The old Kentucky basketball coach answered the phone with pleasantries dipped in a molasses drawl. He spent the next few seconds chewing on a reporter’s question like a thick wad of tobacco.
“I don’t want to talk about that,” he said flatly. “That was a bad moment.”
Joe B. Hall went on to chat for 10 minutes about the very subject, the question no longer leading to Southern discomfort. Would he talk about John Wooden’s final college game, against his Kentucky Wildcats in the 1975 NCAA tournament championship?
Why, yes, he would.