HOOVER, Ala. - Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings was wrapping up his time at the SEC Basketball Media Day podium Thursday when someone asked if the Commodores fans ever booed their players.
"They've booed plays," he said. "But not players."
Then he added, "I got booed one time as a player, though."
It seems that when Stallings was wrapping up his career at Purdue under longtime coach Gene Keady, the Boilermakers had begun to struggle, pushing Keady to bench Stallings in favor of Ricky Hall, whom Stallings magnanimously recalled as "a really good player."
But after Purdue roared out to a big lead against Wisconsin that day in 1982, Keady decided to sub Stallings into the game.
"The fans started booing," Stallings recalled. "They'd decided I was the reason we'd been struggling."
So did the famously cantankerous Keady offer his senior any words of encouragement?
"Nothing," Stallings replied. "Just something like, 'Get some thick skin, brother.'"
In fact, Stallings said he never really started again, not even on senior day.
"When I asked him why," Stallings said, trying to hold back a grin, "Coach said, 'Because I wanted to win.'"
Twenty-eight years later, the 74-year-old Keady is making news for returning to the bench as an assistant to former UCLA coach and ESPN analyst Steve Lavin at St. John's.
Said Stallings of Lavin, an old friend: "[Steve] needs all the advice he can get, anyway."
Personal police escort
When Georgia Lady Bulldogs guard Meredith Mitchell learned she was going home to the Birmingham area for Thursday's Media Day, her parents called to see if they could meet her at the Wynfrey Hotel, the site of the event.
What she didn't expect was for both of them to meet her in full sheriff's deputy gear, right down to their holstered weapons.
"I knew they'd both be here," Meredith said of her divorced parents, Bonita and Norman. "I just didn't know they'd both be in uniform.
She said there was at least one disadvantage during her childhood by having law-enforcement officers for parents.
"Oh, I definitely didn't date," she said. "The guys stayed away from my house."
During the three or four times a year she gets home now, she said, she can't stay away from her grandmother Marie Mitchell's home cooking.
"Grits, black-eye peas and chicken are my favorites," she said. "There's no better way to start the day than with her grits."
Root canal better
Kentucky coach John Calipari said he went to his dentist in Lexington for an emergency root canal at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
Looking out at close to 40 media types poised to ask him questions Thursday, Calipari said, "This is more painful."
Having lost five players to the first round of the NBA draft, including overall No. 1 pick John Wall, off last year's 35-3 team, this figures to be a somewhat painful year for the Wildcats. The severity of that pain almost certainly will be determined by 6-foot-10 post player Enes Kanter, a native of Turkey who has yet to be cleared by the NCAA, which is investigating whether he can be classified as an amateur after allegedly receiving money from a Turkish pro team.
Asked how much Kanter could mean to the Wildcats, junior forward Darius Miller said, "We'll be good either way. But we're better with him. Without him, we just don't have the dominant post player we had with DeMarcus Cousins or Patrick Patterson."