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Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Calipari-Pitino Edition

Louisville, North Carolina, and Syracuse all think Coach Cal was dissing them. But was he?

Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the Big Blue Nation, and welcome to the Wednesday Quickies. I know I’m a day removed from my normal slot, but life sometimes makes that necessary.

Today’s ongoing news is the seeming controversy created by John Calipari in comments to Mike Lupica the other day. No doubt you have read them many times, but here is the relevant quote:

All I can tell you is this: If it happens on your campus and it happens with your assistants and those people, you probably have a good idea of what’s going on," Calipari said. "It happens back in their hometown, it happens back with their family … there’s no way you can know. You just can’t know.

Most people, including here at A Sea of Blue, have assumed this is a shot by Coach Cal across the bow of Louisville Cardinals coach Rick Pitino, basically suggesting that Pitino did in fact know about the "Cardinal Rules" controversy involving sex and strippers at U of L.

That’s certainly possible, and I don’t claim any special knowledge. But to me, it looks more like Calipari defending himself than attacking Pitino. Calipari has been hit by a couple of scandals, the most important of which was the one at Memphis involving Derrick Rose and at UMass involving Marcus Camby where some of his players engaged in questionable activity away from campus. Eric Bledsoe’s alleged academic questions in high school also fall under this rubric, as did John Wall’s unofficial visits issues.

To me, this reads more like Calipari defending himself than indicting Rick Pitino, but he certainly could’ve been doing both. Mike Lupica himself thinks that Calipari was not taking shots at Pitino, or at North Carolina or Syracuse.

This reminds me of an old quote from Dune based on the old "if the shoe fits…" wisdom:

"My son [Paul Atreides] displays a general garment and you claim it’s cut to your fit?" [Lady] Jessica asked. "What a fascinating revelation."

Indeed.

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    "I think the main thing Kentucky has got to do is increase that percentage of passes completed," Steele answered. "It’s something they’ve been struggling in the last couple of years. In today’s game, especially in the pistol offense, you really have to hit 60 percent of your completions. You’ve got to get those short ones and complete the passes. It stops a lot of drives if you’re only completing 53-54 percent."

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