[UK Athletics Photo]
Who was the most competitive, toughest player that former Kentucky All-American Kevin Grevey played with or against in college?
If you are a long-time Kentucky basketball fan, the answer won’t surprise you.
He said it was Anderson County’s Jimmy Dan Conner, Kentucky’s Mr. Basketball in 1971. For three seasons from 1972-75, he played in 85 games at UK and scored 1,009 points, grabbed 344 rebounds, and had 264 assists. He shot 50 percent from the field.
Grevey and Connor were seniors on the 1975 team that lost 92-85 in the national title game to UCLA in John Wooden’s last game. Grevey had 34 points and five rebounds in the game (he was 13 of 30 from the field) while Conner had nine points on 4-for-12 shooting, six assists, five rebounds, and two steals.
He went on to play one season in the ABA for the Kentucky Colonels after turning down a chance to play in the NBA for Phoenix (he was the 18th overall pick in the 1975 NBA draft).
“He was tough in practice and games,” Grevey told Tom Leach on the Leach Report recently. “He was our enforcer.
“In college, nobody wanted to tangle with Jimmy Dany Conner. He would have won a fistfight with anybody.”
