Living in Denver I have provided from time to time a Bronco fan impressions of TT. Now I am first and always a Catman, but for a mid winter change of pace, I pass on this from mother..

I am going to get to see TT I think...Your cousin Y and I joined Graves County High School Foundation so we can get tickets.....Can you imagine an 80 year old woman, a graduate of Mayfield High School, the first football queen crowned in the War Memorial Stadium, joining Graves County HS Foundation.Graves County High School didn't exist until 20 years or so ago!! I will wear my Tebow jersey..Cousin Y will wear hers!! I have engaged X to stay with GF already..April 20th is the date...Love you and yours....

For the record Graves County HS opened in 1985. It consolidated, Lowes, Fancy Farm, Farmington, Wingo, Sedalia, and Symsonia. Cuba the state champion in 1952 had been consolidated a few years earlier with Sedalia.

UK Hoops Vs. UT Lady Vols

Thompson-Boling Arena

Monday February 13,2012

7:00 PM

TV: ESPN2 3D

Radio:UK IMG

OK, So, it is gutcheck time for the Hoops squad. No more undefeated SEC season on the line, no more walking away with the SEC Reg.Season title, no more talk about how no one can play with UK. All that was dashed last week in the Bayou. No friendly confines of Memorial Coliseum to smooth the rough spots tonight. UT's Thompson-Boling Arena is going to be rocking, because something is on the line tonight that has never been done before. Win at Thompson-Boling Arena. Sweep the Lady Vols in the regular season. And along with that, virtually seal at least a tie for the Reg. Season Championship that Matthew Mitchell wants to get under his belt so he can focus on a lot of other things that await the Cats down the road. But make no mistake, UK is not looking past UT. That will not happen.

More after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

So, feeling pretty good after escaping Memorial with not just a win, but a signature win. First victory by a #1 team in Nashville in over 20 years. The Cats not only play a crushing first half, but they manage a comeback from a lapse in the second to overcome a Vanderbilt team loaded with scorers and veteran Seniors who knew how to handle late game situations. You have the confidence that with only five games remaining in the SEC, and only two of those away, that the Cats have passed the test that so many experts and talking heads said would trip the Cats up along the way. Think an SEC undefeated season is forthcoming and that the Cats should steamroll their way through the rest of the season and into the NCAA's with the #1 overall seed and that they should be playing close to home and enjoying the fruits of John Calipari's labor, right? Right.

Just don't think there won't br some more bumps along the road.

The path to the NCAA Championship in April is going to be frought with potholes and detour signs. And almost every one of them is going to be tied to a Zone Defense. More after the jump.

Continue reading this post »

Finally getting caught up on all the posts over the past couple of days, seems like it's been interesting in here!?!?

Thought I would open up a Fanpost where we could all gather and chit-chat as we wait for the game to start, and if nothing else, expend some nervous energy by furiously pounding on our keyboards!

Continue reading this post »

Something strange... is going on, in the neighborhood, something ominous maybe.

Something that I can’t remember ever having witnessed or felt before is going on... there appears to be a paradigm switch happening... right now in Chapel Hill, NC... perhaps over the past two college basketball seasons.

Who you gonna call? Dukes zone-busters?

As far back as I can remember watching, Carolina does not blow 10 point leads in the Dean Dome over the last two minutes of any game. Didn’t happen before... But it just did.

And even further back... Carolina does NOT get blown out by over 30 to Florida State or anybody else for that matter. Didn’t happen... just happened.

Perhaps fittingly on the night the iconic Dean Smith was passed by a Coach from... huh, Syracuse? on the all-time win list, UNC melted like the normal Hot-Buffalo-Wing-Dings late Spring fold-thing. Syr-excuse? Don’t they play in a giant air conditioner or something? Didn’t...do.

True, Duke has beaten Carolina in the Dome before, but never and NOT like this. Once upon a time the story of a game like that would be safely sent to the Daily Tarheel with two minutes left, and them up 10 with..."North Carolina holds off furious late Duke rally to remain atop the ACC standings". Or better yet, it was usually ..."North Carolina rallies from down double-digits, erases (fill-in-the-blank) lead, and wins by five in the final two minutes".

Seriously, I’ve hated and respected the Tarheels for so long I could write the script for most of their games in the past... or during the Dean Smith era at least. Dean awed and annoyed me more times than I can count, but... I always felt it the moment the momentum had swung back toward the baby blue direction, and always knew that I would be soon disappointed... and, that they would win like that AGAIN. Disgusting!

Maybe it would be a charging call, a missed free throw, a clumsy turnover...something... which would spell the opponent’s eventual doom, but you could ALWAYS feel it... everyone ALWAYS KNEW the Heels would rally to win the close games when they NEEDED to win.

As College basketball fans have long expected, I ALWAYS KNEW the Heels would win, and I hated them for it. Has Duke flipped the script?

But listen; Something has definitely changed down on Franklin Street... and it isn’t very good for the Heels. But, what is it really?

Has Ole Roy finally shined his sterling good-ole-boy legend so much so that it doesn’t REALLY matter to him as much? He has alluded to this post-game weak think after some painful season ending losses... that either way he is ALWAYS proud of his team, dadgummit!

It seemed to salve their pain, especially when Tar Heel fans could always point to... NEXT YEAR.

The fever pitch in NC this year had never been so high during an off season as any that I can remember... beginning immediately when most of the team that lost to Kentucky in last year’s NCAA decided to forego the NBA and remain in Chapel Hill for "some unfinished business".

Around Chapel Hill it has been a foregone conclusion that Roy was going to work his magic again this year and the Heels would skate on ice all the way home with a Natty banner from "The BIG Dance".

But so many of them had forgotten (or chose to forget) their embarrassing late-mid-season smackdown from Georgia Tech, literally last year’s perfect version of The Rambling Wreck. Right then... last year I felt a crack... something was amiss in the Hill after that lopsided game... something unkindly and sinister. The floors didn’t creek at the Four Corners bar anymore. I loved it.

Then I felt the icy cold blast when Florida State made a Seminole and Swiss with Bacon of their once vaunted, now Laissez-faire defense, en route to the ass-thumping-bone-jarring-rim-shakin’-twine-smokeout... the likes of which the ACC (nor anybody else) had ever seen until a just few short weeks ago. NEVER... NOW.

Something critical is missing but it ain’t mass. In fact there may be too much mass when you stack them butt-to-butt. I happen to think it’s more like "sass" that’s missing in these Heels. They’re just too nice, too likeable, too in love with the word Tarheel.

Everyone knows that Roy Williams has a dark side to his Andy of Mayberry routine. But does his team know it yet?, the way he runs to their defense to protect them from so many real world threats, like EVIL alumni ticket buying fans who sold their seats in Vegas, choosing the lure of the Strip over the gym while in LV town? C’mon Roy... do you walk your boys to class too?

Oh my Roy... did a fan just call Barnes "a lump of brick-laying coal?" Somebody call security! Ban him from Franklin County. Harrison is a nice young man, just nervous about his future...

How bout this Roy...?

The next time a Duke... or worse... a Kentucky smacks your little boys down till they bleed dark blue... at the post-game press conference... leave off the "it hurts sooo bad whimper"..

Try out a "I’m SOOO f&^K*n pissed!" instead.

Maybe then they’ll get the picture?

-UNC hater who feels their fan’s pain.

This is a big extended weekend for UK basketball in the state of Tennessee. UK faces the first of 3 difficult road games when it travels to Nashville to play Vanderbilt with ESPN Game Day on location. A couple days later the UK Women Hoops squad goes to Tennessee for a game that will likely determine the SEC winner this year. A sweep by the Cats would be delicious.

Continue reading this post »

Every time I review a UK game I look for possible DDMO plays and have a very difficult time in differentiating them from other plays. Now it is entirely possible (likely even) that my understanding of the DDMO (I've read and viewed much about the system) is so minimal that I'm unable to identify it, but then I read this from Kevin Stallings:

"They don't run the dribble-drive motion (offense) very much," the Vandy coach said. "That's one of the big fallacies about Kentucky basketball. ... They run set plays about every time down. Every once in a while, they run a little dribble-drive. Two, three times a game."

Stallings concluded his digression by saying, "The dribble-drive is more a figment of people's imagination."

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/02/09/2062632/uk-notes-vandy-looks-to-step-it.html#storylink=cpy

And I thought, maybe I'm not quite so dull. Further rumination led me to consider that the DDMO was adopted by Calipari as not so much an alternative systems but rather as a means of differentiating himself from other coaches, thus providing a great marketing opportunity — especially to the elite player who wants a system that utilizes and accentuates his individual talent. Not much DDMO in 2010 because the presence of Wall, Cousins, et al wasn't conducive. Not much last year either. Hard to note this year as well although the personnel seem nearly perfect for DDMO principles. Have we been hoodwinked by that sly old trickster? Hmmm.

I run a website called futureofhoops.wordpress.com and we interview some of the top college basketball recruits around the country. We have interviewed such guys as McDonald's All-Americans Tyler Lewis and Shaq Goodwin and Jordan Brand All-American Danuel House. Our most recent interview features 2013 UK commit Derek Willis. This guy seems really excited to play at Kentucky. I thought the UK fans might want to read it, so here's the link: http://futureofhoops.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/derek-willis-interview-2/

Really cool project this guy is working on and his Kentucky writeup is really interesting. Also enjoyed reading back through a lot of his other stuff after getting linked to this one, but either way I think it's worth the read. His last paragraph in particular is the one that really made me think; a unique perspective from an outsider is always refreshing to read.

http://collegebasketballroadtrip.com/2012/02/09/rupp-arena-and-the-best-team-in-the-land/

Go Cats,

John

Should youthful exuberance be tempered with some reality and history lessons for the Big Blue Nation? We might want to consider the fact that this group of Wildcats has not had a really harrowing experience such as this month's tortuous schedule will give them as well as the SEC Tourney and NCAA Tourney lying ahead.

Oh, they are playing well. Maybe too well too quickly, but that is all fodder for the talking heads. "Peaking" at the right time is always desired, but how do we really know if this team has peaked? Factors and stats tell the tale of a team finding itself as the season has progressed, but along the way we had to lose a few parts temporarily. Terrence Jones had to rebound from injury and self-inflicted difficulties as he got his head right and brought his game attitude roaring back to life, just in time to make a few "experts" eat their words as they began to plant the seeds of doubt about his true place with this team.

Marquis Teague has not struggled per se, as much as he has had to feel his way through trying to lead a group of players whos accomplishments and abilities are even more than his own in some ways, and widely ranging and literally bursting at the seams to get out in others. He needed to learn to lead without taking over. He needed to learn how to distribute the ball to 6 places a game and keep everyone happy and involved. His results have been nothing short of spectacular though as the Cats have 5 players averaging double figures, and the sixth is not far from it.

Add to that Kyle Wiltjer's emergence as a lanky and clumsy wingman in a center's body, and Coach Calipari dragging and screaming all along the way to keep them focused and pushing harder and harder, and there is the possibility that they either lose that focus for a short period of time, or they run into a buzzsaw one night and cannot get themselves over the top and get a win pulled out when they really don't play well enough to earn it.

This team is hopelessly and amazingly talented. I don't care if it's Ohio State, Syracuse, or whomever. No one is more talented than the Cats. Calipari has once again assembled a cast of trained mercenaries in the world of college basketball, and I don't mean that in a bad way. These young men understand their roles and they are of singular mind and purpose in executing what they have come to do. From Marquis throwing a lob to Anthony Davis, who with his band of brothers, could end up changing a decades-old addage that winning requires experience, to a myth of epic proportions and pave the way for a new formula to winning it all, to Darius Miller and Doron Lamb simply destroying the morale of a team that thinks they are hanging with Kentucky one minute, and find themselves down by 15 two minutes later, courtesy of a barrage of three point shots. But is the talent, combined with the coaching, combined with all of the stars aligning at once to bring this about enough to prevent this team from making a mistake down the line somewhere? Probably not, Big Blue Nation. And as much as we might want it to be, it might not happen. #8 might elude us once again. We might not be dancing in the streets of New Orleans in early April, I do not know. But I do know that it has been some ride so far, and I do love to ride.

Coach Cal probably has a list of things he can cite as reasons to be worried about what happens over the next few weeks. He could tell us everything that was wrong about the Sportscenter highlights we all watched over the last few days, and he could probably show us the mistakes being made every trip down the court by this team. The problem for the rest of the world of college basketball is that as of right now, they cannot. At this point, Kentucky is 2 pts from perfection. One basket from a destiny reserved for those who acheive pseudo-godhood status. And they may very well not taste defeat again this season. But our expectations must be tempered with reality. Then again, they may change reality this year as well.