Kentucky’s Derek Anderson talks about his documentary film on the 1996 Kentucky Wildcats, who he still keeps in touch with and what are his future plans related to the film industry (run time is 8:15; transcript below the jump).
[podcast]http://www.lostlettermen.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Anderson11.mp3[/podcast]……
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Lost Lettermen: This is Jim Weber from Lost Lettermen.com and I’m joined by Kentucky’s Derek Anderson. Derek thanks for joining us.
You recently put together a film, “The Untouchables: The Greatest Team Ever,” about the 1996 Wildcats. Obviously it’s a very big claim. Why’d you decide to go with that name and stick with that theme?
Derek Anderson: Well we look at ESPN and they ranked us the second best college basketball team. So it wasn’t like we self-proclaimed ourselves. We’re just debating whether we’re one or two because of our talent.
We had seven first-round draft picks. Ten guys go to the NBA. And you get that type of talent on the team, and you win it all, and the way we won, by an average of 24 points throughout the season, I think we laid the stamp down for how dominant we were.
So it’s for me to do is to lead the fans to remember what we did and I think Kentucky fans are so used to winning they really don’t remember, or they don’t realize the dominance that we had because we’re so used to winning.
LL: I know the movie premiered in Lexington last week. What was the feedback like that you’ve gotten?
DA: I got a million e-mails about how people wish they had got it. People are still buying DVDs now. They want this memory to be part of their collection. That’s all I’ve been getting. Nothing bad, nothing negative and it couldn’t have been because we did it the way we’re supposed to do. We left it with pride and class and we just illustrated the dominant team we were.
Everybody was interviewed, I got all the players. It was just awesome to see everybody and to get this thing done.
LL: Yeah, that was obviously a huge accomplishment of tracking everyone down. Who do you keep in touch with the most from the ’96 team?
DA: Tony Delk. He and I have always been close. Ron Mercer still. Me and him were, the last year we played together in 1997, we always were close. I think Jeff (Sheppard), Tony are probably the guys I’m usually always closest to anyway.
That’s the way we were as a college team. We just all connected to each other so pretty much everyone stays in contact.
LL: We know that Tony is now working under John Calipari at Kentucky and Jeff Sheppard is still in Kentucky. What is Ron Mercer up to these days?
DA: He’s in Kentucky, finishing up getting his degree. He’s in Lexington going back and forth. I think he’s helping out as an assistant coach as well, in Louisville. But he’s back in town.
And now that everyone is retried except Nazr (Mohammed), I think everyone has seen each other now we really need to keep this friendship going.
LL: What’s this we hear about Antoine Walker possibly playing in Puerto Rico? Do you know, have you spoken with him?
DA: Yeah I spoke to him and I think if that’s what he wants to do … he still wants to play. He’s worrying about all his personal things but he just still loves to play and wants to play. So whatever makes him happy, that’s what he’s going to do.
LL: And what are you up to these days? Are you going into filmmaking or is this a one-time thing for you?
DA: Naw, I’ve already been in filmmaking. I’ve already put my hands on some things. I’ve got four scripts in front of me. Writing them. Sitcoms and movies. It’s just fun for me. I’ve been blessed to be successful in this field and so I’m sticking with it.
LL: What are your current projects you’re working on? Anything else UK Basketball-related? I’m sure the fans will eat that up.
DA: Yeah well I’m getting 110 years of excellence. Putting a whole bunch of all the ex-players that are still able and alive and well enough to travel, I want to have an event next year to where everyone sees them, whether it be the last time we’re together or the first time of many. I want to get us together so we can give tribute and give thanks to all the fans.
I mean there’s fans who are like maybe 70-80 years old who saw so many teams before me and actually saw me and watching the team now. I think it’d be great for those dedicated fans to get a moment to share with the history of Kentucky basketball.
LL: Now I found this very interesting that today on ESPN.com they ranked the most devastating injuries of all time and they put your injury down in ’97 as one of them, saying that you guys would’ve walked to a national championship over Arizona if you hadn’t gotten hurt.
Do you feel that way?
DA: Yeah. Arizona’s Mike Bibby and I joke that they’re going to retire my jersey in Arizona because I gave them the national championship without even stepping on the court.
Me being the best defender and the leading scorer on the team, there’s no way they could’ve beaten us in an overtime game. We’d have beaten them hands down and that shows you how dominant our team was, that we got back to the championship game without our leading scorer, which is me. And no other team in the country could do that.
LL: Yeah. What do you remember best about the ’96 season? It did seem so easy at times for Kentucky.
DA: I think the games were just so much fun but the off the court stuff that we did, wrestling, bowling, laser tag. Everything else that we did, that’s what we remember. When I did the interviews, that was one thing that everyone agreed upon. It’s like, “The games are easy.” Practices were hard but once you got to the games, you knew you were going to win, so it was just like, hey, let’s just go do what we do and get ready for practice the next day.
And that’s the attitude that we took. So once we got the days off or we got to go bowling and hanging out, those are the memories that we all remember because now when you go to the pros, you don’t do that. Even when you’re retired now, you have to find time with your family and everything else.
But at that point we were a family and that’s what we did and that’s what we remember most.
LL: What do you think happened in that SEC Tournament final against Mississippi State where you guys were upset? How do you think that happened when you guys were winning, like you said, by 25 points a game.
DA: It was easy, coach took all the starters out. People don’t realize but if you watch the tape he took the starters out and didn’t play us for like seven minutes. You can’t use your press for seven minutes if you expect people not to get tired. That’s how we beat teams, we wore teams down.
We winded up getting worn down and then he put some of us back in. He did put Antoine back in, so our whole thing was messed up like the UMass game the first game. We were all thrown off, guys weren’t playing the way they used to. Everything just changed and coach made a decision because that’s what he wanted to do.
But it showed once we won the championship that, hey, we just beat this team by 20 points, in their arena. So it wasn’t like we couldn’t beat them.
LL: Yeah. Did he do that because he wanted to keep you guys rested for the tournament? What was his thinking there?
DA: I have no idea. You’d have to ask him. To this day we still don’t know. People say he did it on purpose to show us, you know what, to humble us. We didn’t understand it to this day but he did it for a reason and obviously it worked out.
LL: Did you feel humbled after that game? Did you feel like that drove you to a championship or do you look back and are just puzzled by it?
DA: Naw, he pissed us off actually. It didn’t humble us. He made us very upset and I think that’s what he wanted to do, is get the fire back into us because we felt like no one should beat us. We worked too hard in practice, we had too much talent.
I mean when you sub in NBA players for another NBA player, that’s hard to do. And other teams felt the same pressure. So for us it was definitely not something we wanted to do. We wanted to win the rest of the season out and break records. But we did it and that’s what we have to live with.
LL: At what point during the season did you guys say, “We’re going to win the national championship hands down? It seems like when people really seemed to realize it was when you guys played Keith Van Horn and Utah and people said, they were picking Utah as a surprise pick and then you guys crushed them by 30. That’s when most people seemed to realize it. When did you guys?
DA: We felt like that after we beat Georgia Tech by 30 at home and we literally just like, everyone scored, we played the way we wanted to. That showed the rest of the country, “You know what, these guys have too many players.” I mean Wayne Turner got player of the game and like six or seven other guys got double figures. It was just like, it was unbelievable.
So for us I think it was that game and everybody admitted to, we finally beat a team by 30 and that’s what we were going to do the rest of the season. And honestly we started doing it. 90-50 against Tennessee. 86 points at the half against LSU. So I think we just started to dominate and we just couldn’t lose after that game.
LL: Well the film is definitely a must have for any UK fan. You can find it at untouchablesofkentucky.com. Derek Anderson thanks so much for your time, we really appreciate it.
DA: Not a problem, thanks for having me.
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I think he’s wrong on that UK fans don’t remember. That is the team that all UK teams are measured by. Personally, I taped (no DVD back then) all games but 2 of that season because I knew how special they were going to be. The alley-oop dunk off the backboard from Anderson to McCarty is one of my all time favorite memories from that season as well the LSU beat-down.