Mark Story: NCAA women's tournament adds a chapter to Memorial Coliseum's history

If only Memorial Coliseum could talk, the stories it could tell.

It could speak about Dec. 7, 1957, when, arguably, the most famous shot in Kentucky Wildcats men's basketball history occurred within the confines of the Coliseum.

Adolph Rupp's Cats trailed visiting Temple by two with one second to go in overtime when Vernon Hatton let loose with a 47-foot set shot.

Remarkably, it went in.

"What I remember, the fans were filing out of there (before the shot)," Hatton, 79, recalled this week. "It looked like we were beat, so you couldn't really blame them. After my shot went in, I guess people got to their cars, turned on their radios and heard we'd tied it, because they started coming back in."

By the time Kentucky won, 85-83 in triple overtime, "the Coliseum, I don't know if it was full again, but it was pretty close," Hatton said.

This weekend, Memorial Coliseum will host first- and second-round games in the women's NCAA Tournament. On Friday, No. 2 seed UK will face No. 15 Tennessee State at 2:30 p.m. The game will be preceded by No. 7 seed Dayton playing No. 10 Iowa State at noon. The winners will meet at 2:30 p.m. Sunday for a spot in the Sweet 16.

Those who attend will be watching basketball in a Kentucky historical treasure.

Opened in 1950, the Coliseum was home to the final 21 Rupp-coached UK teams (because of NCAA sanctions, Kentucky did not play in the 1952-53 season) and the first three coached by his successor, Joe B. Hall.

If the Coliseum could talk, it might tell you that the claim that a Kentucky men's basketball crowd has never rushed the floor to celebrate victory is untrue. On March 8, 1973, Kentucky beat Tennessee, 86-81, to win the SEC title and a berth in the NCAA Tournament.

Exuberant Cats fans stormed the court and carried first-year head coach Hall off on their shoulders. "I still have a picture of that," Hall said.

When the UK men moved into 23,000-seat Rupp Arena to start the 1975-76 season, it gave more fans a chance to see the Cats. Something was lost, though.

"The Coliseum was just such an intimate setting," Hall said. "It took us a long time to develop in Rupp the home-court comfort, the advantage we had in Memorial."

When the Kentucky men moved downtown, having won 306 and lost 38 in the Coliseum (Kentucky later won an NIT game there in 2009) the UK women's hoops program inherited on-campus Memorial as a home of their own.

If the Coliseum could talk, it would tell about Feb. 5, 1983, when 10,622 fans, then a national record for women's basketball, filled Memorial to see stars Valerie Still, Lea Wise and Patty Jo Hedges lead UK past No. 6 Old Dominion.

Or it could tell about the night of Feb. 25, 2011, when Victoria Dunlap, one of the three 2,000-plus point scorers in UK women's hoops history, spiced up her senior night by singing the national anthem. Kentucky then survived a spirited Arkansas upset bid, winning 55-54 on a last-second A'dia Mathies layup.

"I just remember, I was way more nervous about singing than the (close) game," Dunlap said this week.

In recent years, as Kentucky women's coach Matthew Mitchell has built UK into a consistent top-15 program, some people have wondered whether it's time for UK Hoops to follow the men and leave the now-8,000-seat Coliseum to play full-time in Rupp Arena.

Mitchell doesn't seem really interested in ever leaving a venue where his teams are 89-8 over the past six years.

"It's going to take my bosses to tell me to leave Memorial Coliseum," Mitchell said not long ago. "Memorial is an awesome place to play."

If only Memorial Coliseum could talk, the stories it could tell.

This story was originally published March 19, 2015 at 9:24 AM with the headline "Mark Story: NCAA women's tournament adds a chapter to Memorial Coliseum's history."