100 percent agree with EVERYTHING you said. What a downer. The only upside I can see is that they now KNOW THEY CANNOT afford to lose another game. The next five teams are beatable and frankly I EXPECT them to win them all. We are lucky that LSU and Tennessee is at home. Although that hasn’t brought us much luck this season all the time. I am on the verge of pulling my support for BG(and I just know he will be so disappointed). This is not acceptable to me. We were whipped tonight and I am sure he said that in the press conference. I don’t care what anyone says…………Vandy is becoming my least favorite team in the SEC. More so then Florida and that is saying alot because I used to live in Nashville and loved Vandy except when they played Kentucky. I loved Vandy and their excitement. I just cannot stand Stallings. He whinning about Ogilvy’s tech was classless. I sure hope we get to play them in Tampa. Won’t be refs helping them out then.

Before anyone jumps me about the BG comment. Please understand that I have never waivered under Tubby until that Bama loss(ironically on Feb 17th-which just happends to be my bday) in 2007. I just didn’t see the passion in Tubby anymore. Love the guy but realized at that point that he lost his zeal for Kentucky basketball. With BG its like he doesn’t care about the ramifications of the lineup and the subs. He needs to understand that kentucky is sick of losing. SICK OF IT!

Vandy also had the benefit of a friendly whistle, but that made little difference.

Couldn’t disagree more. 40 free throws, thats a joke.

Perhaps I’m too optimistic or too sunshine-y, but it’s only one game. This isn’t a team that’s .500 and definitely out of the tourney. Are we a lock? No. But this loss didn’t kill our chances. There’s still games to play plus a conference tourney. And when push comes to shove, the NCAA loves established programs that travel well. Pretty sure we fit that bill.

It was just an off night all around. Teams have them. Meeks didn’t shoot well, PP didn’t play, and Stevenson was non existant. Coupled with some inconsistent officiating and a road game, and a lot of teams would be hard pressed to win.

One poor game doesn’t define a season, a team, and most especially, a coach. It’s still great to be a UK fan, and I’m not even considering a UK-less NCAA tournament.

… that our five star stud pony was sitting on the bench this whole time. How many games will UConn win in the Big East on the road without Hasheem Thabeet? Answer — maybe none.

I missed the first 10 minutes of the game due to a car issue. I didn’t get to see what he did that was so terrible that BG felt the need to sit him for the rest of the game. I feel like that decision crippled us inside on defense. Not that Harrellson is an all-star defender, but there is a matter of physics.

Gotta work tomorrow. I’m too old for this crap. :-)

They gave us 9 points, 6 rebounds, 6 turnovers and 1 assist in 62 minutes.

That is 3/5 of our starting five.

I appreciate their effort, but their lack of talent and lack of basic basketball skills is killing this team. It’s disappointing that CBG was not able to develop Liggins, Miller, Galloway and Harrellson throughout the year so we would not be in this position right now.

Our remaining schedule is tough, but if we can win on Saturday, we will be in pretty good shape. I hope Patterson’s ankle and finger are 100% by Saturday. We really need him to get healthy in a hurry.

I don’t think this is a team we should have beaten… Without Pat and BCG’s refusal to play zone I figured we were in for loss…

 I don’t buy the quirkly gym thing… I have watched UK win there to many times and saw them beat two very good teams very badly their in the NCAA Tournament in 1994… If you want to make it quirky for Vandy choose the other bench and put them at a disadvantage also…

I am guessing if this team only wins two more games and is bounced in the first round of the SEC Tourney they could be NIT bound… The NIT is unacceptable!!!

Can they close with three wins in the last five??? Let’s hope so!!!

Nothing is quirky about that…

I don’t think he should be fired…..yet. To me, his biggest problem is he is too stubborn. He seems to have the mentality that his way is the best way, and they are going to keep doing it his way come hell or high water. He refuses to make adjustments. I understand that he always wants to play a man to man defense, but there are times when switching to a zone for a few possessions is beneficial.

I’ve given up trying to figure out why and who he plays off of the bench. I think some of the players do not have confidence, simply because they know that if they make one mistake, they are out.

Overall, I am disappointed in what he has doen so far. His X’s and O’s leave something to be desired. That may be due to only 2 guys knowing how to put the ball in the basket, however your only offensive plays can not be 1. Try to throw it in to a double teamed Patterson (when healthy) and 2. Run an on-ball screen for meeks. He can recruit, so hopefully he is just buying time until “his” guys are in place.

I also think the Edwards-gate has soiled Billy G’s reputation not only to the fan base, but to the nation. He comes across, right or wrong, as a grade A prick at times. The problem is, there is no reason for it. I don’t mind a coach getting fired up if he or she has been wronged. Billy G has a temper that gets the best of him at times.

To make a long story short, I give him 2 more years to turn it around before I start calling for his head.

Pretty much sums up the game for me. Vandy exploited us inside, and without Pat and Stevenson in the twilight zone again it really hurt us. Vandy did a decent job defensively on Jodie but let’s face it, he just didn’t have a typical Jodiesque night. What wind we did have in our sails was squashed by the massive number of fouls called. Gathered we did foul more than usual, but not that much more. Bad officiating as I’ve seen this season. And yes, Memorial Gym totally sucks! It’s always a weird place to play. The BCG technical is a an absolute mystery to me. I never even saw him open his mouth. Weird. Hopefully we’ll bouce back.

I watched the second half when somebody informed me of the halftime score. I’m not a basketball guru by any means, but Vandy did appear to be under much better control in the second half of the game. Kentucky’s frustrations were very evident, and that had a very negative impact on their play. As Tru mentioned (and setting all discussion of officiating aside), the inside drives of Vandy were lethal, particularly to your foul count. Once Kentucky had 2 or 3 players with 4 fouls and a lot of time left, they just didn’t have the margin for aggressiveness on defense.

Tennessee fans at RTT were torn on it. Naturally, some wanted the game advantage in the standing (and I’m sure you’re all Ole Miss fans tonight!), but some wanted the Saturday matchup to be on equal footing to add a bit more spice to it.

Will Patterson be back by Saturday (I have no idea on his injury)? UT’s strength is the interior; if they’d ever decide to actually use it, that could be a real problem if Kentucky doesn’t solve the interior woes from last night. (Fortunately for Kentucky, UT has a way of allowing record-setting nights by guards. You know, just in case you didn’t know or something…)

the Gillespie criticism here. Sure he probably screwed up the lineup, he’s too stubborn, he practices too much, and everything else. But the bottom line is that we’re missing the reigning SEC Freshmen of the Year and we are an extremely young team. How many of our players have been through these SEC road battles? To make everything worse, we were playing on College basketball’s most unfair gymnasium.

Sure Gillespie has made some errors but get off of his case. We would’ve had to do something extraordinary last night to win against a desperate Vandy team playing on their funky court.

On offense, we have players wide open nearly every time down the court. We’re usually pretty solid on defense. The only problem I have with Billy G is his substitution pattern. Until we get some players that can make wide open shots and demonstrate some iota of a basketball IQ, Adolph Rupp couldn’t do anything more with this team. I think Stevenson gets softer every game. I was glad Billy G finally gave his minutes to Stewart last night. Harris isn’t much of a player but there’s not many other choices. I bet Billy G would like to cut 4 or 5 players and recruit their replacements next year but he doesn’t blame them.
I can’t say this enough, that was a pitiful display of reffing last night. Typical at Memorial, I guess all those turtlenecks scare the zebras.

All this anti-Gillispie crap makes me sick. I am at the point where I only enjoy watching the games alone – dont want to hear that crap. I mentioned yesterday that I wished that I could have live blogged the Vandy game, but now I definitely take that back. I dont think I could have stomached it after reading the post mortem – no way will I go back and read the live thread. Honestly I am getting where I have a hard time even logging onto this site and I hate that. My feelings are very strong on this. No – things arent that good right now, but hell.

We are just a young team. If we are still struggling next year, I’ll start to worry.

“Billy Clyde is a good coach who has the potential to win big. But in order to do so, I think he has to firmly adjust his principles to a new reality of Kentucky basketball and players/coaches on an elite level. Right now what we have makes little sense. I can take losing because of a lack of talent or even mistakes. But losing for irrational decisions that seem to have little to no purpose….that is difficult to accept.”

http://new.kentuckysportsradio.com/?p=14179

calming down and thinking rationally I think that I can safely say that there are merits to both sides of Billy G. I think that he was brought in to be the savior of this program or at least get us back to competing nationally. Although, it had only been two years when Tubby left that we did compete nationally. That is how crazy we were. We griped and griped about Tubby losing to MSU in overtime and how we didn’t get to the final four. That was a heartbreaker loss. But again it shows how impatient we are. So after two years of mediocre in season play Tubby left and we felt Billy would come in and save the day. What we expected was immediate improvement. What we got was less then what Tubby did for us prior. So this year many of us hoped and felt that improvement would be made and like Tru said there has been as compared to last season to this point. We are still vunerable to losses but are we stronger then last year? YES! So that is good. But I still feel that those who think that Billy G had the potential to be better then he is-is also correct. But what Billy may be implenting is staying power. The guy who said that on here earlier is right on and it really made me think.

What else would you have done differently last night? Only thing I can think of is maybe play Harrelson more. They don’t have skilled offensive players. I’m not talking about a third double digit scorer, I’m just talking about a third guy that can hit an open shot.

want to say that I was totally out of line to call coach out like that. I apologize for letting my anger come out on here because of a loss. It wasn’t fair to other Kentucky fans or Coach(even though I know he will never see this). Please accept my apology to all those who were offended.