It's Friday, and it's my day to play "beat the crowd" for Christmas shopping.  So this moring, I go forth to shop.

But before I do, I want to point out a few things to discuss.  The first is this piece by Mark Story trying which former UK coach they will be pulling for this weekend when the Minnesota Golden Gophers and the Louisville Cardinals face off in Phoenix Stadium.

For more on the game, be sure to visit the SB Nation blogs of the two principal antagonists, the Daily Gopher for Minnesota and the Card Chronicle for Louisville.

You know this calls for a poll of the Big Blue Nation, which you will find below.  OK, 'Cat fans -- who ya with on this one?

Next, there is this story from WKYT that Patrick Patterson has been named to the Naismith Trophy watch list.  Most analysts will tell you that Tyler Hansbrough's name already reserved for this season, although Stephen Curry may have something to say about that.  Perhaps Patterson as well, if UK's guards can ever see their way clear to getting him the basketball more than occasionally.

Finally, I want to leave you with something we haven't engaged in for a while around here -- a little Duke loathing.  The other day I was bumping around the Internet and ran into Turtle Soup, an excellent Maryland Terrapins blog.

At the top of the blog, there is a link to something called "The Anti-Duke Manifesto," which is perhaps the most exhaustive and cogent explanation of reasons to loathe the Blue Devils that I have yet read anywhere.  I warn you, this is a really long piece, but it reads very well and hits the pro- and con- Duke arguments, and approaches the issue from an almost academic viewpoint.  It's a nice piece of work, but make sure you have more than a few minutes left in your lunch hour before trying to take it all in one bite.