If a Division I basketball player did today what Mike Pratt did a few times during his playing career at the University of Kentucky he likely would get in trouble.
“As far as I am concerned it was not illegal when we did it,” said Pratt, a former UK All-American who played for Adolph Rupp from 1967-70 (freshmen were not eligible to play then).
Pratt scored 1,359 points and pulled off 718 rebounds in 81 career games and shot 48.3 percent from the field in his career. He also averaged 3.5 assists per game while playing with UK’s all-time leading scorer, Dan Issel.
Kentucky played Notre Dame annually in Louisville’s Freedom Hall from the 1962-63 season to 1987-88.
“It was a terrific series between teams that were both top five or top 10 most years,” Pratt said. “There were no tickets for season ticket holders. You could buy tickets at the box office for $5 to see two top 10 teams play. That was a pretty sweet deal.”
It was almost always a guaranteed sellout by the time the game arrived — and the players knew it would be.
One of Pratt’s teammates, Mike Casey, was from Shelby County. Pratt would go home to Ohio in the summer to work but Casey would go to Freedom Hall to buy tickets for Pratt and other players when they went on sell.
“We would all try to round up money and buy all the tickets we could,” Pratt said. “We had a former manager in Louisville who knew where to go with the tickets (to resell them). We would take out what we needed for our families and then give him the other tickets.
“It was a nice payday for us back then when we were getting $15 twice a month (for expenses). If you had a chance to sell a $5 ticket for $25, you couldn’t get enough tickets. Later on that became illegal, but not then.”
Pratt also remembers how him and teammates would help sneak friends into games in Memorial Coliseum. Often that included having the friends hide in phone booths inside the Coliseum for hours until fans were allowed in and eventually they would leave the phone booth to merge with the crowd.
Pratt scored 42 points in a 1969 win over Notre Dame. That stood as a UK scoring record in Freedom Hall until Jodie Meeks got 46 against Appalachian State in coach Billy Gillispie’s final season in 2008.
“That was the only time I was rooting for a Kentucky player not to break a record,” UK Radio Network play-by-play voice Tom Leach said. “I had notes prepared for that game and knew the most points scored by a Kentucky player in Freedom Hall was by my partner with 42. Jodie was getting to 38, 40. They (Kentucky) were going to win the game, so I was rooting for him not to get the record.”
Meeks later that season had a UK record 54 points in a 90-72 win at Tennessee to break Issel’s 39-year-old record of 53 points.
“I was happy for Jodie. Him and his family are first class people,” Pratt said. “If Jodie has stayed at Kentucky and been on John Calipari’s first team, they would not have been 0-for-21 (from 3-point range) in the first half (against West Virginia in the Elite Eight) and would have won a national championship.
“That would have been something. All of Big Blue Nation really would have been spoiled then if Cal had won that championship his very first year and I’m convinced if Jodie had not gone to the NBA, he would have won it.”
Pratt believes Kentucky could develop into a national title contender again this season. He’s not sure about who Calipari may have in the starting lineup when the season opens in November, but knows two players that UK needs to perform.
“EJ (Montgomery) and Nick (Richards), this is their year. It’s their spot/playing time to lose,” Pratt said. “Nothing really matters until February. Cal always needs some time to shake the bugs out of his team and get guys to play together how he wants.
“We have become a must-see team in February and March and I think that will be the case again this season, but it will be a lot easier for that to happen if Nick and EJ come through with big years. Cal really has a lot of versatile pieces to work with this year and that’s the kind of team he really loves. He seems to really like all these kids and you can just feel he thinks they have a just to be really good.”
