UK Wildcat Country

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, so I have lots of thoughts.

Let’s start with the SEC Tournament, even though it’s old news. The Mississippi State game showcased a tremendous will to win from this bunch. Eric Bledsoe had the greatest intentional free throw miss I’ve ever seen to set up the tying score. And while I first felt bad for Mississippi State because my team essentially knocked them out of the big dance, after watching the end of their NIT loss to North Carolina, my heart stopped bleeding for them. If you let Larry Drew hit a game winning shot over you, Jarvis Varnado, you deserve exactly what you got. And MSU should have beaten Rider, Arkansas, Alabama and Auburn. That’s why you didn’t get into the show, Rick Stansbury. It wasn’t because of a lane violation.

Were you people worried about the draw Kentucky got on Selection Sunday? I know I was. In fact, I cheered ten times harder while watching Texas vs. Wake Forest than I did during Kentucky vs. East Tennessee State. In hindsight, Texas could have hired the Dallas Mavericks to play Wake Forest and Kentucky would have beaten them in New Orleans, so all the worrying was for naught.

Seriously, how good was the big blue in New Orleans? I was halfway worried about East Tennessee State, not that we would lose, but rather that we would play poorly like we did in 2004 against Florida A&M, only win by 12-15 points and create bad karma for the second round game. In other words, I was worried that UK would do exactly what Kansas did. Once again, I couldn’t have been happier for those worries to become moot points.

Against ETSU, Kentucky did what a top seed is supposed to do to a 16 seed. They broke their will to compete. It was over by the second TV timeout. It wasn’t a battle throughout like the Florida A&M game or Kansas’s game against Lehigh. Bledsoe and Patterson set the tone and put feet to throats, never letting go until the final buzzer. They got Mark Krebs and Jon Hood scoring opportunities. It was easy, but it was supposed to be that way.

Going into yesterday’s game, I had talked myself into worry again. I think I’ve been nervous before every game we’ve played the last two months or so. The last one that didn’t make me nervous was LSU. After all, Wake Forest had four big men that Hubert Davis said would have no problem neutralizing Patterson and Cousins. And in Ishmael Smith, they had a point guard who could beat John Wall in a race, and maybe even while dribbling a basketball. And who was going to guard Al-Farouq Aminu? Well, thanks to Dino Gaudio, Aminu wasn’t the factor that he could have been. Leaving your best player in the game after he picks up his second foul in the first half is not smart. I certainly wouldn’t have done it.

There are three Wildcats I am particularly proud of after the Wake Forest game.

The first is Darius Miller. The poor kid couldn’t buy a shot on those awful rims at Bridgestone Arena for the SEC Tournament. Whatever momentum he had personally gained during his strong finish to the regular season was gone, and it didn’t come back against East Tennessee State. When Wake jumped out 10-2 to start the game, it was Miller who cranked up the aggression to 11 and willed his team back into the game when it looked like they were sleepwalking. It was the nicest array of midrange moves I’ve seen at Kentucky since Keith Bogans and maybe even since Ron Mercer. Where has that stuff been all year? But it wasn’t just the offense that made me proud. He rebounded. We’ve never seen that kind of rebounding from Darius before. Again, where did it come from? He drew fouls on Al-Farouq Aminu. He drove at him. This is super aggression, and when Miller plays well, you know what you’re going to get from some players on the team night in and night out, so that makes the team that much more dangerous.

DeMarcus Cousins also made me beam like a proud father. After Wake beat Texas (thanks, Texas!), we all started hearing about Wake center Chas McFarland and how he takes pride in grinding the gears of his opponents. I didn’t realize that he was the dirtiest player in the ACC all four years at Wake, but his demeanor did remind me of a homeless man’s Bill Laimbeer. So we all knew going in that McFarland was going to try and rattle Cousins. And what did Cousins do? He only scored 19 points, grabbed eight rebounds and didn’t even look at McFarland funny. It wasn’t like McFarland didn’t present him with opportunities either. That hard foul in the second half was right down across his face, but Cuz had been hit in the nuts against Tennessee, so I’d imagine once your boys have come under attack, a forearm to the face will feel like a slap on the wrist. Cousins was the bigger man last night, and he made McFarland look like a jackass.

Finally, on a sentimental note, I was happy for Mark Krebs when he hit that three. With everything he’s been through over these last few years, nobody deserved to score in an NCAA game more than him.

The best thing about these games is that the talking heads on TV will continue to doubt Kentucky. They’ve done it all year, so why should they stop? And Calipari just eats that stuff up. Nobody is better at the “nobody believes in us” mentality than John Calipari. Watch ESPN tomorrow. They’ll say Syracuse was the most impressive team. And if it does happen, I wouldn’t want to be Cornell or Wisconsin.

Doesn’t it feel good to punch somebody in the face in the big dance? It’s been too long.

Before I begin, let’s start with the disclaimer that I was born in 1986 and my basketball memory starts in 1992. That eliminates the 101-100 shootout win over Alabama in 1979 and Kenny Walker’s buzzer beater against Auburn in 1984. I am aware of these games’ existence, but I have never seen them, so they don’t make the cut for the list.

With that in mind, let’s begin.

10. 2003: Kentucky 64, Mississippi State 57

There weren’t a lot of close games for the SEC’s last perfect team. The Bulldogs made us sweat twice. This one was much tougher than the one in Rupp, which saw the Cats pull away. As always in 2003, Kentucky played fantastic defense. Noted UK killer Mario Austin had an absolutely terrible game, being totally outplayed by Marquis Estill. Late in the game, Austin had a chance to put MSU in the lead from the free throw line and missed badly both times. Chuck Hayes sealed the game from the line in an extremely physical SEC final. In a move that has never sat well with me, Tubby Smith didn’t let the team cut down the nets, under the premise that the Final Four was also in the Superdome and those were the nets we wanted to cut down. Well, you always cut the nets down.

9. 1995: Kentucky 86, Florida 72

Our first game of the 1995 tournament was a late evening game in the Georgia Dome. The Florida game was in the middle of the afternoon. There is a considerable difference in lighting between afternoon and early evening in the Georgia Dome, and it showed in the level of play. A desperate Florida team played basket for basket with Kentucky for about 12 minutes. Subs Antoine Walker, Chris Harrison and Mark Pope sparked a blistering run that blew the game open. All three hit multiple threes during the run and turned a close defensive struggle into a rout. Most importantly, it allowed the stars to align for a game that will appear much later on the list.

8. 2001: Kentucky 87, Arkansas 78

This game got Kentucky one of the most ridiculous 2 seeds ever handed out by the committee. Arkansas won a very frustrating game against UK the week before and had blown them out in the tournament in 2000. This particular bunch of UK players just had a hard time beating Joe Johnson. The Razorbacks came out on fire, making seemingly every shot and getting every call. One play had my dad so angry I left the room. Cliff Hawkins got a steal, then his feet got tangled up with an Arkansas player and Hawkins was called for the foul. If I had to guess, Doug Shows blew the whistle. Keith Bogans hit a couple of buckets at the end of the half to cut the deficit to ten points, then he and Tayshaun Prince, along with a great effort from the late Marvin Stone, just wore down Arkansas in the second half. It was an extremely entertaining game that was a moment of toughness for a relatively soft UK team.

7. 1992: Kentucky 80, Alabama 54

If any game in the early Pitino era ever screamed out, “Kentucky is BACK!” it was this one. Alabama was an awfully good team with three NBA players, and they had beaten an Arkansas team that this particular UK team could not have beaten if they had played 20 times. But this group just owned Alabama. Even though they were just over 12 hours removed from beating Arkansas, Bama used a flurry of threes by James Robinson to take the lead at the half, and just like that, it was over. Jamal Mashburn was the best player on the floor and nobody on Alabama’s team could touch him. Uncanny Alabama killer Gimel Martinez had another great game against Robert Horry, including a crushing slam in the final seconds. John Pelphrey cut down the net and waved it around, dare I say as ecstatic as any UK player has ever been in any given moment. It felt great. And I’m convinced that SEC Tournament switched Kentucky and Arkansas’s places in the big dance. Ironically, I believe that UK would have made it to the Final Four from Arkansas’s position in the bracket, but the four seniors never would have become the Unforgettables.

6. 2004: Kentucky 69, Georgia 60

Sometimes it’s your own personal experience that makes a game special. In this case, it was my senior year of high school, and the place came to a screeching halt when this game began at 1:00 on Friday. Georgia had Kentucky’s number that year. In fact, they only had good games against Kentucky. And just like the first two games, this game was incredibly physical and very close. Cliff Hawkins had his best offensive game ever at UK, but Rashad Wright kept up with him shot for shot. Were it not for poor Georgia free throw shooting, it might not have come to this, but the drama came in the final five minutes. I had to leave school a few minutes early to get to an appointment, so I left the building with Kentucky up by a point and Georgia at the free throw line for a 1-and-1 after a timeout. I had to listen to this drama on the radio. Georgia missed. Chuck Hayes rebounded and launched an outlet pass to Erik Daniels for a layup. Cats by three. Wright immediately came down the court and buried a contested three. Tie game. Hawkins did the exact same thing. Cats by three. Wright tried another one, but he missed. After a Kentucky miss, Kelenna Azubuike got an offensive rebound in traffic and scored, plus the foul. Cats by six. Wright missed a driving shot in the lane, Azubuike drove baseline and threw down a ferocious dunk. Ballgame. Are you feeling this? It was beyond intense, and I think being unable to see it added to the intensity of it for me.

5. 2005: Kentucky 79, LSU 78

What a back and forth struggle this was. LSU dominated early thanks to Antonio Hudson going nuts from three. Kentucky came back thanks to Joe Crawford, who used a rare stint of playing time to score 14 big points. Crawford’s play, along with the second half shooting of Patrick Sparks, helped UK take a seven-point lead into the final 90 seconds. But missed free throws and two Darrel Mitchell threes cut the lead to one with less than ten seconds left. Randolph Morris made one of two free throws (Hayes, Azubuike and Sparks on the floor and we get the ball to Morris to shoot FT’s? LSU must have been playing great defense) to make it 70-68. Brandon Bass took matters into his own hands and made one of the toughest clutch shots you’ll ever see, using about a dozen friendly bounces on the rim to send it to overtime. LSU jumped out in the overtime thanks to Mitchell and Bass, and with less than two minutes to go, they led by five. Sparks shook loose for a three. LSU by 2. After Glen Davis missed a couple of clutch free throws, Azubuike drew a foul, made the first shot and missed the second. But Hayes rebounded, and after a timeout, Hayes got free from Davis for a driving score. LSU had a chance, but Tack Minor had the ball, and if you remember Tack Minor, you knew he wasn’t getting off the shot. Hayes got the rebound, slammed the ball down and popped his jersey. He had better games in his career, but that was the ultimate Chuck Hayes moment.

4. 1993: Kentucky 92, Arkansas 81

SPOILER: Three of my top four games are Arkansas games from the mid-90s. Shocker, isn’t it? My favorite UK team ever, by a gift from the basketball gods, got to play the 1993 SEC Tournament in Rupp Arena. Arkansas fans were pretty cocky by this point, as Kentucky hadn’t really come close to beating them in either of their two meetings since they joined the lead. Jamal Mashburn single-handedly killed the buzz of the Razorback fans. Without going into too much detail, the good guys led 17-0, then 21-2, then 24-4. Mashburn was on fire in a way you rarely see a player in a big game against a good team. After one Arkansas miss, Mashburn caught an outlet pass that was going to lead him out of bounds, only he made the catch and threw a touch pass behind his back to Rodney Dent for a huge dunk. This play made a cameraman fall over on the sideline like you see people do on the And1 Tour. Amazingly, Arkansas came back and cut the lead to two in the final minutes, but Mashburn and Travis Ford took over during winning time to produce the 11-point margin.

3. 1994: Kentucky 90, Arkansas 78

Arkansas was ranked #1 in the country and looked unbeatable. The only way Kentucky was going to beat them was to go crazy from three. In the loss at Rupp in February, they were ice cold. In front of a pro-Arkansas crowd in Memphis, they were on fire. They hit ten threes in the first half alone, but Scotty Thurman and Alex Dillard bombed away for the Razorbacks and despite playing a nearly flawless half of basketball, UK only led by 7. Arkansas switched up to a 2-3 zone in the second half and cut the lead to three, but eventually, the insane shooting destroyed the zone for six more threes in the half. Travis Ford hit five. Jeff Brassow hit four. Rod Rhodes came back from a suspension to hit all three shots and all seven free throws. Five players scored between 12 and 16 points. It was as complete and improbable a win as I have ever seen, because that 1994 team had hit the wall and Arkansas was such a terrible matchup for them.

2. 1993: Kentucky 101, Tennessee 40

They cheated us in Knoxville. I know we played like garbage, but we took the lead in winning time and they cheated us. Allan Houston did step across the free throw line before his shot hit the rim. That is a lane violation. Whatever Rick Pitino had in the speech archive to motivate the players for this game needs to be bottled. Switzerland could drop its neutrality, invade and conquer every one of its neighbors if it were as motivated as Kentucky was to destroy Tennessee. It was 14-0. Then it was 41-17. Then it was 101-40. That’s how much of a blur the game was. Kentucky has 19 steals. Jared Prickett had seven of them. Seven steals is an amazing statistic. Todd Svoboda outscored Allan Houston. This is what I call basketball karma. It was the single most vicious decimation of an opponent I have ever seen in basketball. But it wasn’t the best game.

1. 1995: Kentucky 95, Arkansas 93

What else could it be? Both teams were on top of their games. Arkansas used 40 minutes of hell and blistering shooting from Scotty Thurman to jump out to a 35-16 lead. Antoine Walker and Anthony Epps came off the bench to chip into the lead and cut it to six by halftime. Walker and Walter McCarty completed the comeback with some clutch offensive rebounding and scoring. Mark Pope tied the game at the line, then Walker stole an errant pass to set up a final play. Rod Rhodes drove to the rack, drew a foul and clanged both free throws. This was Pitino’s fault for not playing Rhodes during the final eight minutes and change, until that possession. Arkansas, given a second wind by the missed free throws, jumped all over UK in overtime for a 91-82 lead. Kentucky chipped away again, and it helped that Arkansas only made two of their final six free throws. With Corliss Williamson on the bench with his fifth foul, Arkansas lost their offensive flow. Walker got a quick score, then stole the ball and passed to Epps, whose free throws put Kentucky up for the first time since it was 2-0. Thurman missed a long bomb at the end and one more free throw by Tony Delk put the finishing touches on the best SEC Tournament game that will ever be played. Before the Connecticut/Syracuse six-overtime game from last season, this was the best conference tournament game ever in my eyes, and it probably would have been even if Arkansas had won.

Here’s to a great 2010 SEC Tournament. Go Big Blue!

Did Kentucky learn anything from the Tennessee game? The performance against Georgia was a good start, but it takes more than one game to determine if any learning has been done.

After Sunday, we will know if Kentucky has finally understood that they can play championship-caliber defense if they feel like it. It was the single most intriguing development of the Georgia game. After being backdoored to death by Tennessee and giving up 9076596207176970 layups in Knoxville and the first 10 minutes in Athens, Kentucky applied 25 straight minutes of devastating defense on Georgia. The Bulldogs played very well in the first half. They execute extremely well for it being their first year in a new system. They’re very well coached. The defense Kentucky played to close the first half allowed UK to take a two-point lead and kill any good vibes Georgia may have had about their level of play. They had played well enough to lead 98% of the teams in the country – not Kentucky.

After Sunday, we will know if Kentucky has figured out how to step on the throats of their opponent. If the defense Kentucky played against Georgia was good enough to destroy the Bulldogs’ good vibes, the defense in the first couple minutes of the second half broke their will. As well as Georgia typically executes, especially at home, by the end of the Kentucky defensive barrage, Georgia had gone into full panic mode. That started launching crazy threes, and had they not hit a couple of them, you’re looking at a 20+-point win. UK stepped on Georgia’s throat and effectively ended the game before the first media timeout in the second half, a welcome change from what’s typically happened this season.

After Sunday, the world will know that John Wall is the best player in college basketball. I’m sure you’ve noticed this, but Wall has cranked up the aggression level something fierce. When times were toughest against Tennessee, Wall attacked, attacked and never stopped attacking. The end result was coming back to tie the game. Against Georgia, Wall attacked the entire game, pretty much taking it over. He forced Georgia to run with him, and the Bulldogs couldn’t do it. Georgia shouldn’t feel bad about this because most teams can’t keep up with John Wall, and hey, at least they did better than Larry Drew.

After Sunday, we’ll all know that John Calipari is in for a huge surprise. He can say or think whatever he wants, but he will be stunned by the number of Kentucky fans in Nashville for the SEC Tournament. Big Blue Nation had a nice showing in New York for the Connecticut game, but it will pale in comparison to the way we take over towns for the SEC Tournament. It’s just too bad that the tournament couldn’t take place in a bigger building like the Georgia Dome, but the message should still make itself pretty clear.

After Sunday, we will know that it may take some doing for Florida to get into the big dance. That loss to Vanderbilt was terrible. It wasn’t terrible that they lost, but rather how they lost. It was Dan Werner Appreciation Night and they let the Commodores shoot about 89% from three. In the second half, even when they had built a small lead, they repeatedly left John Jenkins all alone for bomb after bomb. If any of the previous four Kentucky teams lost in that fashion (and they probably have), my wall would have dents in it from all the objects I threw. Florida will come out and zone, and it will work or a while. Then the UK offense will run through John Wall rather than DeMarcus Cousins, and the buckets will be plentiful. This isn’t a knock on Cousins at all. The offense works best with Wall running the show because our guys have a tendency to stand around and watch Cousins. At least one turnover in Athens was the result of this, where Cousins passed out of a double team and the guy wasn’t ready to make the catch.

Most importantly, after Sunday, we will know once again what it feels like to be the champions of the SEC. The only question is whether the championship will be outright or shared. And if by some minor miracle Florida shoots out of their minds (I’m already pegging Erving Walker for six threes, at least four of them contested NBA threes), we will know that the problems can still be fixed by the end of the SEC Tournament.

When the schedule was released in August, two weeks of play got special attention. One was the gauntlet in December that went North Carolina –> Connecticut –> Indiana. The other was presumed to be the roughest patch of the SEC schedule: Tennessee –> Mississippi State –> Vanderbilt. Upon the release of the schedule, I predicted 1.5 losses in the tough week in February – a win over Tennessee, a loss at MSU and a toss-up game against Vanderbilt.

It feels good to be proven wrong by this bunch.

Still, it isn’t like the sweep of February Gauntlet Week revealed Kentucky to be this juggernaut that’s going to blaze through the big dance like the 1993 team. This is a flawed basketball team, and it has been from day one. However, the shining light in all this is that the other top teams in the country are every bit as flawed as this one is.

So what has the sweep of Tennessee, MSU and Vandy taught us?

1. The light might have come on for Patrick Patterson.

Patrick couldn’t have picked a better time to play his three best games of the season. I said after Mississippi State that Patterson played the best game of his life in Starkville, but Saturday against Vanderbilt wasn’t too far off from that one. Vandy has some tough guys on their team. Patterson was the only guy who consistently gave the effort to outfight swarms of Commodores on the boards. He still doesn’t get the ball enough on offense, and again, I can understand somewhat because of DeMarcus Cousins being so good, but when he does get it, good things happen. His bank shot over AJ Ogilvy was an underrated clutch shot, and the corner three on the broken play might have been the most clutch play anybody on the team has made since John Wall’s drive against UConn. He has responded to the physicality of those three teams, rather than backing down from the challenges like he did against South Carolina. If he continues this level of play, this team is going to the Final Four.

2. Shooting is a huge problem.

If this team isn’t getting lots of dunks and layups, they’re laying some bricks. They can’t shoot. They can’t shoot threes. They definitely can’t shoot free throws. Quite frankly, it’s a wonder this hasn’t cost the team more losses. It wasn’t really the prime cause for the loss to South Carolina. But it will cost the team before the season is over.

3. This team can play defense if it wants to.

The last ten minutes against Tennessee, the last three minutes and all of overtime against Mississippi State and all 40 minutes against Vanderbilt were examples of championship-caliber defense. Unfortunately, it hasn’t happened enough, and the main reason is effort. The freshmen have yet to adjust to the concept that you have to play balls out on defense for 40 minutes. This is understandable to a point, but that point’s almost up because it’s almost March. The good news is that they have shown that they can. The only question is whether or not they will. That means no gambling, no going for the highlight reel block when forcing a tough shot is more practical, fighting through the high screen, all that stuff. The defense in the Vanderbilt game brought hope because nobody in the SEC executes their offense better than Vandy, and that offense doesn’t consist of “run shot clock down to five seconds, launch 30-foot shot and pray” like so many SEC teams have done this year.

4. If it’s a one-possession game, the team with John Wall will win that game.

I don’t have to explain this. I’ll take my chances with John Wall making the clinching play. He’s done it over and over, and save for a couple free throw misses in Nashville, he’s yet to fail.

A message to Mississippi State fans: Don’t poke the bear with a stick. He’ll go off for 19 points and 10 rebounds against the best interior defender in the country.

I don’t blame State for pulling off all the stops. Beating Kentucky probably would have locked them into the tournament, barring a monumental collapse. When a team’s best win is Ole Miss, another bubble team, you can bet that team is going to be desperate when you come into their house in prime time. Despite the suspension of Ravern Johnson, last night was the best I’ve seen Mississippi State play in the dozen or so games I have watched them. According to some State fans, Johnson being out was addition by subtraction because he is a defensive liability and a streaky shooter. We can just agree to disagree on this.

With three minutes to go, Kentucky trailed by seven and was getting progressively worse with each possession. In other words, it was a near replica of the loss to South Carolina, except the opponent was better. So what made the difference in the outcome of this game relative to South Carolina?

To me, it’s as simple as this: Patrick Patterson played his best game as a Kentucky Wildcat last night.

As maligned as Patterson’s play has been during the conference schedule, last night was as close to the perfect game as Patrick will ever play in his life. He made great moves in the post. He rebounded with ferocity. He took charges. He blocked a few shots. He hit the most clutch shot he’s ever hit on that baseline jumper that tied the score with 40 seconds to go. And while that would be good enough in most games, he did two other things that really separated this performance from any of his other great games.

He called for the ball. He demanded it, got it and did good things with it. It was the first time he had done that all year. I understand anybody becoming a spectator when DeMarcus Cousins is blowing up the SEC and putting up insane numbers every game, but Kentucky needed Patterson last night and he was there for his teammates in a huge way.

The single most important thing he did was cranking up the aggression something fierce. There was no indecisiveness when he got the ball in the corner. He immediately knew what he wanted to do, and when he got it in the post against Jarvis Varnado, it was as if he were one step ahead of him, and that’s how he was able to draw the third and fourth foul on Varnado in about five seconds of game time. Compared to Patterson’s other two games against Mississippi State and Varnado, the jumping jack center didn’t make much of an impact. He didn’t make that much of an impact when he was in the game, but once he fouled out of the game, Kentucky’s size took over in the paint and on the glass. Varnado was the only guy MSU had that could go toe to toe with Patterson or Cousins for rebounds. Once he fouled out, the rebounds were the good guys’ for the taking. Patterson bears the most responsibility for making this happen.

Poise in the clutch can’t be overlooked. You’d have to go back to 1998 to find a team that I believe could have completed the comeback from seven points down and three minutes to go. The best thing about the comeback was that everybody on the floor had a huge role in it.

67-60
67-63 – D. Liggins three (J. Wall assist)
67-63 – P. Patterson block
67-65 – E. Bledsoe layup (J. Wall assist)
67-65 – Offensive foul – D. Bost (D. Cousins takes charge)
67-67 – P. Patterson jumper (D. Liggins assist)

And once the comeback was complete, Bledsoe played his only good defensive possession of the game and forced Barry Stewart into a shot that the Kodi Augustus banked three from the elbow thought was terrible. It had been a while since the team had had to make clutch plays when trailing. They failed the test against South Carolina, but passed with flying colors last night.

Now if only they can figure out how to guard the high screen…

Another day, another SEC mercy kill for the Kentucky Wildcats.

Only twice this year has Kentucky put together a throat slash effort in conference play. One of them was Arkansas, and my message to the Arkansas fans is “you’re welcome.” The other one was yesterday. Don’t give me any crap about how LSU outscored Kentucky by two points in the second half. That doesn’t matter when you’re up by 28 at the half. It was a mercy kill, and if you watched the game, you had to feel for LSU.

One play really summed it up. Early in the second half, DeMarcus Cousins had a wide open dunk, but an LSU player fouled him to prevent the dunk. This “foul” sent the LSU player careening out of bounds into the photographers’ row. That is one team fully dominating another, just like Kentucky should always do in the SEC.

It was 6-1, then it was 10-10, and then it was 42-14. This is what good teams do to bad teams. I have about 97% of the UK games from 1992-2008 on VHS, and during the 90s, those teams went on big runs all the time. You could put very few of those runs up against what this team did to LSU yesterday. That was one of the best runs I’ve ever seen, and everybody contributed.

Let’s start with Cousins. I know Calipari will never do this because he’s smart, but it would be interesting to see Cousins play more in one of these blowout games, just to see how many records he could set. I think Trent Johnson is a good coach, but it was insanely stupid on his part to play man-to-man defense as long as he had his kids do. It was even dumber how he insisted on guarding Cousins straight up with no double teams as long as he did. Johnson ought to thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that he eventually switched up to double teams and later the 2-3 zone because if he hadn’t, Cousins would have gone for 50 and 30. It would have been a Wilt Chamberlain box score and he would have fouled out all of Johnson’s players. The man is a behemoth, and it has been a pleasure to watch him.

Of course, there are still frustrating moments with Cousins, but these aren’t even his fault. Did you see the offensive foul he had in the first half when he whacked that ginger with his elbow? For starters, it was hardly even a foul to begin with, and if another UK player had done this in Rupp Arena, there probably wouldn’t have been a call. But it was Cousins and it was a road game, hence the whistle. Secondly, who are the referees to watch that play as it happened and feel the need to check the monitor to determine the level of malice? Cousins wasn’t trying to knock the guy’s head off and he’s done far worse this season. He grabbed a rebound in traffic and tried to clear room. What’s he supposed to do when he lands on his feet with the ball and two guys are surrounding him? Bring the ball down and let them steal it? Doug Shows was desperate to call a technical foul for that one, but cooler heads prevailed. I’m happy that Calipari stood up for Cousins at the press conference.

Onto the other players, Patrick Patterson still doesn’t get enough touches in the set offense, but he has put together three very good efforts in a row after the terrible game against South Carolina, each one better than the last. He’s asserting himself more on both sides of the court and Calipari has said as much.

If you’re a Kentucky fan, no player’s success on this team should thrill you more than that of DeAndre Liggins. One of the reasons why Texas has struggled the last month is a lack of role definition on their roster. Aside from a couple guys, nobody on Texas knows what their main goal is for the betterment of the team, and so there’s clearly a case of too many alpha dogs that feel the need to take the ball in crunch time. That’s what I love about Liggins. He isn’t asked to do much, but he is very good at what he does. UK has always had a history of solid “energy guys” like James Lee, Heshimu Evans, Chuck Hayes and Ravi Moss. Liggins is just like that. He rebounds. He defends. He hustles more than anybody on the team. He finds himself in the right place at the right time on offense. He initiates the offense with the dribble drive. He’s developed a fairly reliable long-range shot. He plays so much more within himself compared to last year. What’s not to like?

Another guy that stood out for me yesterday was Daniel Orton. Sure, he fouled too much. What else is new? But when he was on the floor with Cousins, he had to play power forward, which meant that he had to guard Tasmin Mitchell, who most small forwards in this country can’t guard. Mitchell never scored on Orton. Every shot he took was contested and looked uncomfortable. Orton is also getting more comfortable on offense. He showed some nice touch when he got the ball.

Bama is a setup game. Calipari knows it. Just because Bama has blown leads in every SEC game doesn’t mean they’re terrible or untalented. They just don’t know how to win. With Tennessee and Gameday fast approaching, it’s essential that Bama doesn’t get overlooked.

Super Bowl prediction: Colts 39, Saints 37

DeMarcus Cousins won SEC player of the week this past week for putting up 18-12 against Hartford and 18-18 against Louisville. I’m okay with that. The 18-18 game was one of the best performances by a Kentucky player against Louisville since the series resumed in 1983. I’m okay with any accolades DeMarcus gets for his play.

But the real MVP of the Louisville game was Eric Bledsoe.

Everybody remembers the forearm shiver by Cousins in the face of Jared Swopshire. But, speaking purely in terms of the 40 minutes of play and ignoring the extracurricular stuff in the pregame, the tone was set eight seconds in. Louisville had already come out with a ton of swagger, and on the first possession of the game, Reginald Delk shoved Eric Bledsoe into a screen. Bledsoe ran into the guy with enough velocity that a foul was called. Only it didn’t stop with the foul. Delk started yapping, clearly part of the Pitino gameplan of getting into the Kentucky players’ heads. But Bledsoe didn’t back down. He yapped back. It got so intense that Coach Calipari had to take Bledsoe out of the game and put in Ramon Harris. Then Cal said some words that are being discussed all over the web. I can’t read lips or even tell who he was talking to, but somebody was going to kick somebody else’s ass after the game and somebody got the wrong guy. Bledsoe showed Delk and the rest of the Louisville players that neither he nor his teammates would back down from any kind of intimidation tactics. Cousins’ forearm was the physical representation of that statement. If Bledsoe had been in there for that play, there would have been a fight, there’s no doubt in my mind about it.

It didn’t end there, though. As the game progressed and everybody cooled down, I don’t think Kentucky ever came down from the adrenaline rush at the start of the game. While Kentucky had previously done a great job against zone defenses, the shots didn’t fall against Louisville’s zone, and once the shots weren’t falling, the offense became stagnant. Nobody attacked the zone and instead of passing the ball to players, they passed to areas on the court where they expected players to be. People were zigging when they should have been zagging, and eventually, Louisville took the lead. Now this is the part when John Wall took over. Magic Johnson would have said “Winning time is John Wall time!” But it started with Eric Bledsoe. Actually, let me backtrack. Louisville only went up by a point, but they could have gone up by a lot more had it not been for Eric Bledsoe. I mentioned that nobody attacked the zone in the early part of the second half, but Bledsoe did. He dribbled into a hole in the zone and buried a couple of midrange shots. If those shots don’t go down, UK is looking at a scoring drought that could have buried them.

Now then, let me go back to the John Wall sequence of plays. He made three straight shots to kick off the big run, but the two buckets that came in transition actually came off of Eric Bledsoe getting a steal and then another 50/50 ball after a Daniel Orton block. John Wall deserves the credit for rising to the occasion when the outcome was in doubt, but Bledsoe deserves credit for the plays that don’t show up in the box score.

Finally, the final five minutes could have been a lot more interesting had somebody other than Eric Bledsoe been shooting free throws. On a day where good free throw shooters were missing their free throws, Bledsoe stepped up and hit six of six, all in clutch situations. I have no problem with Bledsoe shooting free throws in the clutch if John Wall can’t get the ball. Bledsoe has ice water in the veins.

I hope the SEC teams try the Louisville gameplan on Bledsoe. He’ll make them pay.

Thanks for reading.

I haven’t done one of these in a while. Let’s see if I remember how.

The views I’m about to express are not necessarily those of anybody else but me, but they ought to be, and as a matter of fact, they probably are.

Bob Knight made a comment to the media this morning or last night or whenever he did it, I don’t care. He said something to the effect of “John Calipari is the representation of the lack of ethics in college basketball,” paraphrased to avoid litigation from ESPN. That’s fine. It’s his right as an American citizen to say that. And it is true that John Calipari was the head coach at two programs that had all the wins in Final Four seasons vacated. This cannot be disputed. It happened, and it doesn’t matter if Calipari himself was personally cleared of any wrongdoing in either situation. Perception is reality, and it also doesn’t matter if, in my own personal opinion, that the stuff that happened with the NCAA and Memphis is fishy because burden of proof was on the defense in the case rather than prosecution.

What has Calipari done at Kentucky? Obviously something had to happen to prompt Knight to say what he said. The only thing I can think of is go 10-0 and have the best start of any UK head coach besides Adolph F. Rupp. Also, Calipari beat the tar out of Knight’s old team on their home court. While I don’t know if Knight and Indiana have mended their severed relationship, one has to wonder what prompted him. I’m just throwing out suggestions.

He also wondered why (paraphrasing again) Calipari was still allowed to coach after the vacation of the two seasons. And the lemmings at ESPN First Take wondered this as well. Ignore that Calipari was personally cleared of all wrongdoing and let’s assume that just the opposite happened and he was found completely responsible on all counts. First Take called for a year suspension without pay. Why should Kentucky pay for that when no rules have been broken on their end? If Calipari weren’t at UK, I might be joining Knight in beating that drum, but he’s here, so I’m just defending my coach.

Also, is John Calipari really enough of a cheater, crook and slimeball that he’s the embodiment of sleaze in college basketball or athletics or whatever Knight said? What about *gasp* Indiana’s own Kelvin Sampson? Knight knocked Calipari for putting two schools on probation – which isn’t even true, as only wins got vacated – but his own school is CURRENTLY ON PROBATION. What about Knight’s ESPN colleague Lou Holtz? Here’s a guy who left his teams under clouds of sanctions, only to get opportunity after opportunity to leave the next team under a cloud of sanctions. What about Jim “God” Valvano? If you watched college basketball before 1993, you would know that Valvano was as crooked a coach as there has ever been. Then he got cancer and died, and while that is tragic and while the V Foundation has done a great job funding cancer research, it was as if Jimmy V’s flaws left him as soon as he died. Again, I’m just trying to defend my coach.

In the long run, haters will hate. Calipari has already made his response on his website. I won’t spoil it because it’s premium info, but let’s just say he took the high road. You know why there’s so much backlash against Roy Williams for removing that heckler from his game last week? Much of has to do with all the winning Williams has done over the course of his career. Would this incident have been all over the sports talk radio circuit had Sidney Lowe ejected a heckler from an NC State game? Think about it. The best thing Calipari can do about it is keep on winning. Sandy Bell has this program on the straight and narrow. One of our players could be a practicing magician and pull quarters from people’s ears and Bell would report it to the NCAA. All Cal has to do is keep on winning, and he will.

And one final note to Coach Knight: You may have run a squeaky clean program, but when it comes to ethics and values in college basketball, don’t throw chairs in glass houses.

I’m Seth Stogsdill, and that’s my opinion.

Thanks for reading.

That team would be your 2009-10 Kentucky Wildcats. I haven’t been able to write since the Connecticut game, so I have things to say.

When a team depends as much on freshmen as this Kentucky team does, you usually don’t see that team win the kinds of games like Kentucky did Saturday at Indiana or last Wednesday against Connecticut. While there is such a thing as a good loss (the 1996 SEC Tournament being the best example), you still play to win the game, and those good losses are quite the rarity. This team faced two tests these last two games and passed with flying colors.

Against Connecticut, UK faced foul trouble of the highest level, essentially down to Patrick Patterson and four bench players for the last part of the first half. UConn, with its knack for tough, physical defense, built a decent lead, never really let up on either side of the court, but Kentucky came back and withstood a late punch to hold on for dear life to the win. That Connecticut team is only going to get better, especially once Ater Majok starts playing. What made the second half of that game so great was that they were able to come back with Patrick Patterson out with an injury for a chunk of the half. DeMarcus Cousins and Ramon Harris stepped up in particular, making huge plays during the big run. And of course, John Wall took over Madison Square Garden in a way that I haven’t seen a Knicks player do since Allan Houston went nuts against the Pacers in the ’99 playoffs. If I were Donnie Walsh, I’d trade as much of my roster as necessary to end up with the first pick in the draft so I could select Wall. Has there been a sure thing in the draft as sure as John Wall being a transcendent player? Bill Simmons called him a cross between Derrick Rose and Dwyane Wade. That’s insane.

Your typical team of young lions loses the UConn game, at least in December. The Fab Five definitely lose this game in December. This team is different. This team has the potential to be special, and they’re ahead of schedule to realize that potential.

The Indiana game was a huge step in the direction of realization of potential. My most loyal readers know that I have family in Indiana, so it’s never fun to lose to those guys. For starters, how about the student section chanting “Cal’s a cheater” and “SAT?” Now, I’m not trying to claim moral superiority over Indiana fans. Lord knows Kentucky’s gotten in trouble so many times that Sandy Bell is afraid of one of our athletes picking up a lucky penny on the street. However, isn’t Indiana CURRENTLY ON PROBATION? Before Kelvin Sampson, Indiana had only one thing on which to hang their hat: they ran a clean shift. Now, they can’t even claim moral superiority. I don’t go around telling people how to drive their cars. Indiana fans shouldn’t make fun of a program/coach/player for cheating. It’s common sense, Hoosiers.

As for the game itself, this may come off as crazy (in fact, Coach Cal would tell me as such. “You’re CRAZY, Seth. You’re just crazy.”), but it reminded me of a conference road game in the mid-90s. Indiana wanted this game something fierce. If you couldn’t tell that, go back and watch the first five minutes, especially the part when an IU player took a charge on Cousins that nearly brought Tom Crean to violent orgasm. They wanted that game. All of their players were hitting shots in that first half as if they had channeled the spirit of Jimmy Chitwood. They wanted that game. Maurice Creek looked like Reggie Miller. They wanted that game. Then their field goal percentage dipped below 90% and before you knew it, Kentucky had the lead. John Wall dunked on Jordan Hulls – sort of. He actually went around Hulls in midair. The man is a cartoon. Indiana couldn’t have played any better in that first half. If they shoot like that for one half against any Big Ten opponent, they win, end of story. They trailed by one against Kentucky.

Here are some other things I liked about the Indiana game.

The three guys who play small forward on this team combined to score 21 points. That tripled their effort against UConn. When these guys score 15 points or more, it’s going to be a rough night for the other team.

UK doubled Indiana’s rebounding total and tripled their offensive rebounding total. Patterson alone had eight offensive rebounds. That man is a rock. And he’s made a ton of money by staying put.

Wall might have had his best pure point guard game of the season with 11 points, eight assists and one turnover.

Indiana tried multiple defenses, but mostly zoned. They played their zone with the same tenacity that they played it against Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh couldn’t get anything going at all. Kentucky got anything it wanted. Kentucky’s offense was so dominant that if it were the NBA, it would have been a perfect game for one of those Larry Bird experiments like shooting all threes or all lefty shots.

While I don’t know for sure if your typical team of young lions loses the Indiana game, they probably don’t win it by 17. Indiana shot well enough in the first half to deliver a knockout punch to all but a handful of teams (Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Syracuse, Texas and Villanova – that’s the list). Your typical team of young lions might buckle at the first sign of adversity in a hostile environment. This team didn’t, and I couldn’t be more pleasantly surprised, as I figured the UNC/UConn/Indiana stretch would produce at least one loss.

This team is going to be favored in every game they play unless Florida or Tennessee win out until they host Kentucky. It might be preposterous to say Kentucky will go undefeated, but they won’t lose too many as long as everybody stays healthy. And we’ll treat most of those teams like Snookie.

Thanks for reading.

1996.

Not only was it a pretty good year, but that now equals Kentucky’s all-time wins total after the thrilling and emotionally exhausting win over the North Carolina Tar Heels. As a fan, you might think I’m joking when I say this, but it’s completely true: I have never been more nervous during a ballgame as I was during the North Carolina game. This is probably the best regular season win for Kentucky out of conference since December 2005 when Rajon Rondo acted out his own personal fatwa against the Louisville Cardinals. It’s been a long time since December 2005. Let’s see why it went so well.

Patrick Patterson might not have put up his best statistical performance of his career, but it was one of the best performances of his career, and I’ll tell you why: Timing. The constants with Patterson have been defense and rebounding. He’s getting his in those areas regardless of the opponent and that’s why he’ll have a long and prosperous pro career. But it had been tough for him to get the ball in times where the team needed to rely on him as a rock. That didn’t happen yesterday. Times got tough in the second half when John Wall cramped up. Every time Carolina looked close to dagger mode when making their run, there was Patterson, hitting shots, blocking shots, grabbing rebounds, helping out on high screens, doing whatever it took to swing the momentum the other way. My hat’s off to Patrick and he deserves to have a season as special as this one has started off.

John Wall is the man. You got the feeling that the guys would come out tight to start, and that’s what happened as they missed on several good looks. Then John Wall got the ball in transition, had Larry Drew retreating like the French army at the Maginot Line, crossed Drew over and flew in for a huge jam that is currently the background wallpaper on my computer. Then John Wall got the ball in transition, again dribbled right at Drew, only this time drove baseline and threw up some left-handed reverse layup garbage that went in. If the 28-2 run that blew the game open was a Russian-style execution, Wall’s dunk was the pistol whip to the back of the head. The circus shot was the trigger being pulled. And UK was down 9-8 at that point. Didn’t matter at all – the storm was on its way.

The absolute best play of the game happened when Kentucky led by seven early in the second half. Wall was out with leg cramps (Jodie Meeks and Tony Delk had leg cramps as well – all the great ones…) and Kentucky was turning it over at an alarming clip as the Heels chipped into the lead. After another turnover, Carolina ran a great play to get John Henson wide open for an easy dunk. Carolina has been on TV quite a bit this year and I’ve seen Henson dunk on some guys. He might be thin, but he’ll throw it down on you. Daniel Orton met him at the rim and swatted a Spalding imprint on Henson’s forehead. Kentucky got the ball and Orton caught Patterson on a fast break for a dunk. Cats lead by nine. Orton played about as well as a guy can play without scoring a point.

The reasons why this win was so special are the grand schemes, both this season and the overall picture. When a team depends as much on freshmen as Kentucky does, it is unusual for that team to give up that big of a lead and still hold on for a victory. Kentucky wasn’t perfect yesterday. Heck, in the second half, they weren’t even that good at all. But they made enough plays in crucial situations to pick up a win over one of the six good teams in the country this year. And Carolina played pretty well and should be a top 3 team in February and March. That speaks volumes about what this team accomplished by beating them. Also, beating Carolina might end up being the deciding factor in the race to 2000 wins. Downplay it all you want, but if Carolina got there first, they’d probably hang a banner for it next to their Helms title.

Beat UConn.

Thanks for reading.