In 1976, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Blazer’s athletics program was in its infancy and nonexistent. Despite the absence of a program, UAB took a puzzling next step. The university aimed to establish a NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) Division I basketball program from scratch, bypassing all lower divisions. Remarkably, it succeeded. To transition from nonexistent to Division I, the university needed to hire an all-time great coach and athletic director. Somehow, UAB did just that with the hire of former University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) coach Gene Bartow just a year later.
Even while building UAB’s other sports programs, it took Coach Bartow just one year to recruit basketball players who could succeed at the Division I level. In November of 1978, they played their inaugural game in the almost 17,000-seat Birmingham Coliseum against a big-time program: the University of Nebraska. The Blazers lost to Nebraska 64-55 that night and went 15-11 in their first season, but the program was about to make a remarkable rise to basketball relevancy in the following years. Despite already achieving a winning season in their first year in the 1978–1979 season, Coach Bartow and UAB aimed even higher, setting their sights on the opportunity to compete in a postseason tournament.
The following season saw Coach Bartow and the Blazers improve remarkably, finishing as the runner-up in their first year in the Sun Belt Conference as well as securing their first postseason tournament appearance in the NIT (National Invitation Tournament). The experience of participating in a postseason tournament proved invaluable for UAB. In the following year, in the 1980–1981 season, it propelled them to advance to the NCAA Tournament, also known as the “Big Dance.” In the 1981 NCAA Tournament, UAB upset basketball royalty by defeating the University of Kentucky Wildcats, a team that had already secured five NCAA National Championships. The following year, in 1982, the Blazers advanced to their second NCAA Tournament, going to the Elite Eight (fourth round of the tournament). On the way there, they defeated the Indiana University Hoosiers, who, just a few years prior, had won an undefeated National Championship. These were arguably the most important years in the history of the program, laying the foundation for a standard of basketball excellence that many today call “The Bartow Standard”.
Coach Bartow led UAB to 7 more NCAA tournament appearances as head coach, and after the conclusion of the 1995–1996 season, Bartow retired as head coach of the Blazers. He was replaced by Murray Bartow, his son, who led the team to another tournament in his tenure. Coaches Mike Anderson, Mike Davis, and Jerod Haase led UAB to six more tournaments between the years of 2002 and 2016. Following a few average seasons from 2016 to 2020, UAB hired Andy Kennedy, a UAB basketball alumni who played under Coach Bartow, to be its next leader. Kennedy was not a stranger to “The Bartow Standard” of excellence and in his second year as head coach, he proved it. In the 2021–2022 season, he led the team to its first NCAA Tournament in six seasons with the help of Conference USA Player of the Year Jordan “Jelly” Walker and future NBA center Trey Jemison. Kennedy also led UAB to the NIT championship game and another NCAA Tournament Appearance in the following two years in 2023 and 2024. From the early success of Coach Bartow to Coach Kennedy’s recent basketball accomplishments, UAB’s rise to a premier basketball program was unprecedented, and a fantastic story in the history of college athletics in the state of Alabama.
Photo Caption: 1989-1990 UAB team photo featuring Coach Gene Bartow as well as current Head Coach Andy Kennedy (13) [Photo courtesy UAB Athletics]
Additional resources
- “Gene Bartow – Men’s Basketball Coach.” UAB Athletics, uabsports.com/sports/mens-basketball/roster/coaches/gene-bartow/1353. Accessed 11 Apr. 2024.
- Jares, Joe. “Branching out into the Big Time.” Sports Illustrated Vault | SI.com, 4 Dec. 1978, vault.si.com/vault/1978/12/04/branching-out-into-the-big-time-with-former-ucla-coach-gene-bartow-brash-birmingham-is-starting-at-the-top. Accessed 11 Apr. 2024.
- Attner, Paul. “UAB Takes the High Road.” Washington Post, 25 Dec. 2023, www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1982/03/20/uab-takes-the-high-road/634a1563-07df-4d48-bdb8-95dadf32653e/. Accessed 11 Apr. 2024.
About the author
My name is Neal Partin, and I am an undergraduate student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham majoring in Computer Science with a minor in Social Media strategies. In my free time, I enjoy going to many kinds of sporting events in Birmingham including UAB football and basketball games, Birmingham Stallions football games, and Birmingham Barons baseball games. I’m also an active member of the Eta Psi chapter of Theta Chi at UAB. I’m set to graduate from UAB in Spring of 2024.
