from the words of UK historian Jon Scott
FYI, when this story came out in 2009, I thought I had heard it all. This was shocking to me, because it seemed so blatant and even moreso because I had never even heard a whiff of a rumor of this and it seemed to come completely out of the blue.
The good news is that because it was a fresh charge, I was able to follow up with all concerned parties, although it took a while. I was able to talk directly to Tim Bassett, a handful of Bassett's teammates, a few people who had worked at Georgia at the time along with a few Kentucky people (including Russell Rice) who were at UK at the time in question. Beyond that I spoke with the author of the article (Chris Hine) along with the sports editor of the New York Times (Tom Jolly). The only key persons of interest I wasn't able to talk to were the coaches, as both Rupp and Georgia's coach Ken Rosemond had long passed away.
I talk about this charge on my Rupp page in it's own section
Rupp Page: Tim Bassett
Bottom line is that Bassett maintained to me that he saw 'something' but he couldn't describe what it was, where exactly it was placed in the arena, nor explain why he thought it was Rupp who placed it there, and he didn't investigate further.
None of his teammates that I spoke to remember this supposed incident, and more critically none remember offering to sit out the game over such an incident. Kentucky officials vehemently deny any such thing ever occurred and in fact were upset that anyone would actually believe it. No one else from Georgia remembers such an event.
I also scoured the media reports from the time, both UK and Georgia (including the student newspapers) and there was no hint of anything unusual. It is true that Rupp was upset with Bassett as he had outplayed Jim Andrews the game before and bragged about it publicly to the media, saying Andrews was a bad defensive player.
As far as the claim that Rupp told Bassett he didn't belong in the Southeastern Conference, if it's true it likely wasn't due to his skin color because at that time most of the Conference had already been integrated (including Kentucky the year before, something Bassett may not have been aware of since he was a Junior College transfer).
I don't like to call people liars but there literally is no evidence to back up Bassett's explosive claim, and frankly it doesn't pass the smell test. The year prior to this Barry Jacobs published an entire book about integration of ACC and SEC schools with an entire chapter devoted to Georgia where he extensively interviewed both Ronnie Hogue (who was at UGa the previous year and was their 1st black player) and Bassett (who came the following year as a JC transfer) and this incident wasn't even mentioned.
As far as the New York Times, the author (Chris Hine) was an intern at the time who soon thereafter moved to a more permanent job in Chicago. I was able to track him down and he told me that he had many of the same questions and concerns about the claim that I had. Like me he was unable to verify the claim and intended to remove it from the draft, however according to him the Times decided to go ahead and run the draft without his knowledge or sign-off.
The sports editor (Tom Jolly) refused to print a retraction and claimed that he wanted to investigate the claim himself. Despite my help in providing contact information to Bassett and others, he never confirmed anything either. FYI, the Duke Lacrosse story came out under his watch around the same time and the blowback from that led to him being reassigned by the paper.
