necessary, I could drive a few miles south and glance across the border to be sure, but it appears reasonably certain there is no blood flowing in the streets of Kentucky.

Yes, the Wildcats have lost four consecutive basketball games. Yes, that does not happen very often. Yes, this is a very big deal from Paducah to Ashland. Indeed, if you want to find UK in the Ratings Percentage Index standings at CollegeRPI.com, you have to scroll all ... the way ... down ... to ... No. 175.

Oh, my.

Kentucky is wedged between Eastern Michigan and Wofford in the lower half of Division I performance. Well, that has to hurt. This is way more of a struggle than anyone at Kentucky imagined it would be when the school gave Tubby Smith a couple mil to go find another job, and the UK administration became intoxicated with the idea of hiring the hottest coach of the moment, Texas A&M savior Billy Gillispie. It's fairly obvious that not everybody is handling the pain particularly well.

Well, here's the truth about all this:

There's going to be more. More pain, I mean. It's going to feel like a dentist wrestling to properly fit a crown over one of your back teeth and popping it on and off eight or 10 times in the space of a novocaine-free half-hour until sweat forms on your forehead and you're thisclose to tears. (That was my Tuesday.)

The question I am asked most often by people who care about Kentucky basketball is: It shouldn't be this bad. Yes, I realize that's not a question, and I'm pretty sure they do, too. What seems ominous is they've moved pretty quickly past questions and onto declarations. Few want to examine what is happening and what the repercussions might be. They're ready to indict.

Kentucky did not get to where it is now in one offseason. It took years of mismanaging the program by the previous coach — and the bosses who failed to properly direct him — to get the Wildcats to the position where they could lose five of their first nine games. It took some stunningly uninspired recruiting and some dumb scheduling to get them here. It is going to require energetic recruiting and smart scheduling to move them forward. Most of all, though, this process demands patience. But that appears to be in shorter supply than elite talent.

Gillispie is trying to change the culture of a program whose players acted as though they were special because Kentucky recruited them. (Fellas, under Smith, that wasn't such a big deal. If you were all that great, you'd have had Carolina or Kansas chasing you in 10th grade). He is trying to accomplish this with his team wracked by injuries, including those that have kept his three most talented players — wing Jodie Meeks, guard Derrick Jasper and forward Patrick Patterson — down for a combined 16 games. Trying to install a culture of effort rather than entitlement has been more public than any coach would prefer, but entirely necessary.

Winning any particular game is not as important, in the long term, as establishing a method by which championships can be won. If Gillispie had his players running stairs on the day of the Gardner-Webb game, he likely had a reason. If the reinforcement of whatever principle moved him on that day eventually leads to a victory in some Elite Eight game, we'll never know. He will, though. And Kentucky will find itself back in the Final Four for the first time since 1998.

Mike Miller's college hoops blog Coach K, Roy both want shorter seasons

Kentucky is not the first program to endure this process. It's not even the first elite program. In the past decade, every one of college basketball's country-club programs save Kansas — UCLA, Indiana, North Carolina and now the Wildcats — has undergone revolutionary change that produced sub-.500 seasons.

The situation at Kentucky now is quite a bit like what Matt Doherty faced early in his short tenure at North Carolina: recruiting had been deficient for several years, and the coach who tried to push those players harder was not easily embraced as the losses mounted.

It's not all that much different from what Ben Howland encountered when he arrived at UCLA and the Bruins went 11-17 in 2003-04. There were a few talented players, such as forward Trevor Ariza, and so there was some discomfort about the early defeats.

What Kentucky fans and boosters must decide now is whether they want to be rash and handle their coach the way Doherty was treated — and trust they can find their own Roy Williams — or whether they're willing to be patient and wait for Howland-type results. Gillispie turned UTEP and Texas A&M, places where success was genuinely difficult to achieve, into championship-level squads. He didn't forget how to coach when he crossed the Texas border.

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