Nice story on UMass and Coach Ford in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
[b][b]UMass rides with Ford[/b]
By Bud Barth
Worcester Telegram & Gazette
June 24, 2005
WORCESTER— For nearly a decade now, UMass basketball has been stranded in a graveyard of its past greatness, carefully tiptoeing among the headstones of Julius Erving, Jack Leaman, Marcus Camby and John Calipari while waiting for someone to resurrect that spirit.
That someone, many believe, is new head coach Travis Ford, the former University of Kentucky star who last night schmoozed with about 20 alumni from Central Massachusetts at a meet-and-greet session sponsored by the UMass Alumni Association at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.
Ford, whose last appearance in Worcester was in 1992 as a 5-foot-9 sophomore point guard with Kentucky when the Wildcats won two NCAA Tournament games at the Centrum, has been trying to light a fire under alumni at similar sessions in Boston and Amherst, with another one scheduled for Aug. 2 in New York.
Despite being asked to do so by one questioner at last night’s two-hour session, Ford refused to set any goals for the upcoming season, saying he never set targets for wins as a player or as a coach. But he did promise to kick-start a Minutemen team that finished 16-12 last season and has suffered through nine years of mediocrity (136-137) under Bruiser Flint and Steve Lappas since the departure of Calipari and Camby.
Ford vowed to produce a team “that you’re going to love watching, that’s going to play a style of basketball that’s going to be up-tempo; it’s going to be exciting, it’s going to be aggressive.”
The Minutemen will have only one senior this coming season, eight returning lettermen, and three Ford recruits. A fourth, 7-foot-1 West Virginia transfer Luke Bonner, will have to sit out this year after leaving the Mountaineers, but Ford said Bonner moves like he’s 6-6 or 6-7 and could be the Minutemen’s next Camby.
Ford’s other recruits, all of whom he said would have an immediate impact, are 6-foot-6 Brandon Thomas, 6-foot point guard Chris Lowe and hot-shooting junior college All-American James Life.
The coach unabashedly called Lowe “one of the best point guards in the country;” said Thomas “can do everything” and could conceivably play four positions from point guard to small forward, and noted that Light once scored 55 points and hit 10 3-pointers in a game.
“I’m back to get everyone excited about UMass basketball again,” said Ford, who guided Eastern Kentucky to its first NCAA appearance in 25 years and its first winning season in 11 years (22-9) last season. “We want to get it back to where it was in the Jack Leaman years, the John Calipari years, the Final Four years.
“We need you to come to the Mullins Center and get it to be the electrifying building that it can be and we’ve all seen it be in the mid-’90s. Don’t wait till we’re winning a year from now. We need you now to help us win.
“We need you to jump on board. We need your support, we need you to spread the word that great things are about to happen.”
Ford was noncommittal about future games in Worcester, where UMass tangled with the likes of Maryland and DePaul before huge crowds at the Centrum in the ’90s, and he also wouldn’t go out on a limb about possibly scheduling Holy Cross in the future.
“We need to get back to the point where we’re competing nationally and we can draw the interest back here to Worcester and get a game back here (at the DCU Center), whether it’s two years down the road, a year down the road, whatever it is,” Ford said. “If it was successful in the past, I don’t know why it couldn’t be successful in the future.
“But I think we’ve got to take our steps, get the Mullins Center packed, and then we can start moving out throughout the state, to Worcester, Boston, and Springfield.”[/b]