Returning home is a recurring theme in Tubby Smith’s life these days.
Playing in the Barbasol Championship Pro-Am at Keene Trace in Nicholasville on Wednesday will be a homecoming of sorts as he was the University of Kentucky’s basketball coach from 1997-98 through 2006-07. In that 10-season span, UK won five Southeastern Conference regular-season championships, five SEC Tournament titles and the 1998 NCAA Tournament.
“We felt we did right by Kentucky,” Smith said in a telephone conversation last week. “We gave it our best effort. And I think we represented that program and that university the right way.