Nice article on Lake Kelly

Ever wonder where Lake Kelly went, here is an article from 02/25/2007 with a few Austin Peay references.

One for the history books
Lake Kelly has big role in state's hoops highlights
By Mark Story
HERALD-LEADER SPORTS COLUMNIST

FLEMINGSBURG - Lake Kelly lives on a hill in the house where he was born 73 years ago.

His mother was born in the same home. "We still have the bed she was born in," says Kelly.

It is fitting that Kelly -- the longtime college basketball coach who returned to his hometown in the 1990s and coached the local high school, Fleming County, to its greatest hoops success -- lives a life in touch with history.

Across a long basketball career, few have been in the picture more often than Lake Kelly when significant events in Kentucky's basketball history have occurred.

Let's retrace an eventful journey:

• Stop one. The 129-game Kentucky Wildcats winning streak stopped.

There was not much anticipation in the University of Kentucky's Memorial Coliseum on Jan. 8, 1955. On this evening, Adolph Rupp's Kentucky Wildcats will face a lightly regarded team from Georgia Tech.

The mighty Wildcats had not lost in Lexington since falling to Ohio State 45-40 on Jan. 2, 1943. No one expects anything different tonight.

Kentucky native Lake Kelly is a reserve guard for the Yellowjackets. Yet when he called his father, Ed, and asked if he wanted tickets, "My dad said 'No, I don't relish the fact of seeing you guys get slaughtered and embarrassed. We're going to Louisiana to visit your sister,'" Kelly recalls.

Yet, on this night, the lightly regarded visitors hang tough. "The longer we stayed with them, the more confidence we got," Kelly said.

The final two of Joe Helms' 23 points gave Tech a 59-58 lead. They were the game's final points.

When the horn sounded, 8,500 people fell stone silent.

"Nobody got up, in the whole gym, nobody moved," Kelly says. "We were jumping around and banging each other, and those people sat there. They were totally shocked. I don't think one got up and left the gym."

The best part for young Lake Kelly was yet to come. Out to celebrate with a couple of teammates, he found a phone in a Lexington eatery and called his family in Louisiana.

"I said, 'Hey, you all aren't going to believe this, but we just beat Kentucky,'" Kelly said. "My dad said, 'Oh, c'mon.'"

His father didn't believe the news, Kelly says, until he returned to Kentucky and saw the newspaper accounts of the game.• Stop two. A UK NCAA Tournament game without Adolph on the bench -- and a magical Fly.

On March 15, 1973, at Vanderbilt's Memorial Gymnasium, something that has never happened before in all history -- Kentucky playing an NCAA Tournament game with someone other than Adolph Rupp as head coach -- will this day occur.

Joe B. Hall's first edition of Wildcats closed the season with a rush to wrest the SEC crown from Tennessee. Their first NCAA opponent is Ohio Valley Conference champion Austin Peay.

Coached by Lake Kelly.

Austin Peay is led by the charismatic freshman star and New York playground legend, James "Fly" Williams.

"Fly was a completely undisciplined maniac," Kelly says. "When he got upset, he was ready to fight. He didn't like authority. He loved to trash talk.

"I don't know how I survived it. I was ready to get him out of there 15, 20 times and send him back to New York. But my wife, our coaches, they'd always say, 'Don't send him back.'"

With good reason. What Pete Maravich was to SEC basketball, Fly Williams was on the smaller OVC stage.

He averaged 29.4 points as a freshman. With his high-rise Afro hair style, Fly did things with panache.

People turn out to see stars.

One night, when the fire marshals declared the Austin Peay gym filled beyond capacity, a husband got in but his wife was left outside when they locked the doors, Kelly says.

So she punched the glass door out.

"She said, 'I'm getting in to see Fly Williams.'" Kelly says. "Those kind of things were just commonplace. Fly packed arenas."

When Austin Peay went on the road, fly swatters would dot the opposing stands.

At home in Clarksville, Tenn., arguably the single greatest cheer in college sports history would fill the air: "The Fly is open, let's go Peay!"

Against Kentucky, Williams scores 26 points on 13-of-31 shooting. With the game tied at 92 and the clock ticking down in regulation, Austin Peay has a shot in the air to win.

It misses.

Getting an unexpected offensive lift in overtime from Larry Stamper, UK proves it can win an NCAA tourney game without Rupp, 106-100.

• Stop three. 3-for-33.

On the date of March 31, 1984, Seattle's Kingdome is playing host to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament.

It will also turn out to be the site of the worst half of basketball ever turned in by a Kentucky team.

Lake Kelly is in his first year as an assistant on the staff of the same Joe Hall against whom he coached in the 1973 NCAAs.

On this day, Hall, Kelly and Kentucky take a 29-22 lead over John Thompson's Georgetown Hoyas at halftime.

What happens next still causes heads to shake from Paducah to Pikeville. In the second half, UK made only three of 33 shots. That horrid performance ended in a 53-40 loss to Patrick Ewing and Co.

How could such a good UK team play so poorly with the stakes so high?

"Oh, Lord, I still don't know," Kelly says.

Then he tries.

"First of all, Kenny Walker got hurt in the Illinois game (in the finals of the Mideast Region) and it was his Achilles' tendon. About 55 percent of our points came from him in games we won in the second half. We didn't have that from him out there.

"Georgetown came at us like buzz saws and got us on our heels. And we just shot so poorly and it snowballed."

• Stop four: A King assumes his throne.

(note: Greg Moore, Scott Erby and I went to this game and cheered the Peay on. We had a great time in the middle of the UK fans. The Peay and Darryl "Bedrock" Bedford had them worried that night, they couldn't believe it when "Bedrock" stepped out to drain a three.)

In Rupp Arena on Nov. 29, 1986, Kelly is in his second stint as head coach at Austin Peay and about to play UK for the second time. But what has people excited is that this will be the first game in a Kentucky uniform for the ballyhooed freshman, Rex Chapman.

The night before, Austin Peay opened its season with a home loss to Centre College.

King Rex scores 18 in his college debut.

But, amazingly, the team that lost to Centre the night before is down one and has a Vincent Brooks 17-footer in the air in the final seconds that would beat Kentucky.

It misses.

Says Kelly: "I guess I just wasn't meant to beat Kentucky. We never got that last shot to go. But we almost spoiled Rex's first game."

• Stop Five: Back Home.

After taking Austin Peay to the second round of the 1987 NCAA Tournament -- including a wrenching overtime loss to Providence College and a young up-and-coming coach named Rick Pitino -- Kelly eventually makes his way back home.

(note: They kind of shorted us on this mention, but this is a KY article after all, G.Moore, Erb, myself and I think Pat Day also made the trip up to U. of Illinois for the rematch the next year which ended 100-62 in the Illini's favor. I might need my memory refreshed on who went on the road trip.)

In 1993, he became an assistant principal at Flemingsburg Elementary. Two years later, he became head basketball coach at Fleming County High.

Working at a school that had never won a boys' Sweet Sixteen game, he led the Panthers to back-to-back state tournament appearances in 1998 and '99, including a trip to the state semifinals in 1998.

"What we did here at Fleming County ranks right up there with anything I've experienced," Kelly says. "This is home. And the people here were so excited. It was very meaningful."

Out of coaching but still working as an elementary assistant principal at 73, Kelly talks like a man who even now feels the tug of X's and O's.

"It's still in my blood," he says of coaching.

Few have a richer history from which to draw.