Last week Billy Gillispie was accused of breaking practice rules, practicing for eight hours straight, and forcing players to play while injured. This week Gillispie has checked himself into the Mayo clinic for treatment of high blood pressure and “other things”? I think we all have an idea what those “other things” could be.
He was one of college basketball’s hottest coaches and in a matter of five years he’s checking himself into clinics and having his players openly discuss their dislike for him. It also seems that those who played for Gillispie before his tenure at UK, have a different perspective.
Texas Tech coach Billy Gillispie, in a text message to The Associated Press late Tuesday, said he would be treated for high blood pressure “amongst other things,” at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Gillispie had hoped to admit himself last week, a source told ESPN.com, but Gillispie had to wait for a spot to become available at the prestigious medical facility.
News that Gillispie is voluntarily seeking medical attention comes two weeks after a handful of Texas Tech players met with compliance officials and Hocutt to voice concern about the way Gillispie was running the program. Among their complaints were Gillispie mistreating athletes and that he exceeded the NCAA limit on practice times, a secondary violation for which he’d already been reprimanded in January.
Gillispie has been told not to have any contact with the team until he and Hocutt have a face-to-face meeting, according to a report in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.
Hocutt said he won’t make a decision about Gillispie’s future until he meets with the coach to ask him about various claims.
Here are some comments from players who played for Gillispie before his time at UK…
“I would play for him again,” Robert Lewandowski wrote in an email from Poland, where he plays professionally. “He loves his players, with no exceptions. I would never doubt that for a second. Playing for him was tough, but I came out alive and a better person for it.”
“I wouldn’t change anything that happened over the last four years,” said Lewandowski, who spent three seasons under Pat Knight before Gillispie was hired in March 2011. “Coach Gillispie pushed me to my physical and mental limits, and I came out an improved person. I know I can handle anything that comes my way. The process wasn’t very pretty, but isn’t that how life usually is?”
Current Texas Tech broadcaster Andy Ellis — who played for Bob Knight at the program and traveled with the team throughout last season — told King that he never saw Gillispie cross the line last season. Other accounts from former players were similar: Gillispie was a difficult guy, sure, and he could be tough, but he wasn’t the full-on bad guy caricature other accounts had made him out to be.
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This makes me believe that Gillispie’s time at UK is the tipping point for his on and off court struggles today. We all knew coaching at UK is a pressure cooker and definitely not for everyone. Not succeeding on such a public stage would be difficult for anyone to overcome, but not impossible.
Even if we did lost to Gardner Webb, I can’t imagine having to go through the things that Billy Clyde has had to endure over the past three years. We’ve all taken our shots at Billy Clyde (I even ran a fake billy clyde twitter account), I wish him the best in the future.
