UK recruit’s father grew up ‘idolizing Kenny Payne’ ... and the Louisville Cardinals
There’s often a hometown pull when it comes to high-profile college basketball commitments. Local fans get to know a young player who transforms into a star, and they want him to stay nearby and play for their favorite school. It’s a natural reaction.
And, naturally, Minnesota basketball fans would love nothing more than for Matthew Hurt — a McDonald’s All-American and one of the greatest high school players in state history — to make a surprise announcement that he’ll be playing next season for the Golden Gophers.
There’s another state with plenty of connections to Hurt and his family. It’s Kentucky.
“We have a lot of family still in Kentucky,” Richard Hurt, the star recruit’s father, told the Herald-Leader. “We have family in Owensboro. We have family in Murray. My cousin is a UK grad and she’s down in Nashville.”
The elder Hurt attended Murray State, just like his parents. He named off a long list of family and close friends that live in Kentucky and root hard for the Wildcats. Those folks, naturally, would love for Matthew to play for UK next season. He’ll likely choose either Kentucky, Duke, Kansas or North Carolina, a list of blue-blood options that has garnered plenty of interest inside and outside of his own home state.
“Our best friends from college live in Owensboro,” Hurt’s father said. “They’re teachers, and they have their kids come up to them all the time and ask them about Matthew. And they want him to go to Kentucky, right? So, it’s, ‘Oh, we saw something written about Duke’ and this and that.”
Rumors like that often warrant a phone call to find out what’s going on back in Minnesota.
“Big Blue Nation is definitely a real thing,” Hurt said with a chuckle.
He witnessed as much first-hand.
Richard Hurt started his undergraduate work at Murray State in 1989, the same year that Rick Pitino took over a UK program saddled with probation and quickly turned it back into a college basketball powerhouse.
“I was there for kind of the revitalization of Kentucky basketball in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s,” Hurt said. “To be a student at Murray State University — and obviously Murray is a very good basketball school — but there was nothing like Kentucky. Whether it was on TV or on the radio or whatever it was, it was all over the place.”
One problem: Hurt, at the time, was a Louisville fan.
His father, Richard Sr., had played basketball for Murray State before attending U of L’s medical school and moving to Memphis for residency. That’s where Matthew’s dad spent the first year or two of his life, then Richard Sr. got on staff at the Mayo Clinic and the family moved to Rochester, Minn., settling there. But the Cardinals — not the Gophers — were their team.
“One of my earliest memories was the 1980 championship,” Richard Hurt said. “And I grew up idolizing Kenny Payne. I was a Louisville fan, right? Nobody could shoot the ball like number 21 back in the day. Seriously.”
Payne, of course, is now the top assistant for John Calipari at Kentucky and actively recruiting Hurt’s son to come play for the Wildcats, a shared rival from more than 20 years ago.
Richard Hurt said that he still considers himself a fan of Louisville — and mentioned that his brother, a U of L medical school alumnus, is an even bigger fan — though he noted with a grin that he sure wasn’t rooting for the Cardinals last week when they played Minnesota, the team his oldest son, Michael, plays for. The Gophers ended the Cardinals’ season in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
“I’m still a fan,” he said. “And the Kentucky guys know that.”
As often happens in recruiting, though, parents also become fans of the schools pursuing their children. It’s been no different with Hurt, who heaped praise on Calipari and the UK coaching staff throughout his interview with the Herald-Leader and noted that Matthew would have a terrific support system inside the state should he ultimately choose to play for the Wildcats.
His U of L fandom only goes so far these days.
“Now, my brother is very different,” he said with a smile. “Having gone to medical school at Louisville, not only is he a big Louisville fan, he’s not a big fan of the University of Kentucky. BUT, I should say, he has said that if Matthew chooses to go there he will absolutely be all in.”