Wildcat-palooza - Part 2

Josh and I started out on Thursday to head out for part one of our trip. Shelby and Josh went to see Lucy. I met them there a bit later so I could of course see my granddaughter as well. I picked up Josh there. Since Jonathan and Cheyenne live just off of Highway 68, we took the route of going down the Purchase Parkway and through Western Tennessee as opposed to my usual route of I-55 South. The trip through Western Tennessee is a bit more complex, but we made it to our hotel in Southaven Mississippi with no trouble.

My brother Kevin met us there. He came bearing a wonderful gift of one of those handheld Mattel football games from the 70s that I used to have. I immediately had to play a game on it. Josh could not believe that this game (as elementary as it seems now) was so popular. We discussed where we would have dinner. I had read there was actually a Canes inside the new Ole Miss arena. Canes is a really good place to eat with fabulous chicken strips. We decided we’d eat when we got there.

As we drove along, I couldn’t help but think of some of the trips I took as a teenager to Oxford and Starkville. My dad, my brother and I used to go with my Uncle Donnie and my cousins Tony and Neal to see UK play. We’d meet my Uncle Reggie in Jackson Tennessee with his dad – who we all called Mr. Smith. We always had a lot of fun. The first time I ever went to a UK game was in Starkville in 1975. Our whole family went. I remember my dad pointing out an old guy sitting down by the court and telling me to get his autograph. My dad told me it was Adolph Rupp. Sadly at the time, I didn’t even know who that was. My sister Jody and I got our programs autographed. I had lost mine over the years, but my sister gave me hers a few years ago.

We got to the Ole Miss campus. I had stalked out online where to park before we got there. There were a lot of people parking on the side of the road as we came in, but I held out for the parking lot I’d found and was rewarded with finding a spot there with little trouble. We walked a few blocks to the arena. We passed a sign for Manning Way which I ended up having to take a picture of for Jonathan – it had Ole Miss alum (and his favorite player) Eli Manning’s name on it. We got to the Ole Miss arena with no problem and went in.

They had moved into a new basketball arena since I’d been there last (almost ten years ago) called “The Pavilion”. It’s a very nice new arena with a good sized video board. All the seats are chairbacks which is nice. We found the Canes and while it was pricey, it was excellent. My brother ended up buying tamales from a university group since he felt sorry for them – Canes had a huge line while hardly any one was buying tamales. We settled into our seats and waited for the game to start. I would say about a third of the crowd was UK fans.

The game started out close. UK was scoring a lot but their defense wasn’t too great. Kentucky however had amassed sixty points by halftime and shot over sixty percent and led by twenty one points. Ole Miss got the lead down to fifteen at one point in the 2nd half, but KY ended up winning 99 to 76. Malik Monk had thirty four points and Bam Adebayo got twenty five. Isaiah Briscoe ended up with a triple double although I felt the tenth rebound was a bit tainted – Derek Willis intentionally bricked a free throw so Briscoe could get that tenth rebound. We thoroughly enjoyed the game. We had no trouble getting out of the parking lot and back on the road to head back to our hotel.

In my next post, I’ll continue the story of our trip and what we did in Nashville before we flew out to Jacksonville.

Wildcat-palooza - Part 1

When Kentucky’s football season started with a huge blown loss to Southern Mississippi and then a blowout loss to Florida, I thought “Here we go again”. However, they actually won some games and won their sixth game over Austin Peay. This made them bowl eligible for this first time in six years. Their last game would against nationally ranked Louisville at Louisville. Given that plus with their Heisman trophy candidate Lamar Jackson, I thought Kentucky had no chance to win. All the bowl projections I saw seemed to agree with that and projected Kentucky to end up in the Liberty Bowl in Memphis.

Jonathan and Josh and I planned to go the bowl game. There was an interesting alignment of the date of the bowl game with Kentucky’s basketball schedule. Kentucky would play Mississippi in Oxford the night before the Liberty Bowl game. Oxford is about an hour’s drive from Memphis. Tickets for that game would go on sale the day before the Louisville game. I went ahead and bought three tickets right when they went on sale. In an unbelievable turn of events, Kentucky upset Louisville. This ultimately caused them to be chosen for a different bowl game – the TaxSlayer (formerly known as the Gator Bowl) in Jacksonville Florida. I loved the idea of a Florida bowl, but I wasn’t sure what we’d do now.

So, the boys and I started discussing our options. The trip to Jacksonville would end up being a multi-day trip. Jonathan decided he didn’t want to do that since he didn’t want to be away that long from his new daughter Lucy (which I totally understand). Josh and I batted around ideas and came with the idea for him to come home and then we would drive to Southaven Mississippi and stay and go to the game in Oxford. We ran all sorts of options on flights and found the cheapest option was to fly out of Nashville (non-stop) to Jacksonville on Southwest. I bought bowl game tickets (club seats!) and got decently priced flights.

We still had that extra ticket to the Ole Miss game though. I came up with the idea to invite my brother Kevin. He lives in the Memphis area plus it’d been a while since we’d seen him so I invited him along. He was able to go with us, so the “Wildcat-palooza” was all set up and ready to go. In my next post, I’ll let you know how part one of the trip transpired.