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Topic: Harrison sons shine after dad lifts a cloud
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catmandoo
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Member # 1284
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posted 03-16-2014 10:42 AM
You sure can see a difference in their play after a father son talk and it's really helped the Cats as a team.
After Kentucky was drubbed by Florida in its regular-season finale last week, Aaron Harrison Sr. went to Lexington to spend a few days with his sons Aaron and Andrew, the Wildcats’ star freshman guards.
He knew the season had not gone as planned, and he could sense that Andrew, the point guard, was tense. So they sat in a dorm room and had a long talk, and Andrew told his father that the pressure to leave for the NBA at year’s end was wearing on him.
As a high school senior, he had been slotted by most experts as a top-five draft pick this year, and now he was sliding down or even out of most projections. The NBA was his future, and now it was also a stress.
Aaron Sr. was taken aback. He said no father in the world is closer to his sons than he is, but he had never had an extensive talk about the NBA with them. He figured there was no need until it was time, and who knew when it would be time?
“What I told him was, ‘Son, me and your mother, we’re in a fine financial situation. It’s not like you have to go,” Aaron Sr. said by telephone on Saturday night. “If it doesn’t work out, we’ve got next year, the year after that or the year after that. …There’s no pressure for you to go. And I don’t know where he got that in his mind, that pressure. I told him not to worry about it. Relax and have fun.”
And just like that, Andrew felt a weight lifted off his shoulders. Maybe he was worried about disappointing his father. Maybe he just needed to hear from someone he loved that there was nothing to be ashamed about if his time was not now.
“He just told us, ‘Don’t worry about next year, just worry about the next practice,’ ” Andrew Harrison said. “Just play and have fun and play like you usually do, and everything will fall into place. It helped me take a deep breath and relax and think about what we could accomplish.”
Over the first two games of the SEC Tournament, Andrew Harrison has been a revelation. He has looked confident and poised and unburdened. He has looked like the player we’d once heard about.
He set a career high with eight assists in UK’s quarterfinal win over LSU on Friday, and then bested that with nine in the 70-58 win over Georgia on Saturday. Harrison’s assist-to-turnover ratio over these two games is nearly 3 to 1, more than double his season average entering the tournament.
Harrison also scored 10 straight UK points over a five-minute stretch late in the second half against the Bulldogs. When that flurry ended, he lobbed an alley-oop to James Young, putting a final stamp on an emphatic start here.
“I feel like this tournament is helping everybody with their confidence,” Harrison said.
Aaron Sr. spent four days in Lexington during his recent visit. Most mornings and nights, he went to UK’s practice facility with his sons. He wasn’t there to coach. He was just there to rebound their jump shots and be a sounding board and to “tell them things I’ve been telling them since they were 4.”
Aaron Sr. had never gone into great detail about the NBA with his sons because he never saw the point. And maybe Andrew took that to mean that leaving now was almost a foregone conclusion.
Aaron Sr. said Andrew has been noticeably less tense since their conversation. When the season ends, they’ll talk about the NBA. But right now, Andrew at least knows that his parents think there would be no shame in returning to UK.
“We like Kentucky, and we know what it’s like if you go back to Kentucky,” Aaron Sr. said. “If they come back, it won’t bother me. We’ll just figure out if there’s a future there for you in the NBA.”
And while that future might be this June after all, it is certainly not now, not during this run, not when things are finally going so well.
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[ 03-16-2014, 10:49 AM: Message edited by: catmandoo ]
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Posts: 186359 | From: st. augustine florida 32092 | Registered: Mar 2001
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rupps runt65
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Member # 1286
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posted 03-16-2014 11:02 AM
Nice story, sometimes a parents word's make all the difference!
Posts: 860 | From: jacksonville, fl. u.s.a. | Registered: Mar 2001
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catmandoo
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Member # 1284
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posted 03-16-2014 01:41 PM
rr, it's great to hear good stories but it seems like the bad stories always make the headlines.
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