To anyone who is a member of the Big Blue Nation, it would be a dream to own a Kentucky Final Four ring. For Jeff Brassow, that dream came true during the 1992-1993 season when Kentucky returned to the Final Four for the first time since 1984.
Kentucky, under Rick Pitino, was in the process of rebuilding The Dynasty, after a devastating probation period, so that trip to the Final Four was priceless, both for the team and for the Big Blue Nation.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
With that said, imagine how important a Final Four ring is to a member of the 1993 team, one Jeff Brassow. Priceless…
About ten years ago, that dream was lost, only to find its way home this week, all the way from a local Lexington landfill, that’s right, the dump.
Here are some excerpts from this amazing story:
[QUOTE]About 10 years ago, the way Brassow explains it, he let his roommate look at it and put it on. For some reason or another, of which Brassow cannot remember, the two got separated and his roommate accidentally walked off with the ring.
When they met up later, Brassow’s roommate mysteriously claimed he had “lost it.” Suffice to say, Brassow was devastated.
“I was not happy at all,” Brassow said. “We looked and looked and looked for it and could not find it.”
Following an exhaustive search, Brassow finally gave up hope of finding the ring. After all, finding an object no bigger than a golf ball was like finding a needle in a haystack.
“I had forgotten all about it,” Brassow said. “I had just kind of written it off. There had been several times where I thought for my birthday or Christmas that I might replace it but I never got around to it.”
Randy Davis, a public service supervisor in the LFUCG, saw a fellow employee wearing the ring around and showing it off. Davis was a little skeptical about what the man was showing him until he got a closer look.
“It wasn’t in that bad of shape,” Davis said. “I don’t know what kind of ring it was from 1993, what kind of ring they’d given him, but it wasn’t a gold ring. He had maybe a stone in it. It had ‘Brassow’ on the side, ‘Kentucky’ on one side, the black onyx was on the top of it, the ‘NCAA,’ and on the inside of it was engraved with his name.”
Davis, through a friend, got in contact with the UK athletics department and found Brassow’s number. The two hooked up over the phone and Davis sent the ring to Brassow in Charleston, S.C.
Brassow received the ring in the mail a few days ago. Brassow was floored.
“I was like, ‘Wow,’ because I’ve got two young kids that I would love to show that to someday,” Brassow said. “I was obviously very excited. I had kind of put it in the back of my mind.”
The ring, after 10 years, returned to Brassow in relatively good shape.
“It doesn’t matter to me where they found it,” Brassow said. “I’m just glad they found it and returned it to me. It still fits and it still looks good.”[/QUOTE]AMAZING!!!
Go Cats!!!
Contact Chip Miller with your Kentucky questions or comments at [EMAIL=”[email protected]”][email protected][/EMAIL], via twitter at [URL=”http://twitter.com/ukbigbluenation”]@ukbigbluenation[/URL] or here at N of B, at his NofB Profile, by [URL=”http://www.nationofblue.com/members/chip-miller/”]clicking here[/URL].
