Kentucky WBB's potential 2nd Round opponent has 'road runners' instead of forwards

Basketball coaches are weird, and sometimes, they like to do weird things with their rosters in order to instill a sort of culture or philosophy on their team. For example, Vanderbilt men’s basketball coach Mark Byington has 18 point guards on his team because he wants all of his players to think and play like point guards.

There’s no denying that it is odd that Vanderbilt has their roster listed in that way, but what if I told you that it could be even more off the wall?

Kenny Brooks‘ Kentucky squad could be playing a 12-seed Fairfield team in the 2nd Round of the NCAA Tournament that has guards and “road runners” — not forwards — on it’s team.

Check out their official roster here for yourself if need be.

Stags assistant Blake DuDonis told KSR about what it means to be a “road runner” and how the position came to be.

“Carly [Thibault-DuDonis] wanted me to create an identity for our post players and after a while, I came up with the road runners (like the Looney Tune),” DuDonis noted. “Most of the kids didn’t even know who the Road Runner was, so I had to pull up old videos of the Road Runner running away from Wile E. Coyote.”

“They loved the idea and it caught on,” DuDonis added. “We shortened it (because saying road runners every time is a mouth full) to ‘Meeps’ — like the noise the Road Runner makes; meep meep! We even greet each other with it. See someone in the morning? ‘Meep Meep, Cyanne!’, ‘Meep meep Coach Blake!’.”

The reasoning behind the terms “road runners” and “meeps” comes from how Road Runner was in the Looney Tunes. As DuDonis put it, “it symbolizes their versatility, speed, agility, and how they just keep on coming and never stop.”

If Kentucky can take care of business and if Fairfield is able to get by 5-seed Kansas State, then Big Blue Nation will get to see the “road runners” in action.