Billy Clyde Gillispie was born November 7, 1959 in Abilene, Texas. He grew up in Graford, Texas, a small populated town. As a kid, he worked by delivering newspapers of copies of The Fort Worth Press. At Graford High School, Gillispie was a outstanding point guard there, and later went to Ranger College, playing basketball and baseball for them from 1978-1980. After that he transfered to Sam Houston State University, and worked as a student assistant for their basketball team.
After coaching at college schools, UTEP and Texas A&M, on April 6, 2007, Gillispie was named the offical head coach at the University of Kentucky Men's Basketball Program. He made a lot of recruit waves from five different classes and most striking, an 8th grader, Michael Avery who would be in the class of 2012.
Gillispie's first year as the coach of UK, got off to a bad start. His Wildcats got routed 84-68 by unranked Gardner-Webb in Rupp Arena in the second game of the year. Gillispie improved his team by SEC play, and achieved a 12-4 SEC Conference record.
At the end of the 2008-09 season, Kentucky didn't make the NCAA Tournament for the first time in years. Instead, they went on to gain a #4 seed in the NIT Tournament defeating UNLV and Creigton in the opening and second rounds before losing to Notre Dame in the quarterfinals. Kentucky finished the year with a record of 22-14 overall, tieing for the second-most losses ever in the program's history.
He finished at UK with a overall record of 40-27.
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