RICHMOND, Ky. — For many boys in the Bluegrass State, the ultimate dream is to one day play basketball for the University of Kentucky.

Dominique Hawkins was no exception.

“As a kid growing up, all you do is watch Kentucky basketball and basically saying you want to be that guy,” Hawkins, a 6-foot sophomore guard, said. “I had those thoughts when I was little.”

Hawkins’s high school coach, Allen Feldhaus Jr., knows the feeling. Feldhaus’s father played for the Wildcats under Adolph Rupp, who coached Kentucky to four national championships and 876 victories from 1930 to 1972. Feldhaus’s brother, Deron, was one of the so-called Unforgettables — four seniors on the 1991-92 team who led the Wildcats to the N.C.A.A. tournament’s round of 8 (they lost to Duke on Christian Laettner’s buzzer-beater). Three of them were Kentucky natives.

“The last good Kentucky team to have a lot of Kentucky kids on it was my brother’s team,” Feldhaus said. “That’s why their jerseys are in the rafters.”