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BY LARRY VAUGHT

Vaught’s Views

Any time he gets a chance to watch the University of Kentucky play basketball, Scott Padgett watches the team he helped win the 1998 national championship.

Padgett is in his first season as an assistant coach at New Mexico after he was head coach at Samford from 2014-20.

He admits not being a head coach is “different” for him.

“For six years you were making the schedule, calling the meetings, going everywhere. Now I am looking at the phone waiting for calls to tell me what to do,” Padgett said. “I would love to be a head coach again but right now it is kind of nice just to focus on basketball and helping guys get better because the last year at Samford was rough.”

Padgett says he’s learned a lot that he didn’t know when he became a head coach even though he was a graduate assistant one year under John Calipari at UK and was an assistant coach for two years at both Manhattan and Samford. He spent seven years in the NBA and played in 448 games before starting his coaching career.

“You never stop learning,” Padgett said. “I really had been in this business for only four years when I got my first head job. If I knew what I know now maybe things would have been a lot different and hopefully there will be a time I get a chance to be a head coach again and use all I have learned.”