Book being written about Kentucky 1978 National Championship Team

By LARRY VAUGHT

We are only two years away from the 40th anniversary of Kentucky's 1978 national championship team. Trust me, that's hard for me to fathom because I was not much older than some of the players on that team when the Wildcats won that year.

Still, I have to admit I am already excited about a book about that 1977-78 team that former UK All-American Jack Givens told me about that is being written by Doug Brunk, a Wilmore native who now lives in California.

Brunk has already written one book about UK basketball — "Wildcat Memories: Inside Stories from Kentucky Basketball Greats" — that featured stories and personal essays from Joe Hall, Kyle Macy, Tubby Smith, Dan Issel, Wallace "Wah Wah" Jones, Patrick Patterson and John Wall.

"It's really going to be a good book," Givens said. "The University of Kentucky has commissioned him to write this book. Every guy on our team will be represented in the book. The book is going to be unbelievable."

Brunk said he is "about 90 percent" done with the book and publication hopefully will be the fall of 2017 or early 2018 by University Press of Kentucky.

"It has been fun," Brunk said. "I have learned many new things about this team."

There should be a lot for UK fans to learn about the team that had a little bit of everything with Givens, Macy, Rick Robey, Mike Phillips, Truman Claytor, Jay Shidler and more. Current Toronto Raptors coach Dwane Casey was also on that team.

Givens said when the book is released, all his teammates will be coming in for autograph sessions and my guess is that UK fans of all ages will want to be part of those sessions, too.