You can't coach big-time college hoops without leaking a little soul. Stalking a Top 25 sideline in a thousand-dollar suit is a glamorous gig. It's also a standing invitation to barter your principles for a few W's.

        Without Gerald Fitch, Kentucky doesn't beat Florida Saturday. Minus Fitch bloodlessly draining the winning 3-pointer, UK doesn't get the first-round bye in the Southeastern Conference Tournament or the shot of confidence it needed. Fitch isn't a great player. But he's tough. He's as consistent as any Wildcat outside Tayshaun Prince. Tubby Smith needs him. Especially now, with UK's season threatening to go Code Blue.

University of Kentucky head basketball coach Tubby Smith. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

        So Smith, the coach, cuts a little deal with himself. Even as Fitch is making Smith look silly and weak, Smith brings him back. How many hours was it after Tubby warned against curfew-breaking that Fitch broke curfew? How many days had it been since Tubby decided he was done with the headaches of problem players?

        Soon after Smith stated junk no longer would be tolerated, junk was. Smith allowed Fitch to punk him because without Fitch, UK's in a bigger mess than it is now. In the name of winning, a certain amount of punking is tolerated.

        It's out of character for Smith, as classy as college coaches come. But the pressures of coaching college basketball can do strange things, especially at a place like UK.

        Smith already had suspended Fitch once, for fighting a teammate on a flight home from Georgia. After Fitch and Erik Daniels passed phony IDs and smashed curfew last week, Smith suspended them indefinitely.

        Indefinitely was one game. Two, if you count the 40 minutes of bench time each got in the loss to Vanderbilt. The message is this, to Fitch and anyone else: Breaks are cut for players who can play. Winning matters most.

        Smith might have lost some credibility. For all the glamor, he might have realized something, for probably the hundredth time in a distinguished career: His livelihood depends on the whims of 19-year-olds who think life owes them because they're good at a game.

        Principles-for-wins is not unusual in college basketball, where one player can make a big difference. But it has to be humiliating, especially the older you get as a coach. Then again, Fitch's 3 did find the bottom of the net Saturday.

        Afterward, Fitch called Smith “A great coach and a good father figure in my life.” Would a father allow such brazen disregard of his rules?

        Seven years ago, Xavier suspended Pete Sears and DeWan Rose for fighting in a bar two nights before the Musketeers were to play Georgetown in the NCAA Tournament. Sears and Rose averaged 19 points a game between them. Georgetown beat Xavier by five.

        “It was an agonizing decision,” then-XU coach Skip Prosser recalled this week. “You can rationalize it any way you want: Don't punish the rest of the team for the mistakes of a few; the courts hadn't acted. Whatever. I had kids crying after that game. But I feel like we did the right thing.”

        Prosser wasn't second-guessing Smith — “I'm not omnipotent,” he said — just commiserating with him. In college basketball, principles are negotiable.

        UK's result was good Saturday. The Cats won the game, and probably that's all anyone cares about. But the message? The message stunk.

        Contact Paul Daugherty at 768-8454; e-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com.

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