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posted 02-27-2015 04:07 PM
Dusty Mills was a freshmen walk-on at Kentucky for the 2007-2008 season, Billy Gillispie’s first year as head coach. Mills has agreed to share his diary entries from that time with KSR, but first, he wanted to respond to Vanderbilt’s Kevin Stalling’s tirade against Wade Baldwin last night. In case you missed it, Stallings berated Baldwin after the game, yelling “I will f****** kill you” at him in the handshake line. The incident was caught on camera, and when Stallings found that out, he apologized to Baldwin in his postgame remarks.
Mills has coached at the high school and AAU levels and wanted to share his thoughts…
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I’m a coach. Whether or not I ever get to prove it at the collegiate level, I am a coach. I know the game, I mastered the game. I mastered it as a 5’6” white kid with blonde hair who happened to walk-on to the winningest college basketball program of all time. (28-0 and counting)
Point is, I know the game. Worst part is: I can’t get a coaching job. But you know who did? Kevin Stallings.
I had one run-in with Kevin Stallings in my life. I was 16, sophomore in high school, and at the SEC Tournament in 2005 in Atlanta. Vandy has just gotten upset by Auburn (last in the SEC West that year) and my Dad and I happened to be on the elevator at the Hilton with Kevin. On the elevator, Kevin was messing up his hair and cussing out every player in sight (to himself, I may add, as he should have tonight). At the time, I just laughed with my dad about it, not knowing what that stress as a college basketball coach would include.
Well, join me. Let’s fast forward three years later. Suddenly, I am playing under the wings of Billy Clyde Gillispie. No need for details, we all know (some of) the stories. Dude was crazy… CRAZY!! But I will tell you something about Billy Clyde (and keep in mind that him and I have NO relationship, even with my multiple attempts to reach out to him): Billy DID care about his players. I never doubted that. I never will doubt that. He tried challenging us every day. Yes, his methods were crazy, yes sometimes he seemed insane. Yes, sometimes you gave him the look that Kobe gave on “Jimmy Kimmel” the other day. But the guy cared.
Want to know why know I’m fired up about this? Three years ago, I started my own AAU program. In that time, I coached some crazy ass kids, I mean hell, imagine kids from the inner city who are playing for a blonde short white boy whom they don’t truly believe played at Kentucky. I got pissed, I yelled things, I COACHED kids when they needed it; but guess what? I loved each and every one of those kids. And when I say love, I mean I cared. I wanted to give them a better life, I wanted to make sure when they left my hand, they had a future. Yes, I was hard at times. But there are 2 things I would have never done:
◾Physically grabbed them (Hi chair thrower)
◾Let anybody ever think my players weren’t the best citizens.
So, now we move back to Kevin.
Look, I get it, you have a kid you’ve been frustrated with. That’s fine. I had multiple. And they were three years younger than Wade Baldwin. I had cocky **** happen in the hand shake line ALL THE TIME. You know what I did? I kept shaking hands, then took him to the side and talked to him about it. But at no point, EVER, would I put him on blast in public for his actions. Why? Because I cared about him and his future. I wasn’t worried about my contract (like I had one) or what people would think (like Kevin), but I cared about him and his future. My plan was to make him a better man. And as recently as two weeks ago, I got a call from a mother of one of my players that said “thank you.”
I’m SURE Wade’s Mom will call Kevin and say the same.
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Posts: 13248 | From: flatwoods,ky. | Registered: Oct 2000
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