I graduated with Larry Pursiful’s daughter. I was in his home a few times and i was TOTALLY unaware of what a great wildcat he was. He is such a nice nice gentleman who didnt flaunt his Wildcat ties or sucess. My, my ,to live those days over again to sit and bug him to death asking questions and learning from him.

I was actually looking for your "voice" after the Miami game, but sadly you were not here. : ( Great write-up here, though.

I have just a couple of thoughts……: )

I totally agree that all of our offensive efforts absolutely MUST run through Patrick. Even if he doesn’t end up shooting the ball, at least we should be passing it into him and then he can kick it back out if he doesn’t have a good shot. I do believe that this is the coaching staff’s master game-plan and like Ken pointed out, now they MUST get the boys to execute the plan to perfection.

There were a few plays in the last two games when we did actually attempt to get the ball inside to Patrick that I personally found incredibly frustrating. Must we try to pass or in some cases lazily lob the pass into Patrick from the half court line and hope and pray he is able to fight off three defenders to go and get it? For the love! We pick up our dribble, stand at the half court line totally looking at Patrick and my goodness is it ever obvious (can you say telegraphing?) where we are trying to go with the ball. It’s also extremely obvious that we aren’t going to be shooting the ball from that far out so, "hello, defense, don’t bother guarding the person who has picked up their dribble and feel free to stand in front of Patrick". Really? Must we do this? I realize there is some proper spacing involved and that there are certain angles we need to try and create in order to open up the passing lanes, but honestly, to me, the plays where we are trying to get the ball inside from basically half court will never work and we have to stop being so blatantly obvious in the desire to get it inside to Patrick. Surely, it can’t be that hard to get a good passing angle?

I think the fact that we have been unsuccessful to this point at getting the ball inside to Patrick is making him incredibly frustrated and quite possibly making his mental recovery from injury that much harder. I would think that once we are able to get him the ball, Patrick will feel productive and fiercely dominating once again and his confidence will go through the roof and hopefully he will be back to his old potentially-All-American self.

Billy G is an adjuster. We started horrible last year and finished strong. At the first of the year I said this team has sweet 16 potential and I think that will ring true by the end. I disagree with most of the posts here. I think Patterson is tremendous, but I don’t think he’s good enough for us to predicate our entire offense around him into just coming down the court and trying to force it inside. We are obviously the best when we run. When you have Liggins running the break, good things happen and we should press more. When we come down and pass the ball around the perimeter waiting for ppatt to get open, we become stagnant. Coming up with a ppatt quota for touches I think would be even more damaging. I say run, run, run and run some more.
I just haven’t seen us get many breaks this year. I thought the reffing against Miami was horrible. Meeks took good shots he just couldn’t get them to fall. It seemed like every loose ball fell into a Hurricane’s lap. Not to mention what Miller hasn’t done this year, but I’m not going to pick on him much since he’s a frosh.

I would say he’s twice the adjuster Tubby was. Last year he had nobody due to injuries and Tubby’s lack of recruiting. This year he is feeling out a young team and seeing what works. College basketball isn’t the same anymore. There are too many solid players in the nation and a team only needs a couple of scorers to beat anybody. VMI and Gardner Webb defeats are going to become the norm across college basketball. I wasn’t happy with the first half of Miami but I think he’s done a great job adjusting after the first few minutes. The real problem is Patterson and Meeks have to step up every game. No excuses. Demand the ball Pat, Billy G can’t do it for you.

i think coach g needs to use playing time as an even bigger motivator than he is now. I think he should experiment with meeks, patterson, slone, porter, and stevenson as the starting lineup for one of our easy games AFTER the indiana game. Though it shouldn’t be permanent, i think that patterson will get the ball more for the mere fact that with that lineup, nobody other than meeks is a legitimate scoring threat. Hell they’ll be so scared of taking shots, they’ll HAVE to pass it to Patterson, I think this would help the regular starters realize what their job is and help them contribute alot more to the team

I love me a good big who passes well out of the post when he is doubled. It makes the game so easy if you use him right.

Until our outside shooting picks up. You can pound it in to Patterson all day but he will be continually double-teamed until we start making shots. As for the argument over final four talent. Look, I know we are insane in Kentucky, but take a step back. We have no senior leadership. Our biggest contributing junior didn’t play last year(Meeks). Liggins and Miller have talent but are just babies. Patterson is also coming off injury. You can’t realistically expect us to be a final four team this year. If Smith had this team or last years’, we wouldn’t even be talking NIT. As for FortyYear talking about talent on last year’s team, please. Bradley and Crawford had turned into scrubs before Billy G got a hold of them. Our most talented players all missed significant time. As for wanting Lucas to come, whew, I’m glad he didn’t. I’ve never been a fan, apparently Florida wasn’t either.

 “If Smith had this team or last years’, we wouldn’t even be talking NIT. As for FortyYear talking about talent on last year’s team, please. Bradley and Crawford had turned into scrubs before Billy G got a hold of them”.

That whole comment is a joke.

Get him Forty.

I came across this article reflecting on last year’s season and I think that it deserves another look. There are so many people feeling down right now that I thought this might provide a little encouragement of sorts. This season is so FAR from over. Take a look:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/14002-farewell-to-seniors-joe-crawford-ramel-bradley-kentucky-basketball-season-recap

Note: Joe and Ramel were in NO way “scrubs” prior to Billy G, but see their comments about BCG in this article. Very inspiring.

Didn’t let Rondo start and when Crawford and Bradley played under Tubby, they weren’t half the players they were under Billy G, especially Crawford. Tubby inherited a BMW and turned it into a hoopty. I don’t think the 06 and 07 teams were similar to last year’s. Even if they were, is making the round of 32 what you consider a success at UK? You are dealing in maybe’s and what ifs. What if the injuries hadn’t of happened. What if Ppatt would have still came to UK if Tubby was there. The truth is, those injuries did happen to Billy G and he made good with what he had. The truth is patterson didn’t commit to UK while Tubby was the coach. The truth is Tubby was at the helm for the longest final four drought in UK history. Those are facts, not speculation.
As for Mr. Detroit basketball, the same guy who told me the celtics wouldn’t win the title last year, come on man, your basketball knowledge has been noted.

But you were the one who dropped the first insult. And my mom always told me don’t dish out what you can’t take. Plus it’s Christmas time, so hohoho(no offense to your relatives :)
Back to the subject. Do people not realize how damning this is to the program? Have we not noticed how uncomfortable our team has been at Rupp over the past five years? It’s like they’re playing in front of a crowd of vipers, waiting to strike at the first mistake. I yell at the TV during every mistake too, but when the game is over I can put it into perspective. Billy G’s kids play with a lot more heart than Tubby’s teams, for the most part, ever showed. I don’t see how anyone could look at the heart last year’s team showed at the end of the season and argue that. Plus they are so much more interesting to watch. I don’t hate Tubby, I bet he would be a fine neighbor and he’s a decent basketball coach, but UK deserves more than that.
Bottom line is this team is very young and growing. By the end of the year they will be a sweet 16 type of club. If not, I will be right here with you saying Billy G needs to get it together. That aside, we have only lost one game to an inferior opponent, VMI. Losing at home to Miami isn’t an upset considering Rupp is about as intimidating these days as Rasheed Wallace’s perimeter game.

I said your comment was rediculous. I didnt say anything about you or your abundance or lack of knowledge. If you read closer I was adressing your statement not yourself.

Enough with the Tubby Smith debate. This thread has nothing to do with him. Drop it, please.

I thought we were talking about UK’s offense. At the end of the year when Meeks is leading the conference in scoring and ppatt is putting up a double double every night, I think some people on here will owe Mr. Billy G an apology. It’s frustrating to watch Pat not get the ball but I think, as well documented on this blog months before the first game, outside shooting is still the culprit.

I want this thread back on topic. If you want to talk about something else, start a fan post.