Billy Gillispie's modus operandi as a coach was well-known but rarely talked about: He was a jerk. He screamed at players, he ran them hard in practice, and he played the role -- whether he was playing a role or not is up for debate -- of old-school nose-to-the-grindstone tough guy. And if you didn't like it, you could play somewhere else. Which is what most players decided to do. Which got Billy Gillispie fired.

We sort of know all this, even if anecdotes about Gillispie's time at Kentucky are rare. Fortunately, we have one today, courtesy of the Lexington Herald-Leader's John Clay. Get a load of this:

[Kentucky center] Josh Harrellson verified to our own Jerry Tipton the rumor that during halftime of last year's game at Vanderbilt, the sophomore forward was banished to a bathroom stall, apart from the team, apparently as punishment for poor play. Then after the Cats' 77-64 loss to the Commodores, Gillispie ordered Harrellson off the team bus and into the team equipment truck for the long ride back to Lexington.

I'm no coach, and I'm no expert on coaching, but I'm going to go ahead and guess that that's not the best way to treat your players. Just a thought.

That's Clay's whole point, actually; after using Harrellson's anecdotes as a lead, Clay theorizes that there's a reason why this sort of old-school surliness doesn't work on college basketball players anymore. Frankly, they're smarter:

Kids today don't want to play for those coaches, nor should they. They're too smart for that. They know too much. They've been exposed to too much. While some argue that kids today don't know the difference between right and wrong, I'd argue that they know the difference now more than ever. They can think for themselves.

It's not that college basketball players in the modern era just inherently smarter. The system does this to them. By the time college hoopsters -- the really good ones, the ones who would consider playing at Kentucky -- get to college, they've had plenty of coaches in orbit. They've played high school ball and AAU and gone to hundreds of summer camps. They get to see nearly every kind of coach, and they get to figure out what sort of man they want to play for. They're experienced. Things weren't always like this.

And sure, maybe some of these kids are spoiled, uber-stars before they ever set foot on a professional court. That's a byproduct of the system. But there are just as many kids who are anxious to play and eager to please -- Harrelson's quotes make him sound like a confused puppy; he still says he and Gillispie had a "good relationship" -- and who can't figure out why their coaches are like this. They just don't know what their screaming coaches want from them.

This, ultimately, was Billy Gillispie's undoing. Stories like the one above are why he's not a coach anymore. And the lack of such stories about the Jim Calipari, the man who replaced, speak almost as loudly. There's a new order in place. And it's not even all that new. Do the names Dean Smith and John Wooden ring a bell?

Related: Big 12 Basketball