Graford, TX is a small town about sixty miles west of Fort Worth/Dallas. At around five hundred population, the high school was too small to field a football team, so this small town in Texas, where everything is normally bigger, focused on high school basketball. Billy's dad and mother (Wimpy) divorced a few years ago. He has sisters. Dad is a truck driver.
Billy was point guard (he now calls the position lead guard) at Graford HS. Billy grew up tough and got tougher. After finishing college and coaching HS and JR, college and becoming an assistant to coach Bill Self at Tulsa and Illinois. Billy's first head coaching on the Division I level was at Texas El Paso. He brought that school success in three years, in fact they knocked off the Harlem Globetrotters 288 game win streak there, and moved to Texas A & M where he performed further miracle seasons for two years. Kentucky hired him last year after their season ended and coach Tubby Smith moved to Minnesota.
During the 2007-2008 season, it was nearly a miracle that they had enough players each game due to injuries. In spite of that, the Wildcats finished second in the SEC East ahead of FL (last two years NCAA Champions) and Vandy.
The Tornado Tourney (SEC) in Catlanta proved eventful for a Georgia team which had won only two games during the last seven weeks of the SEC season. The tournament was moved to GA. Tech's much smaller gym due to tornado damage to the Georgia Dome. Georgia beat UK , Miss. St. and the two other top seeded teams to win the SEC Tournament Championship in three days play.
We Kentucky basketball fans look forward to the 2008-2009 UK basketball season. Billy wants very much to bring NCAA Championships back to our university and we believe he will do it soon. We are certainly indebted to AD Mitch Barnhart and President Lee Todd for bringing coach Billy Gillispie to Kentucky.
