USJ’s Simmons part of championship reunion

When University School of Jackson boys basketball coach Oliver Simmons arrived to work Monday morning, he had an unusual answer to the typical question: “How was your weekend?”

Simmons, who played basketball one year at the University of Kentucky in 1995-96, gathered with the rest of the team in Miami. It was the first time the entire team and their coach, now-Louisville head coach Rick Pitino, was all together in one place since 2012. That team won the Wildcats’ first national championship in nearly two decades.

“We try to get together every couple of years or so, but the last time we were all together was a few years back when [current Kentucky coach John Calipari] had us in to honor the national championship team,” Simmons said.

Team camps are a time of testing

Pitino had the entire team in Miami for the weekend for a couple of days of relaxation and reminiscence.

“It was fun,” Simmons said. “The evenings would be spent hanging out with all of us together.

“One night we went on a three-hour yacht cruise up one of the intercoastal waterways and just hung out,” Simmons said. “We’d just sit and talk about old times and what everybody’s been doing since then.”

Simmons enjoys getting to talk about his current job of leading the Bruins in competing for championships in Division II-A.

He said he and another player on that team with West Tennessee ties enjoyed a long talk about West Tennessee basketball.

“Tony Delk and I sat at the front of the boat for about an hour and just talked about USJ and Haywood and basketball around the area,” Simmons said. “He keeps up with it as much as he can from where he is now, but I got to fill him in on what he’s missing.”

Delk, who was one of the key players on that national championship team, played at Haywood High first and is now an analyst for the SEC Network.

Simmons said despite hanging out with one of the most successful coaches in NCAA basketball history and a number of former NBA players and one current one (Nazr Mohammed is a center for the Oklahoma City Thunder and his team’s run in the playoffs is why the former Wildcats gathered in August instead of the spring), there was very little talk about hoops Xs and Os.

“That team was a very talented team, obviously,” Simmons said. “But I’ve come to realize now that I’ve been a part of other programs and coaching myself that maybe just as important for that championship run was how close we all were as a team.

“Coach P created situations where we did everything together, and we built bonds that went beyond basketball and last until this day. I spent one year at Kentucky and went to Florida State. I stay in touch with almost everybody from UK more than I do most from FSU or any other program I’ve been a part of since then. So when we got together this weekend, it was friends gathering and not necessarily basketball players.”

Brandon Shields, 425-9751