By Bill Koch
In April 2014, I attended the UC basketball banquet, as I did every spring after the season ended. I always frequented these affairs looking for a story beyond who won the team awards.
On this night, my story was about whether the school would use the occasion to announce that Sean Kilpatrick would have his No. 23 retired in Fifth Third Arena.
No such announcement was made.
“Kilpatrick is one of six Associated Press All-Americans in UC history,” I wrote. “He’s the school’s second-leading career scorer. Only he and Oscar Robertson have scored 2,000 or more points in their UC careers. If Kilpatrick doesn’t deserve to have his name on the south wall of Fifth Third Arena, who does? As it turns out, maybe no one.
“UC has retired only three numbers – Robertson’s No. 12, Jack Twyman’s No. 27, and Kenyon Martin’s No. 4. Robertson was a three-time national player of the year and is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, as is Twyman. Martin was national player of the year in 2000. Those are pretty high standards for retiring jersey numbers, so high that UC might never have another player who meets them."
When I asked then-head coach Mick Cronin that night if the school planned to retire Kilpatrick’s number, he said he didn’t have that authority. But he planned to find out who did.
“We have fewer numbers retired or people in rings of honor or whatever than any major program that I notice when we go to play games,” Cronin said. “You can’t hold everybody in player of the year status. It can’t be a Hall of Fame or consensus player of the year. If that’s the case, you may never have another number retired. I don’t know that that’s fair to some of the guys that have built the tradition of the program.
“I think that Sean should have his number retired, but I think that some other people need to be considered as well. Two that come to mind from the modern era would be Danny Fortson and Steve Logan.”
Seven years later, Cronin has moved on to become the head coach at UCLA, and still UC has only the same three retired numbers.
When Kilpatrick arrived on the UC campus in the summer of 2009 he was eager to make his mark after a year of prep school, only to discover that Cronin had other plans for him. At the time, Kilpatrick had a mechanical flaw in his jump shot. With quality players ahead of him, he would have received only marginal playing time as a true freshman. For Cronin, that made him an ideal candidate to be redshirted.
“I hated it,” Kilpatrick said for a profile I wrote about him at the start of his senior year. “But as I sat there and was really mad about it, Coach told me, ‘You’ve just got to take it with a grain of salt. You need to keep getting better.’ I was mad, but I just took it and said, ‘I’m going to take every practice and get better from that.’”
At the end of his redshirt year, he told his dad, “They can’t stop me no matter what. My time is coming.”
When he made his UC debut on Nov. 15, 2010 against Mount St. Mary’s, Kilpatrick was in the starting lineup and scored 21 points. He made 6-of-11 field goal attempts, 3-of-5 from 3-point range and 6-of-7 from the free throw line in 24 minutes in a 69-59 win before only 4,083 fans on a Monday night at Fifth Third Arena.
Kilpatrick scored his 2,000th point four years later on Feb. 22, 2014 on a driving layup in a 58-57 loss to Louisville at Fifth Third Arena. He finished the game with 28 points, including 22 in the second half.
He once told me how nervous he was the day Cronin was scheduled to visit him at Notre Dame Prep in Fitchburg, Mass., where he had gone after high school to improve his test scores so he could play in Division I. Cronin was having trouble locating the school and Kilpatrick was afraid he would just give up and return to Cincinnati. When the UC coach finally arrived, he told Kilpatrick he was the Bearcats’ top recruiting priority. Kilpatrick was so flattered he immediately arranged a visit to the UC campus.
“I didn’t visit anyplace else,” he said. “This was home for me.”
Kilpatrick led the American Athletic Conference in scoring his senior season with an average of 20.6 points per game. He was named a unanimous first-team All-American by the AP, but was snubbed when it came to the AAC Player of the Year award that went to Louisville’s Russ Smith.
“That’s something that really hurts a lot,” he said that day, “because I worked all summer and really all my life to try to get to situations like this, and it seems to always get snagged back from me. You’ve just got to use it as motivation.”
He was snubbed again when he wasn’t taken in the NBA draft, but he persevered and eventually played in the NBA for six different teams over four seasons. He’s currently playing professionally in Turkey.
Perhaps it would be too strong to say that his own school is currently snubbing him for not retiring his number. Or is it?
When I talked to Cronin last week about the possibility of Kilpatrick having his jersey number retired, the former UC coach was just as adamant as he was that night in 2014 at the banquet.
“This has to happen,” Cronin said. “I saw somebody wearing his number and got upset. I’m all for honoring more people, but Sean Kilpatrick was first-team All-American and the only guy not named Oscar to score 2,000 points. Nobody else can boast those credentials. I’m not looking to ruffle any feathers, but obviously this is something that I believe in and I planned on reaching out to (current UC athletic director) John Cunningham this summer to see where it’s at. It was my understanding when I left that it was going to happen.”
Coming soon: The case for Steve Logan and Danny Fortson
In April 2014, I attended the UC basketball banquet, as I did every spring after the season ended. I always frequented these affairs looking for a story beyond who won the team awards.
On this night, my story was about whether the school would use the occasion to announce that Sean Kilpatrick would have his No. 23 retired in Fifth Third Arena.
No such announcement was made.
“Kilpatrick is one of six Associated Press All-Americans in UC history,” I wrote. “He’s the school’s second-leading career scorer. Only he and Oscar Robertson have scored 2,000 or more points in their UC careers. If Kilpatrick doesn’t deserve to have his name on the south wall of Fifth Third Arena, who does? As it turns out, maybe no one.
“UC has retired only three numbers – Robertson’s No. 12, Jack Twyman’s No. 27, and Kenyon Martin’s No. 4. Robertson was a three-time national player of the year and is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, as is Twyman. Martin was national player of the year in 2000. Those are pretty high standards for retiring jersey numbers, so high that UC might never have another player who meets them."
When I asked then-head coach Mick Cronin that night if the school planned to retire Kilpatrick’s number, he said he didn’t have that authority. But he planned to find out who did.
“We have fewer numbers retired or people in rings of honor or whatever than any major program that I notice when we go to play games,” Cronin said. “You can’t hold everybody in player of the year status. It can’t be a Hall of Fame or consensus player of the year. If that’s the case, you may never have another number retired. I don’t know that that’s fair to some of the guys that have built the tradition of the program.
“I think that Sean should have his number retired, but I think that some other people need to be considered as well. Two that come to mind from the modern era would be Danny Fortson and Steve Logan.”
Seven years later, Cronin has moved on to become the head coach at UCLA, and still UC has only the same three retired numbers.
When Kilpatrick arrived on the UC campus in the summer of 2009 he was eager to make his mark after a year of prep school, only to discover that Cronin had other plans for him. At the time, Kilpatrick had a mechanical flaw in his jump shot. With quality players ahead of him, he would have received only marginal playing time as a true freshman. For Cronin, that made him an ideal candidate to be redshirted.
“I hated it,” Kilpatrick said for a profile I wrote about him at the start of his senior year. “But as I sat there and was really mad about it, Coach told me, ‘You’ve just got to take it with a grain of salt. You need to keep getting better.’ I was mad, but I just took it and said, ‘I’m going to take every practice and get better from that.’”
At the end of his redshirt year, he told his dad, “They can’t stop me no matter what. My time is coming.”
When he made his UC debut on Nov. 15, 2010 against Mount St. Mary’s, Kilpatrick was in the starting lineup and scored 21 points. He made 6-of-11 field goal attempts, 3-of-5 from 3-point range and 6-of-7 from the free throw line in 24 minutes in a 69-59 win before only 4,083 fans on a Monday night at Fifth Third Arena.
Kilpatrick scored his 2,000th point four years later on Feb. 22, 2014 on a driving layup in a 58-57 loss to Louisville at Fifth Third Arena. He finished the game with 28 points, including 22 in the second half.
He once told me how nervous he was the day Cronin was scheduled to visit him at Notre Dame Prep in Fitchburg, Mass., where he had gone after high school to improve his test scores so he could play in Division I. Cronin was having trouble locating the school and Kilpatrick was afraid he would just give up and return to Cincinnati. When the UC coach finally arrived, he told Kilpatrick he was the Bearcats’ top recruiting priority. Kilpatrick was so flattered he immediately arranged a visit to the UC campus.
“I didn’t visit anyplace else,” he said. “This was home for me.”
Kilpatrick led the American Athletic Conference in scoring his senior season with an average of 20.6 points per game. He was named a unanimous first-team All-American by the AP, but was snubbed when it came to the AAC Player of the Year award that went to Louisville’s Russ Smith.
“That’s something that really hurts a lot,” he said that day, “because I worked all summer and really all my life to try to get to situations like this, and it seems to always get snagged back from me. You’ve just got to use it as motivation.”
He was snubbed again when he wasn’t taken in the NBA draft, but he persevered and eventually played in the NBA for six different teams over four seasons. He’s currently playing professionally in Turkey.
Perhaps it would be too strong to say that his own school is currently snubbing him for not retiring his number. Or is it?
When I talked to Cronin last week about the possibility of Kilpatrick having his jersey number retired, the former UC coach was just as adamant as he was that night in 2014 at the banquet.
“This has to happen,” Cronin said. “I saw somebody wearing his number and got upset. I’m all for honoring more people, but Sean Kilpatrick was first-team All-American and the only guy not named Oscar to score 2,000 points. Nobody else can boast those credentials. I’m not looking to ruffle any feathers, but obviously this is something that I believe in and I planned on reaching out to (current UC athletic director) John Cunningham this summer to see where it’s at. It was my understanding when I left that it was going to happen.”
Coming soon: The case for Steve Logan and Danny Fortson
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