County’s Blue Chipper in Bluegrass Country

LeRon Ellis, the 6-11 Renaissance man formerly of Mater Dei High School, now finds himself with but a single force-fed passion: basketball.

Gone are the days of cooking cute little chocolate-mocha gingerbread houses for the high school bake-off. Or auditioning for drama club plays. Or dabbling in water polo. Or even finding time to re-read his favorite book, “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

Instead, his mornings are stuffed with freshmen classes, his afternoons filled by intense and ultra-competitive practices, his evenings often spent playing not so much a game but the business of Kentucky basketball.

This is like no other place; Ellis knew that months ago when he signed his letter of intent. He had been told of the tradition, treated to the hospitality, shown the legacies--those stately national championship banners that hang above the Rupp Arena floor like cloth monuments. There is an aura here, both inspiring and stifling.

“One of our seniors, (forward) Winston Bennett, said in the paper one time that it’s almost like we’re the Russians and everybody else is the USA every time we play them,” said Ellis. “If they beat us, they go nuts, it’s a big upset. But if we beat them, it’s just another win for Kentucky.”

No other NCAA team has won more games than Kentucky, has a higher winning percentage, has been invited to more postseason tournaments. Only UCLA has earned more national championships or won more NCAA tournament games. So talk all you like about the brilliancy of Dean Smith’s North Carolina, the integrity of Bobby Knight’s Indiana, the fabled past of the Bruins, but there is only one program that clings to its tradition so tightly: Kentucky.

And now Ellis, 18 and still refreshingly innocent, is part of it. He said he remembers marveling at the sight of Kentucky’s first workout, scheduled annually at Memorial Coliseum at 12:01 a.m., Oct. 15--the very minute the NCAA allows teams to begin practices--and attended by about 12,000 fans. “It can only happen at Kentucky,” he said.

And what about the preseason barnstorming tours, where fans, many whom purchase scalped tickets, cram themselves into small high school gyms just for the chance to see a Kentucky scrimmage?

But with tradition comes expectations. Lots of them. It isn’t enough to win 20 games here. Or the Southeastern Conference; that’s a given. Kentucky fans--fawning, temperamental, given to fits of fierce loyalty and rage--want more banners.

“They roll with the good things, but when something bad happens, they roll over you,” Ellis said. “They won’t go, ‘Oh, OK, that’s all right, get back up for the next game, it’s no big deal, you got a loss but we should have beat them.’

“When we lose, it’s like this on the call-in shows: ‘THEY’RE NOT GIVING 100%! WHAT’S WRONG WITH OUR PLAYERS? THIS IS ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE LOSER TEAMS!’ Oh, man, I mean, they get on us. They get on the individual players. They get on the team. I’m not saying all of our fans are like that. There are some die-hard fans who won’t care if you lose or win. But then there’s those fans who love to win, who don’t like to lose and don’t like you if you lose.”

Today, when Ellis and the Wildcats play Syracuse, on national television, the Kentucky radio network will beam the game on more than 90 stations (in contrast, the Angels have 23), including a 50,000-watt station in Cincinnati, which can reach 40 states. There will be the usual sellout crowd of 23,000. Among those, a considerable cheering section for sophomore guard Rex Chapman, who has attained such lofty status that you can buy “I Luv Rex” or “Rex Chapman Fan Club” T-shirts.

Head Coach Eddie Sutton will be there, of course. Sutton, who like Joe B. Hall before him, is faced with the task of somehow duplicating the accomplishments of the legendary Adolph Rupp.

And Ellis, who barely knows how to sing “My Old Kentucky Home” yet, is expected to fulfill the potential that comes with his high school playing resume. Ellis is doing what he can, but it doesn’t come with the same effortlessness that it did at Mater Dei.

Here, almost every player made some high school All-American team. Such as Eric Manuel, a 6-6 freshman recruit from Macon, Ga., who, at the moment, said Sutton, is everything they had hoped Ellis would be: Strong, aggressive, sure of himself.

This would explain one of Sutton’s dilemmas: Start Manuel and sacrifice much-needed size, or start Ellis, hampered earlier by illness and injury, and sacrifice production. Lately, Sutton has chosen Ellis, in hopes performance would improve with playing time. But against LSU last week, Ellis sat and Manuel started, scoring 14 points and adding 7 rebounds in 31 minutes.

Ellis had five points and one rebound in 15 minutes.

“I do know that (Ellis is) not as intense, as aggressive, as mentally tough as you need to be at this level of competition,” Sutton said. “But he’s getting a lot better along those lines.”

Just the other day, Sutton stopped part of a three-hour practice to lecture Ellis on moving without the ball. Ellis listened, shook his head slightly and then worked to get open. It worked--Ellis began to get position on his defender--but no one would pass him the ball. So he threw up his hands and pouted. At workout’s end, assistant coach Dwane Casey called Ellis over, presumably to discuss the incident.

Not that Ellis is a flop. To the contrary. He said he arrived hoping only to become the sixth man. Instead, he’s started seven games. “Basically, I’m trying to make progress,” Ellis said.

And don’t think Kentucky fans haven’t been watching. One gentleman wrote one of the several Kentucky publications--this one called The Cats’ Pause--to inform readers that Ellis turns the ball over every 13.61 minutes compared to the 13.69 minutes of the senior center Rob Lock. “Out of curiosity, I also found that Lock scores a point every 2.3 minutes and grabs a rebound every 3.7 minutes (compared to Ellis’ 2.8 minutes per point and 4.4 minutes per rebound),” wrote Mr. Bobby Tandy of Lexington.

Out of curiosity? Get a life.

Ellis doesn’t seem to mind. Then again, this is one of the Kentucky players who didn’t list his all-time favorite movie as “Beverly Hills Cop,” or “Death Wish III.” He listed “The Breakfast Club” as his favorite.

“(Kentucky basketball is) like a religion and everybody expects so much of you, but you don’t put that much emphasis on that,” Ellis said. “If you do, then you’re not going to be able to play like you know how. You can’t listen to what everybody says. You’ve just got to go out and play your game.”

Ellis is playing it just fine. So you struggle with The J--for jumper--once in a while. Big deal. Just never lose The P--for perspective.