Pitino Pounds Home Weighty Matter

When Rick Pitino steps down someday as coach at Kentucky he might have a future as one of the exercise-weight loss gurus.

Senior Walter McCarty has been told to get his weight up to 235 pounds, five more than the 6-foot-9 forward started the season at. McCarty recently weighed in at 222 pounds and Pitino, stressing the added weight will help his stamina down the stretch of the long season and his NBA future, told him he had lost his starting position until the weight was back up.

Then there’s freshman Nazr Mohammed who showed up at school with about 300 pounds on his 6-10 frame. Pitino took over and the Chicago native is down to 250 pounds and has drastically changed his eating habits.

But the best story of all isn’t about a player.

Sean Gray is a manager for the Wildcats, a position to Kentucky natives that is the closest thing to wearing the blue and white.

The 5-7 Gray weighed well over 350 pounds and Pitino decided it was time do something. He financed Gray’s trip to Weight Watchers and held a spot in the traveling party for Kentucky’s summer trip to Europe as a trump card to make sure things went as they should.

Gray lost more than 100 pounds and made the trip to Europe. When practice started in October, Pitino noticed Gray had gained some weight and he suspended him from his managerial duties until it was lost. In Pitino’s world, that means walking the treadmill while practice is going on and it worked as Gray is back on the bench.

Precious playing time

There weren’t any headlines about Bernard Jones getting injured at practice this week. The senior forward for St. Joseph’s tore the patella tendon in his right knee, an injury that ends his season.

It also will end his career, one where Jones got so little opportunity to show his basketball ability and so many chances to show his determination and courage.

In 1992-93 Jones started for the Hawks and averaged 11.6 points and 6.5 rebounds. He injured his left knee playing in a summer league and he underwent surgery three times in two years. He was on the bench for every game, going to school and listening to people say he would never play again.

Before the first home game of the season against Bucknell, Martelli told Jones he was starting.

The stat line was far from impressive - 0 for 3 from the field and two rebounds in 7 minutes. But it was three shots, two rebounds and 7 minutes that weren’t supposed to happen.

“I was shocked. I had no clue,” Jones said of the start.

Those 7 minutes would be it because Jones was injured Tuesday when he threw an outlet pass after grabbing a rebound. Those 7 minutes would be all that Jones had for a three-year period that had him undergo three operations, deal with the deaths of his father, grandmother and great-grandmother and lose personal possessions in a fire.

Bernard Jones underwent surgery on his right knee on Thursday. That may signal the definitive end to his basketball career, but it doesn’t seem anywhere near enough to get the better of Bernard Jones.

Take that, big schools

Mount St. Mary’s, 71-69 winners over Georgia Tech on Monday night, is the fourth-smallest school in Division I in terms of enrollment.

It was the first win ever over a ranked team for a school from the Northeast Conference, which was formed in 1981. It was the first win over an ACC school for Jim Phelan, the man who has been coaching at Mount St. Mary’s since 1954, a year after the ACC was formed. It was his 741st career victory and left him six behind Phog Allen who is sixth on the career list.