Thursday Quickies: Early Adversity Edition

The Kentucky Basketball program hasn’t had the greatest few days

By Zac Oakes@ZacOakes Nov 8, 2018, 6:40am EST

This week has not been kind to the Kentucky Basketball program.

On Tuesday night, Kentucky was throttled on a national stage in the Champions Classic by the Duke Blue Devils in a game where Duke couldn’t seem to do anything wrong and Kentucky struggled to get anything right.

The performance brought some valid questions about this team to the forefront, while fans have to sit back and watch Duke become the darlings of the sports world as they have shown just how good they can be when things are clicking on all cylinders.

And then last night, news broke that two Kentucky Wildcats were linked in the FBI’s probe into college basketball through documents released by the FBI. One of them is former Wildcats forward Jarred Vanderbilt. The other is current point guard Ashton Hagans. The two were targeted by Christian Dawkins, a runner for ASM Sports.

The full article we posted last night can be found here.

In my opinion. I don’t think either is anything to sound the alarms on just yet. With the Duke loss, I don’t think it means that Kentucky is horrible and will have a terrible season. Are there legitimate question marks with this team? Yes. Do they have major holes that could prevent them from making a run at a title? Yes. Is it anything to freak out about before Thanksgiving? Absolutely not.

There’s no denying that Duke is the better team right now. They have three of the best players in the entire country, and three guys that could be top 5 draft picks. The question with them was never the talent, but instead the fit. Well, we’ve seen that they can all play well together, and that’s why Duke should probably be considered the early favorite to win the title.

But crazy things happen, and IT IS NOVEMBER. Kentucky should continue to grow throughout the season and get better and by February or March, be in a position to contend. As for Duke, nothing is guaranteed. They may be very good, but they aren’t unbeatable. In a one-game scenario, what happens if two of Williamson/Reddish/Barrett get into foul trouble or something? Nothing in college basketball is a foregone conclusion.

As for the FBI probe, we’ll have to wait and see what happens when more information comes out. Right now, it appears that Dawkins was targeting these guys, but we don’t know if anything was actually exchanged and there is no report of them meeting or anything like that.

That isn’t to say those things didn’t happen, but it seems that worrying about it and speculating are premature right now. We’ll have a clearer idea of the situation if more information comes out. Then again, nothing else regarding Vanderbilt or Hagans may come out. You just never know.

Now on to your regular Thursday morning programming...

It is all good. Back to the drawing board for this UK Team, but these guys will be okay. Chalk this up as a humbling experience for the team.
— Anthony Epps (@epps_anthony) November 7, 2018