The House of Blue

Just don't think I can put a guy's jersey in the rafters for one season.

Then we may never have another player to have one retired. I know what you mean but when these guys do so much for the program in such a short time. These guys can't help it how things are compared to past years. They represented the program in absolutely the best way possible and will always be Wildcats.

The guy I wanna see the most up there is Keith Bogans, one of my favorite players of all time

Davis, in one season, is more decorated than most UK players with their jerseys already up there.

Only player in program history to have won the Wooden or the Naismith.

If Davis' jersey isn't eventually retired, they should take all of them down.

I'd love to hear your arguments for some of those players. From your list I'd vote for Delk and Davis. That's it. I might consider Bogans and Mercer. No way in the world I'd even think about Sheppard, Turner, Padgett, Patterson, Miller, Casey, Pratt or even King Rex.

I think Davis absolutely belongs in the rafters.

He won more awards in one year than any other player has won in four years.

I love Miller but he doesn't belong up there. Davis was POY. Miller was coming off the bench. Have to stop thinking with your heart.

Despite what others think I agree with you.

Miller will go down as one of the most respected players in recent memory, IMO, but I tend to agree that it's probably a stretch to put him up there. Then again, it was a stretch to put Pelphrey, Feldhaus, Farmer, Woods up there, too. You can make a case that Darius made his own special sacrifices just like the Unforgetables AND brought home a national championship. Also a 1,000-point Club member.

Maybe the more I think about him, the better he looks.

The arguments for Mercer, Sheppard, Turner, Padgett and Miller are based on the fact, as I stated above, that each championship team before 1996's is represented with at least with at least two retired jerseys, and the '96, '98 and '12 (obviously) teams have none. And from the '48, '49, '51 and '78 teams, the players whose jerseys were retired are either players very high on the all-time scoring list or had exceptional merits and individual achievements on those championship teams. Some of their candidacies may not be as strong considering the UK Athletics Hall of Fame considers achievements after UK, but that doesn't mean I won't advocate for them if I think they should be included, which I do.

For Prince, Bogans and Patterson, I don't think it's a reach at all. Bogans is fourth on the all-time scoring list, Prince is eighth. That's easy. Patterson is 13th, and he's fifth among players that didn't play four years. The four such players above him are all retired. Patterson, Prince and Bogans were all also fan favorites, which goes a long way whether or not it should ultimately matter for such honors.

Casey, Pratt and Chapman shouldn't be forgotten. Mike Casey is 14th on the scoring list (he's 29 points behind Patterson), and Pratt is 26th. Three players have their jerseys retired that only played two years at Kentucky, and only one had more points than Rex Chapman. For him, I also go by the fact that whenever I casually ask longtime fans who the best player that ever played at Kentucky was—this came up a lot this year among Anthony Davis' run—Chapman's name came up almost always on the very short list. That matters, doesn't it?

For those three, I also validated my opinion with what I think of as the Jim Rice Argument. If Jim Rice is in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, who else deserves inclusion just by way of being a markedly better player than him? Many come to mind. If Richie Farmer has his jersey retired—and I realize his was retired with the Unforgettables, but officially his jersey was retired individually and it deserves to be evaluated as such—who else should? It's a dangerous wormhole. I certainly think those three above are deserving, not solely based on that merit, but I think it's a valid argument.

I also chose as many names as I chose because I feel like the decades of the '90s and '00s (and '10s, but those aren't finished yet) should be treated, in terms of retired jerseys, as the decades before them were. Eleven players that played at UK at some point during the 1950s have a jersey retired. That's by far the most of any decade. So why shouldn't the '90s reasonably compare? The achievements compare similarly. Even with all the suggestions I made, the '90s would move just ahead of the '50s with 12 retired jerseys. But among those 12 include Bogans and Prince, players that more readily associate with the 2000s but whose careers overlapped decades anyhow.

It's a fun exercise, and one that will likely fall for naught, but I wanted to take it seriously anyway. I hope my logic is sound. I know that rankings on a career points list can be a crude measuring stick but it's difficult to easily quantify players on a list otherwise. More important than convenience for this exercise, I suspect it's how many of the other retired jersey candidates before them were evaluated.

And as much as no one wants to admit, our own individual emotional ties also affect our thinking.

The longer a player is here, the stronger the emotional tie.

It also depends on when that player played. For me, Mashburn played at a time when I was about 10 years old and seemed larger than life at the time.

As far as Davis, if you win a major NPOY, that's the only criteria needed, especially when he was the first in school history to do so.

At North Carolina, the only way to get your number in the rafters is to win POY.