Rodrick Rhodes grew up on an asphalt prairie in Jersey City, N.J. So when the former Kentucky Wildcats and NBA forward shocked the commonwealth's basketball community last summer by taking a high school head-coaching job at tiny Cordia in Knott County, he was confounded by the twisting roads that wind up and down the Eastern Kentucky mountains. “He got up here, he was afraid to drive,” said Mitch Smith, Rhodes' assistant coach at Cordia. “Ask him.”

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.