When the University of Kentucky hired Orlando “Tubby” Smith to replace the departing Rick Pitino as the school’s sixth men’s basketball coach since 1930, the decision raised more than a few local eyebrows.

Not that anyone questioned Smith’s ability. In four years coaching the University of Tulsa and two more at Georgia, the 46-year-old Smith had compiled an impressive 124-62 record, repeatedly taking his overachieving squads deep into the NCAA tournament. Since Smith was the first African American to coach at Kentucky, a program with a tumultuous racial history, the concern was less whether he could do the job than whether the Kentucky faithful would let him.

Today that anxiety has become a distant memory. This past spring Kentucky’s first-year coach led the Wildcats on an improbable run through the tournament brackets, culminating with a stunning come-from-behind 78-69 championship win over Utah. Any doubts about whether Kentucky would accept Smith fell away with the nets at the Alamodome in San Antonio.

A glance at his background reveals that beating long odds and achieving unlikely outcomes have become Smith’s stock in trade.

Growing up on a farm in rural Scotland, Maryland, the sixth child in a line of seventeen, Smith learned early on the value of hard work, toiling as a field hand on his father’s farm. Until he was 13 the family had no indoor plumbing, so the whole brood took turns bathing in an outdoor tub. Young Orlando received his nickname for frequently refusing to vacate the multipurpose basin, which was also used for washing vegetables and cleaning and gutting pigs. To make ends meet Smith’s father worked three jobs (farmer, barber and bus driver), and the example rubbed off on the Smith kids. All 17 graduated from high school and 12 went to college.

Tubby was one of the college-bound Smiths. He attended High Point College in North Carolina on a basketball scholarship. After graduating he taught high school physical education and coached three sports for six years, never earning more than $150 a week. “I could be teaching today,” he says, “and I’d be very happy.”

Teaching is a consistent theme mentioned by Smith’s admirers and players alike. In taking over for Pitino, Smith not only had to replace a man who virtually walked on water for Kentucky fans, but he also inherited a team that had lost five first-round NBA draft choices in two years, leaving no proven stars on the roster. The players reacted positively to Smith, who immediately took an interest in them on and off the basketball court.

“Coach Pitino was more a playing-basketball coach,” says senior guard Allen Edwards. “Not that he didn’t care about us. But Coach Smith seems to care about our academic, social and religious lives a lot more.” Or, as Edwards’ teammate Jeff Sheppard put it, “He really does a good job of teaching us basketball, but even a better job of teaching us how to be men.”

At times Smith’s attitude toward building a successful program betrays his agricultural roots. “It takes patience not to wait for players to grow,” he says. “It’s like a crop. You weed it properly, and hoe it, and nurture and cultivate it.”

The basketball season is also a lot like the growing season, and coaches hope their team ripens at just the right moment. For this year’s Kentucky team, that moment arrived at the NCAA tournament, where the Wildcats turned skeptics into believers with extraordinary victories against a laundry list of tough opponents. Down by 17 points in the final nine minutes of the regional final against Duke, the Wildcats stormed back to take the lead for good in the final minute. In the next contest, facing Stanford, Smith’s team again rose to the occasion, making quick work of a 10-point second-half deficit, then overcoming the Cardinals’ last-minute flurry to emerge with a win and a shot at the national championship.

In the final, Smith’s tactical genius was on full display. Down by ten points at the half, Smith made three incremental adjustments – changing the defense, double-teaming Utah’s red-hot Michael Doleac and putting the ball in Sheppard’s hands – changes that got Kentucky back into the game while unnerving and disrupting the Utes on offense. With just under five minutes to play Sheppard hit an off-balance baseline jump shot to complete the comeback. Utah never recovered.

“We were down, and he did a great job of keeping us positive,” commented sophomore Jeff Padgett after the game. “This win, you have to attribute a lot to him.”

The unassuming Smith is reluctant to take much credit for the team’s success, however, primarily because to do so would contradict what he teaches his players.

“I never look at it as if it’s me,” he says, “because it’s not. It’s the program, it’s the players, it’s the whole atmosphere of the program that wins. I tell the players all the time that it’s amazing what you can achieve when you don’t care who gets the credit.”

As for any residual racial tensions, Smith says, “I haven’t had one racial comment, one racial slant to a letter. Not that it’s not out there or might not happen. But I think there’s a lot I can do in the way I carry myself. So people might say, ‘That Tubby Smith, he’s just like Joe Smith, the black guy I know who lives in town.'”

The title has changed, and the salary has jumped from $150 a week to $1.5 million a year, but in many ways Tubby Smith is still a teacher, and that’s just the way he likes it.