UTSports.com
February 3, 2011
Tennessee athletics director Mike Hamilton, along with head men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl, announced on Monday plans to retire Allan Houston's No. 20 during a pregame ceremony on March 6, when the Volunteers host Kentucky at Thompson-Boling Arena (noon ET, CBS).
Houston, 37, will join fellow UT legends Bernard King (1975-77) and Ernie Grunfeld (1974-77) as the only Tennessee men's basketball players to have their number retired and hung from the rafters in Thompson-Boling Arena.
"Allan represents everything the term `student-athlete' is supposed to represent," Hamilton said. "He was a very good student, a campus leader and tremendously successful on the court. We are thrilled to have his number hang in the rafters at Thompson-Boling Arena as a tribute to who he was, and is today."
In 2007, the Tennessee Athletics Department announced criteria for number retirement. Men's basketball candidates must have a minimum of five years between the candidate's UT basketball career and consideration for this honor. A candidate must have achieved two of the following four honors: candidate must be a first-team All-America, SEC Player of the Year, member of an Olympic basketball team or a member of the NBA or ABA All-Star Team.
Tennessee's all-time leading scorer (2,801 points), a two-time All-America and a four-time All-Southeastern Conference selection, Houston trails only LSU's Pete Maravich on the SEC's all-time scoring chart while ranking 16th in NCAA Division I history. A native of Louisville, Ky., Houston was selected by the Detroit Pistons with the 11th overall pick in the 1993 NBA Draft, and he played 12 seasons in the NBA. One of the most prolific scorers of his era, he spent his final nine NBA seasons with the New York Knicks and now serves as the Knicks' assistant general manager.
