Most of all, I remember the empty orange chair. Fifteen years have come and gone. Fifteen Roads to fifteen Final Fours. Fifteen shining moments. But that day at the Basketball Hall of Fame there was only the vacant chair. I was writing then for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, the closest newspaper to the University of Massachusetts campus, so I had been given an up-close look at the basketball program under John Calipari. The press conference at the Hall in early June 1996 had been set up weeks earlier.
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.