Since the start of the 1974–75 season, my grandfather Bob Peake kept stats for nearly every Kentucky basketball game. Last year, at 87 years old, he thought he had done his final game.
Maybe it was Mark Pope’s uptempo offense, which had him constantly playing catch-up. Maybe it was that he could no longer make it downstairs to his favorite chair and his familiar game-day setup. Whatever the reason, the pages stopped in notebook No. 9 with the last entry being a 94–78 loss to Auburn.
I don’t get to watch many games with him anymore, but since I didn’t make the trip to Baton Rouge, I reached out to see if he’d be willing to do one final game of stats.