The star of UK basketball’s most unusual NCAA Tournament moment is back in March Madness
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Tracking NCAA games in Rupp Arena
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As NCAA Tournament games tip off across the country this week, there will be no shortage of coaches stressing the importance of the attention to detail and fundamentals it takes to advance in March Madness.
But no coach might understand the impact of that lesson more than Wofford’s Dwight Perry.
The pressure of March can create mistakes. The spotlight is so bright that even the most basic of routines can be altered.
That’s how Perry found himself starting a 2007 NCAA Tournament game against Villanova as a freshman walk-on at Kentucky whose statistical contributions to that point in the season were not even enough to round up to one minute played on the official stat sheet.
“Obviously as a freshman at Kentucky and walking on, my chances of playing in the main part of that game were very low,” he said Wednesday just before his Wofford team took the Rupp Arena court for its pre-first round open practice. “So, I was excited. I had no pressure, no stress.
“... Everything that happened between the horn sounding and the starting lineups taking place, it was fast. It was a blur. But my biggest thought in my head was do not mess this up. Do not be the reason we lose.”
In perhaps the most bizarre NCAA Tournament moment in Kentucky basketball’s illustrious postseason history, Perry was incorrectly entered into the official scorebook as a starter for the Villanova game instead of his cousin, normal UK starter Bobby Perry. After the lineup was filed, Kentucky coach Tubby Smith was faced with two options: take a technical foul and the accompanying Villanova free throws for altering the entered starting lineup or start Perry on the biggest stage in college basketball.
Smith elected to start Perry but instructed him to immediately foul the Villanova player who came down with the ball after the tipoff. With Bobby Perry already stationed at the scorer’s table, Dwight’s NCAA Tournament start lasted just three seconds.
“He should be thankful for me to get him to start a game,” former UK assistant coach David Hobbs, the coach who made the lineup error, told the Herald-Leader this week with a laugh. “I think he probably started as many games that year as Jodie Meeks did.”
Hobbs, now retired, has no trouble remembering the details of that day even as some of the other moments in his almost 50 years of coaching have faded into obscurity.
His general practice was to wait until as close to the deadline to enter the starting lineup as possible to make sure he could come back to the huddle with the list of the opponent’s starting five. He stuck with that plan before the Villanova game but was sidetracked by someone who stopped him to deliver a message on the way to the scorer’s table.
By the time he had finished that brief conversation there were only seconds left to check the starters on the official scoresheet.
“I’m kind of in a hurry, and I’m checking them all,” Hobbs said. “Check, check, check, check, check. Of course, Randolph Morris and Joe Crawford and Ramel Bradley, whoever it was. And when I get to Perry, when they put them in the book, they put the last name first and then their first name. So I see Perry, I check it off.”
In his haste to meet the deadline, Hobbs had not realized the first Perry he saw on the list was Dwight instead of Bobby.
“We got so many Perrys on the team: Dwight Perry, Bobby Perry, Perry Stevenson,” Smith said after the game. “You look at the scorebook, you couldn’t even read it. But I guess a rule is a rule.”
The good news for Hobbs and Kentucky was the gaffe did not end up having any long-term consequences. No. 8 seed Kentucky beat No. 9 seed Villanova 67-58. There were even jokes after the game about keeping Perry in the starting lineup for good luck in the next game against No. 1 seed Kansas.
Smith elected to return to his normal starting five for that game, which Kentucky lost, but Perry’s spot in Kentucky basketball lore was secured.
“We would never have said it back in 2007 but I’ve (told him), ‘You know what? I’m going to play a few minutes until the next dead ball,’” Bobby Perry said. “But him being kind of had that coach’s mind and having the respect for the game plan, he obeyed Coach Smith and fouled immediately.
“That was a special moment, I think one of the more memorable moments in all of Kentucky basketball NCAA history. I mean, to this day, people come up to me and say, ‘Do you remember when your cousin started for you in the NCAA Tournament?’”
While the lineup gaffe was enough to secure Perry a spot in Kentucky basketball lore, it was far from the end of his story.
After playing part of his freshman season without a name on his jersey, Perry stayed at Kentucky after Smith left for Minnesota. He was on the roster for both of the tumultuous seasons of Billy Gillispie’s brief Kentucky tenure then had his college career end a year early when John Calipari elected not to retain the large group of walk-ons he inherited from Gillispie when he took over the program in 2009.
Even when Perry first arrived at Kentucky as a practice player who had to prove to Smith he was worthy of a spot on the roster, his goal was to prepare for a coaching career. Even he would have had trouble predicting the exact way that plan would play out though.
Perry started his coaching career with two years as an intern at Stanford before being hired as a graduate assistant by Shaka Smart at Virginia Commonwealth. He spent five years as an assistant at Furman before being hired as an assistant at Wofford in 2019. Midway through the 2022-23 season, he was named interim head coach after Jay McAuley resigned.
A 12-12 record that season was enough to earn him the full-time job. Now, in his third season as Wofford’s coach, Perry led the Terriers to the Southern Conference Tournament title and a return to the NCAA Tournament.
“He’s always there for you to put his arm around you,” Wofford guard and former McCracken County High School star Jackson Sivills said. “He’s always going to make you feel welcome. And I think he does that to everyone in the program. Whether you’re a custodian or manager, player, starter, bench player, freshman, senior, he treats everyone the same.”
Considering Wofford finished sixth in the Southern Conference regular season race, few will pick the No. 15 seed Terriers to pull off the upset against No. 2 seed Tennessee on Thursday.
But Perry knows something about being dismissed.
He certainly did not look like a coach facing any pressure as he threw up shots alongside his players during Wofford’s open practice Wednesday and played with his children in the front row of the Rupp Arena stands, not far from the bench where he was stationed for the majority of his playing career.
“I think Dwight put his team in position to come away with the (conference tournament) victory,” Bobby Perry said. “... Dwight did some things early in the game that I actually questioned, as far as having three of his best players on the bench at one time, but now I know he knew what he was doing. He was saving their legs for the ending stretch. And sure enough, they got some key rebounds, some key stops, and they made all their free throws. That’s what won them the game.”
The return of Mark Pope to Lexington as Kentucky’s coach this season has offered a clear reminder that the Wildcats program can churn out elite coaches as well as high-level NBA talents.
No one will confuse the playing careers of Pope and Perry, but with NCAA rules prohibiting Kentucky from playing in its home arena for first weekend tournament games, it’s Perry who gets the benefit of playing at his former home. His experience during a roller-coaster stint as a Wildcat helped get him there.
And yes, he will be taking extra time to make sure the correct lineup gets filed with the official scorer before Thursday’s game.
“I think maybe I just get triggered randomly,” Perry said Wednesday. “I’m like, ‘Hey, did we turn the lineup in?’ And without fail a couple of our coaches always joke and they say, ‘Oh, I think we forgot.’
“... Through all the good, the bad, the ups and downs, the adversity, the highs, the lows, I’m forever appreciative of my total experience here. Obviously there’s definitely great times, there were bad times, but I wouldn’t trade any of it because it made me who I am today.”
This story was originally published March 19, 2025 at 4:35 PM.
