When one sport, one school, one supreme program so dominates a state, you can take its measure with sounds alone. Cock an ear to the sound track of more than a century of basketball in the Bluegrass State and you'll hear:
The buzz of the Hyatt lobby in advance of a game at Rupp Arena….
The rap of a hammer as Governor Happy Chandler pounds a nail into the floor of Memorial Coliseum to mark the spot from which Joe Hagan's 48-footer beat Marquette in 1938….
The strains of that same Happy Chandler, a half-century later, leading the crowd in My Old Kentucky Home on Senior Day….
Walter Cornett, of Glendale, Kentucky, is the owner and operator of Walter's Wildcat World. He founded WildcatWorld.com in 1998 making it one of the oldest Kentucky basketball fan sites in operation today.