Congratulations Cats! Your 2014 NCAA Runner-Up banner was very well earned!

Estil

First off, congratulations to the Huskies, they lead us all 40 minutes and despite our best efforts, we just couldn't find a way to put us over the top. As for our guys, I am so tremendously proud of our guys...a little over a month ago no one expected us to do much of anything and though the trophy we're bringing back to Lexington isn't exactly the color we had hoped for we at Big Blue Nation have much to hang our hats on. I hope (like in 1997) they still get a hero's welcome and banner ceremony (for 2012 we hung the banner at the start of the 2013 season)...they deserve it big time.

MGLICKER

Nice run, Estil!

larryallen73

Good run for sure. I doubt too many people had KY in the final. However, I am hope you are joking about putting up runner up banners.

That's one of the things I liked about growing up in LA. Lakers, UCLA, etc... post championship banners only. Actually, the Dodgers didn't put anything, except on opening day, back when I was a kid. It's a little different here in Sacramento where we hang division championships. Lol.

Seriously though KY has enough championships that they don't have to mess with second place banners. Sure a hero's welcome at the airport would be great but don't clutter your arena with runner up signs!

Estil

No, we really do also hang runner-up and Final Four banners. Check it out.

Well the problem with only hanging championship banners is that is that all (now four) of our runner-up teams are among the most beloved teams in our history, in particular our 1966 Rupp's Runts. My wife's team the Red Sox also recognize their second place teams both with banners outside of Fenway as well as on the giant green press box area (their most beloved ironically was the year after our Rupp's Runts, the 1967 Impossible Dream, and I'm sure most will agree there is NO topping that magical "Fisk waving it fair" in 1975. Egad! Our 1975 Cats also finished second to John Wooden's final championship and our freshmen that year would help us win the 1978 title!). Our 1997 Unbelievables had lost too many players from our near-invincible 1996 team and we weren't given much of a chance to even come close to repeating. Had Derek Anderson not gotten hurt down the stretch it's very likely we would've and even without him we came up JUST short. Our 1996, 1997, 1998 teams came right back home after the title games to a hero's welcome and banner raising at Rupp Arena. For 2012 they decided to wait till our 2013 home opener to raise the banner so I'm just saying maybe they could bring back how they did it in the late 90s. And you know what? The fact that there's "unfinished business" might mean more of our otherwise "one year wonder" players might decide to be at least TWO year wonders; who knows?

Now as far as the banners in Rupp Arena are concerned, we didn't always do them the same way...for example remember that really weird way they had going on in 1988? Also if you look closely at the 1985 championship game (which we hosted) over at the NCAA On Demand channel on YouTube, at that time we only hung NCAA championship and NIT championship banners (we now only recognize our NIT titles at Memorial Coliseum). As for our SEC regular season and tournament championships we just use one banner each to list all the years at Memorial Coliseum.

So I fully support honoring all of our Final Four teams with banners at Rupp...gold, silver, and bronze. Now you wanna talk about having too many banners? Maybe someone here with some good Photoshop skills can show how it'd be if we hung Elite Eight banners

Estil

Looks like I got my wish. These boys REALLY deserve it.

This time they chose to have the 2014 banner already up in advance. I would've preferred they unveiled it in some day during the ceremony but what can ya do?

What our champs gear would've looked like...this is kinda a tradition for this website after each major sports championship.