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Wildcat Quickies: The Wrath of Cal Edition

Calipari unloads on an anonymous NBA Scout, the 'Cats lose a big Football commit, Marlana VanHoose rocks Rupp, and more quickies to start off your last week of 2015.

By Keith Garrett
Anthony Gruppuso-USA TODAY Sports

To say that Skal Labissiere is struggling to adjust to the college game is a ginormous understatement, you may as well say that the Christmas weather in Kentucky was just a bit lacking in the snow department.  However, one 'anonymous' NBA scout let loose on Skal after the Louisville game.

"Big Skal, no strength, no toughness, no game," the scout said. "Comes off the bench, plays 10 minutes, had 2 points, 3 rebounds, 0-for-3 from the floor. Shot an air ball on an easy hook.

"That guy is what you call a 'Paper Tiger,' a mock draft myth. He's a f***in' fantasy, that guy."

Told that DraftExpress.com had Labissiere projected as the No. 5 pick in the draft after he was once at No. 1, the scout said: "No. 5, he's not No. 1, he's not No. 5, he's not No. 51. That's a joke.

"He's not going to play anymore for Kentucky, I don't think. There's nothing he could do. The Louisville big men are mediocre at best. Truth be told, they're below mediocre. He couldn't do nothing with them. He's a fraud. The thing is going the other way fast."

He added: "You gotta see kids play against big-time college athletes and then you can make some kind of assessment. ...This is Rupp Arena, sold out, this is religious tribal warfare. It's one of the great rivalries in college basketball and if the kid didn't have a big name, he wouldn't even have played because he didn't deserve to play. That's my opinion."

While the information contained in the rant is accurate, to a point, the manner in which this anonymous tough guy went about the assessment is akin to a bully. To see a kid that wants to win, is a good kid, and is just in over his head is tough to watch.  You want so badly for the guy to succeed, and to see someone take a shot at the kid behind the veil of anonymity is just cowardly.

Coach Calipari agrees, and took to social media to make an indirect statement about it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Every one of my players is on their own timetable. Kids grow at their own...

Posted by John Calipari on Sunday, December 27, 2015

TWEET(S) OF THE WEEKEND

YOUR WILDCAT QUICKIES

  • Three Star Defensive Tackle Kobe Smith has reportedly de-committed from Kentucky.  Smith was a big get for the UK staff and he was about to enroll early at UK as well.  Early indications are that South Carolina may be his new destination.  There is also a possible interesting angle to this:

  • Unless you did not watch UK-UL and live under a rock, the sports world is basically Zaprudering the film of Rick PItino flipping the UK crowd the bird following the game Saturday.  I was walking into the tunnel about 10-15 feet behind Rick and it happened.  The fact that Pitino acknowledged a gesture happened, but said it was him saying they were #1, is a clear admission without actually saying it.
  • An awesome part of the game was the Rupp Arena atmosphere, the fans brought it from the tip through the final buzzer and it was awesome.  I used a decibel meter app on my phone to measure the loudness, the noise level hovered around 100 during normal parts of the game and shot to 115-120 during big moments.  I also took this short video of the Go Big Blue chant combined with the 10-second call and Pitino going crazy.

YOUR NON-UK QUICKIES

  • The Philadelphia 76ers are now 1-29 this season, this is now an NBA record and an amazing one.  How a franchise can collect professional players and be 1-29 is amazingly terrible. It is bordering on tanking, in my opinion.
  • One of the cool experiences for Football players during bowl week is the swag they get.  LSU got some things better than most when they received some custom KD8 shoes.


YOUR RANDOM QUICKIES

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