The ice storm that ravaged much of Kentucky has put the staff of UKWC in a bit of a bind when it comes to posting. Please bear with us until we can get power and such restored.

Once that happens, we’ll be ready to roll again. The storm also explains why we’ve been a little lacking the past few days. Sorry.

Let’s focus on the other 11 teams first.

Auburn destroyed Arkansas. I want to say this was the most surprising outcome of the year in the conference, but as we go forward in this season, I don’t think it will be. Auburn played so well against Kentucky that Big Blue Nation had to wonder if Auburn was that good or if it was just one lucky night where the Tigers had the Midas touch. Let’s just say that Auburn playing so well against Kentucky was not a coincidence that was only possible because of a below average performance by Kentucky. Just like in that game, the Tigers went into a hostile road environment and started jacking threes. Only this time, those threes were going in at an alarming clip. Auburn started out 8-9 from three and didn’t look back for the rest of the day.

Arkansas had no answer for the Tigers’ quickness on defense and lost all patience on offense. To put it bluntly, they looked like a poorly coached team and the polar opposite of what they were four weeks ago when they beat Oklahoma and Texas in the same week. LSU and Mississippi State are still the big dogs in the West, but watch out for Auburn. They’re one post player away from being the prohibitive favorite to win the division, but with the way they’re playing now, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they reeled off some more upsets, of at least wins that are perceived as upsets. As for Arkansas, that OU/Texas week feels like years ago. They’re terrible right now, but unfortunately for the Hogs, their biggest flaw is inexperience, and it takes time to remedy that.

Florida destroyed Vanderbilt. This was a nationally televised game from inhospitable Memorial Gym. I tuned in because I thought Florida might be reeling from their choke job against South Carolina and Vanderbilt would be angry after their 40-minute abortion against Tennessee. Instead, Vanderbilt left their defense in their dorm rooms. You look at the box score, and you’ll probably think Florida was just hot from three on this particular day. And you’d be right, but you wouldn’t know that all 12 threes in the first half were from open looks. Vanderbilt was a team that prided itself on defense all year long, and unless they slipped up a bit after the Kentucky and Tennessee games, they were one of the best teams in the country in either scoring defense or FG% defense. Florida made them look like the Washington Generals.

Tennessee and LSU provided the conference with a healthy dose of the epic fail. Both teams had winnable home games against ranked teams and both teams fell flat on their face in their efforts. Memphis scored fewer points against Tennessee than Jodie Meeks did by himself. That should have been enough for the Vols to win by a significant margin. It wasn’t. The 2000 Portland Trail Blazers think Tennessee’s shot selection in the final minutes was bad. LSU had an advantage over Xavier in the size and athleticism departments, and they hadn’t lost at the PMAC since Kentucky beat them last season. That should have been a winning combination. It wasn’t. The Tigers looked like they still had some bad John Brady juju on offense. Once again, Paul Westhead thought their shot selection sucked down the stretch. The one that really stings is Tennessee losing to Memphis because there’s a good chance that a loss may have knocked Memphis out of the polls with no more opportunities for them to get a quality win until the tournament, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

And now, for some quick hitters:

Is Georgia better than we thought, or is Mississippi State worse? MSU had no business blowing that lead in Athens.

Who gets the ax first – Dennis Felton or Mark Gottfried. It seems like both guys are living on borrowed time.

Every game Vanderbilt plays on TV is justification for Shan(e) Foster winning the SEC POY last year. Florida effectively utilized the 2-3 zone the entire game and stymied the Vandy shooters with it. Can you imagine Billy Donovan or any coach outside of Syracuse having the balls to zone a Vanderbilt team with Shan(e) Foster on it? The guy that misses Shan(e) the most has to be AJ Ogilvy. I know he’s had foot problems this season, but he’s looked awful every time I’ve seen him.
Kentucky is still undefeated. How sweet it is.

Finally, a word on the Coaches’ Poll: Any poll that argues that two 12-6 teams are among the nation’s top 25 in January is a poll I don’t trust.

In case you don’t have the dates circled every week, today is when both polls come out. Last time, the Cats may or may not have been snubbed.

Can they jump into the AP Top 25? What about at least getting close in the coaches poll?

Today we will see. We may or may not revolt.
It’s supposed to snow. Hard to keep a torch lit in that type of weather.

Five down, 11 more to go. The conference schedule can be a real grind at times, and there will be games where a lot of stuff goes wrong – like Patrick Patterson battling foul trouble all day long and being a statistical non-factor. In those games where a lot of stuff goes wrong, it takes upper echelon mental toughness to withstand all those storms and come away victorious. Kentucky did it again yesterday against a fired-up Crimson Tide from Alabama.

Obviously, the health of Ramon Harris takes precedence over anything that happens on the court. I only know as much as what’s been released to the public. Ramon passed out yesterday as the guys were getting ready to come out of the locker room for the second half. It is uncertain what caused this, but he was rushed to the hospital and has since been released and sent home with the rest of the team. It was a scary situation for everybody, and I think it was more unsettling than the collision with Mike Porter against Lamar. One sports clip that I refuse ever to watch again is Hank Gathers collapsing on the court. We all know what happened there. I hope and pray for the best as they run tests on Harris to see what exactly happened, and it was a testament to the character of Billy Gillispie to stay in the locker room with Harris, even as the half began without him.

When the well being of a player is in question, it’s hard to even talk about the game, much less play it, but the show must go on, just like it did yesterday in Tuscaloosa. The player of the game on the radio broadcast was Darius Miller. TV said it was Jodie Meeks. The box score would argue that it was Perry Stevenson. All three are worthy candidates, but I’m going to make the case for DeAndre Liggins. It took three missed layups for Coach Gillispie to decide that it wasn’t going to be Mike Porter’s day. That third miss is a breaking point for anybody, I guess. So in comes DeAndre Liggins to play the point for the rest of the game. In the first half, the bad outweighed the good with Liggins. When he came back in for Porter, the good started to outweigh the bad. The one area where you should have noticed this was on defense. When Ron Steele decided that he didn’t want to play at Alabama anymore, the team was handed over to Mikhail Torrance, who is more of a scorer than a distributor like Steele. With Steele out of the lineup, Torrance had averaged over 22 points a game. Torrance did not score against Kentucky. He had a difficult time even getting off shots against Liggins. Liggins also had some timely and spectacular assists, and would have had more if Perry Stevenson hadn’t made like a Kentucky wide receiver during the regular season. He was the difference maker, and if you believe Gillispie’s comments after the game, the coach agrees.

Opposing players just need to stop challenging Jodie Meeks. Unlike Rasheem Barrett of Auburn, Senario Hillman was being dead serious when he said that Meeks wasn’t going to go off for 50+ points against him. First off, way to shoot for the stars, Senario. Were you going to celebrate if Meeks scored 49 points? Secondly, Meeks got his against Hillman – 27 of them, to be exact. But I guess it was a quiet 27 points. Really, I thought Alabama and Hillman made Meeks work harder for his points than any SEC team (he scored less against Vandy, but had a ton of open looks that just didn’t go in), but the shots still went in. He’s having a transcendent season, so enjoy it.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say anything else about Stevenson and Miller. Yesterday was arguably Stevenson’s best game as a Wildcat. It definitely was from a statistical perspective. With Patterson struggling with his finger injury and battling foul trouble for most of the day, somebody else had to step up and provide points. Stevenson took the Bama bigs out to the perimeter, put it on the floor and drew fouls like we’ve never seen from him before. This is good because Perry hits his free throws at a high percentage for a power forward. His defense was excellent, as usual. One play stands out from the first half where Hillman got a steal and only Stevenson stood in between him and a highlight reel dunk. Stevenson altered the attempted dunk and there were no points on that possession.

As for Darius Miller, he had about as good a game as you can play without scoring a point. Along with his seven rebounds, two assists, two steals and three blocks, he also locked down Bama’s best player, Alonzo Gee. Miller had to come in because of a tough emotional situation with Harris, and he was everywhere. To come in under those circumstances, play the entire half without coming out and do it at a high level speaks volumes of his ability and his toughness. I have no problem with Leach and Pratt awarding him player of the game. These minutes in tough games are going to be huge for Darius come March.

All due respect to the Crimson Tide players, but I hope Alabama loses the rest of their games this season because of Mark Gottfried. He deserves it for what happened to Ron Steele. This kid was one of the best players in the history of the Alabama program, and Gottfried played him 40 minutes a game on an injured knee or ankle in 2007 when he probably had no business playing at all. That’s the most blatant disregard for a player’s health that I’ve ever seen. My feelings towards Gottfried were cemented after his behavior yesterday, when he was visibly upset that there was going to be a delay to start the second half because Gillispie was still in the locker room with Ramon Harris. Basketball is important, Mark. But you have to draw the line somewhere. Plus, if you weren’t sold on his coaching ability, that technical was a thing of beauty, wasn’t it? In a game that was all Alabama for 25 minutes, that technical swung everything in favor of the good guys. To rip from Bill Simmons, it was the “He’s cut! The Russian is cut!” moment of the game.

After Tuesday, Kentucky will have already played half of its conference road games after only six games. The Cats should also be ranked when the polls come out on Monday. It will be a gigantic load of bull’s crap if they are not, considering all the low-end ranked teams that lost this week. If the good guys bring their flashlights, they should win that one.

Thanks for reading.

That’s right, there’s one undefeated team left in the SEC, and it’s our favorite team.

Let’s go ahead and get this out in the open. Darius Miller should have gotten about five times the playing time that he got last night. Ramon Harris played poorly. Miller did not. I understand Coach has his reasons for doing these things, and it usually goes back to defense, but I didn’t notice defensive mistakes from Miller in what few minutes he got. I’ll defend Coach to the death for giving Mike Porter so many minutes despite it being one of his worst games of the year. The one thing that was killing Kentucky for most of the game (besides idiotic turnovers) was defending the high screen. Porter was better at it than DeAndre Liggins, which explains that distribution of minutes. The evidence just isn’t as clear with Harris vs. Miller, and that’s unfortunate, because I think Miller really would have helped last night.

That last paragraph makes it sound like Kentucky lost. They won by 9 – they didn’t lose by –9. I have to talk about Patrick Patterson now. There hasn’t been a 20-point, 20-rebound game since Mike Phillips did it back in the 70s. Jamal Mashburn went off for 38 and 19 against EKU in 1993, but since then, nobody has come closer than Patterson did last night. The scary thing about Patterson’s game last night is that it’s clear his hand isn’t 100%. He’s missing shots that he made earlier in the season and the ball is leaving his hands awkwardly on a few of these shots. And he still got 20 and 18. The gameplan was solid for Auburn – pound it inside. It’s a good gameplan if you have good passers on the team. Maybe that explains all those turnovers. Still, I loved that Patterson got so many touches inside. Did you know that Korvotney Barber was a McDonald’s All-American? In three games against Kentucky (he was injured last season), Barber has 12 points and 14 rebounds total. Both Patrick Patterson and Randolph Morris have abused him.

Jodie Meeks hit his average in conference play. It’s amazing that he’s been able to keep that up. It feels good to have a guy capable of going off like that. Before the game at an Auburn press conference, Rasheem Barrett said that if he got the chance to guard Meeks, he would hold him to two points on a couple of free throws. I know Meeks and Barrett are close friends from the Georgia AAU circuits, so the comments were definitely in jest, but in case they weren’t, advantage = Jodie.

Has Perry Stevenson emerged as the dreaded third scorer? Perry has scored in double figures in six out of the last ten games, and is playing like he did at the end of last year after Patterson went down. He made some knucklehead turnovers, but made even more positive plays. That play where Auburn was pulling up for a transition three and Stevenson flew in from off the screen to block the shot and save possession was superhuman. He’s playing some great ball right now.

The bottom line is this. Auburn played a style that is kryptonite for Kentucky. They’re 4th in the country in steals. They play four guards on the floor at all times. This is murder for Kentucky because both Patterson and Stevenson are too invaluable to have on the bench. Perry couldn’t hang with Rasheem Barrett in the first half and Barrett went off. Surprisingly though, Stevenson did switch off onto DeWayne Reed a few times in the second half, and while Reed did lead Auburn in scoring, none of his points came against Stevenson. Nevertheless, I can only think of two teams that always go with the four-guard approach, and we’ve played both of them. The other team is VMI. Hopefully the selection committee won’t put Kentucky and VMI in one of those awful 4-13 matchups.

At least Coach Gillispie didn’t choke his game away like Billy Donovan did last night. Florida had no business losing that game with a seven-point lead in the final minute. How in the world can you allow a runout and a breakaway layup off of a missed FT to win the game? How can you let Walter Hodge rush to the frontcourt to crash the boards when he should have been in the backcourt to prevent the runout. Lord knows Dan Werner couldn’t outrun anybody on South Carolina’s team.

Oh, well, I can’t complain about that. The upset bug was bulldozing through college basketball last night with Michigan State, Florida and #1 Wake Forest all losing games they shouldn’t have lost. Kentucky played pretty poorly all game long and still won. That one game difference might determine the winner of the SEC, and as it stands right now, I’m glad the good guys are standing alone at the top.

Ed. note: This is my column, running in today’s newspaper. Thought you might enjoy it.

Let’s not forget about Patrick Patterson.

You wouldn’t think you could, when the sophomore forward consistently turns in a double-double, although not always in the same way he did during Wednesday night’s 73-64 win against Auburn.

How could you forget a player that had 21 points and 18 rebounds? But people forgot about Patterson. Sometime during Jodie Meeks’ explosion in the past week, people forgot how such an explosion could even occur — the constant double and triple teams Patterson faces in the post, the sagging defenses, the special attention opposing coaches have to give him.

In the past week, Meeks has gotten all the attention, which is well deserved, and has been put into everyone’s National Player of the Year discussion. On Wednesday, Meeks again delivered with 31 points, including 5-of-8 from behind the arc.

But that kind of production has become expected from Meeks. People knew that if healthy, the junior would be a huge scoring machine. This year, it has finally shown. But in college basketball, no one player can carry a team by themselves. Good teams have a superstar player (Meeks fits that bill), but there has to be someone else.

The Cats are lucky enough to have two superstar players. Everyone forgot about the other. On the road, Meeks has dominated in almost every game. At home, Patterson has been King of the Bluegrass.

No one works harder than Patterson in the post. The Tigers pushed, elbowed and muscled Patterson all night long, treatment he has to be used to by now, and yet Patterson turned in a huge night. Everyone knows Patterson is going to touch the ball almost every possession down the court. Almost every possession, Patterson still puts the ball in the hoop. The term both UK head coach Billy Gillispie and opposing players like to use to describe Patterson is flattering to the sophomore — “beast.”

“That man’s a beast,” Auburn guard Rasheem Barrett said. “Plain as day, he’s a beast. You can double and triple team him and he still scores.”

Nothing against Meeks, but Patterson is the reason UK is still undefeated in conference play. His defense has limited the opponent’s lead post player since Southeastern Conference play opened. His rebounding — Patterson’s 18 rebounds were almost half of UK’s total — both on the offensive and defensive glass gives UK a major edge.

There is not a better example of this than Patterson’s play in the Auburn win. Sure, Meeks was lights-out again, but when Auburn took the lead or when UK couldn’t pull away, the Cats looked to Patterson for rebounding, defense and points.

“Tonight was the best I’ve seen Pat play all year,” Gillispie said. “Bless his heart. He has a hurt finger, and it doesn’t affect him one bit. Yeah, ‘beast’ is a good word for it.”

Jodie, your scoring ability may be impressive, but UK’s return to national prominence relies on one man and one man only.

Patrick Patterson.

UK further proves that they have regained their SEC throne with a scheduled trashing of Auburn tonight.

The show starts at 9 p.m. in Rupp Arena. See you there.

The AP Poll came out yesterday, and Kentucky was ranked 3rd among the “others receiving votes” category, or 28th in the country. That’s all fine and good because Kentucky is going to keep on winning games and in due time, the pollsters will have no other choice. The Coaches’ Poll came out while I was composing yesterday’s piece, so I didn’t get to look at it in-depth before posting.

Now that I have examined the Coaches’ Poll, there are some things that need to be addressed. Never mind Illinois being ranked 24th after being unranked and going 1-1 last week. Never mind St. Mary’s being ranked despite playing nobody. Never mind that I think Kentucky could handle Duke, Syracuse, Marquette, UCLA, Xavier, Georgetown, Texas, Arizona State, Butler, Purdue, Villanova, Notre Dame, Minnesota, St. Mary’s, Baylor, Illinois and Memphis. If I were to rank Kentucky, I’d put them at #25, so I’d only bump one team from the list, which would be Illinois. I want to focus on the teams that finished ahead of Kentucky in the “others receiving votes” category.

? California – 15-3 (4-1), 65 votes. Call it East Coast bias if you must. I haven’t watched a Cal game all year. I know they have a great coach in Mike Montgomery and a solid conference win over Arizona State. Maybe they should be on the precipice ahead of Kentucky. Are their wins over UNLV and Utah better than Kentucky’s win over West Virginia? Hard to tell, but I’ll call this one a push due to my lack of knowledge.

? Florida – 16-2 (3-0), 52 votes. Watch the games, people. Florida’s three conference wins are over the proverbial pupu platter – at home against a green Arkansas team (good team, but terrible on the road) and a depleted Ole Miss team, and at a bad Auburn team. Florida’s best wins are over terrible Washington and NC State. I’m not worried about the Gators because the conference schedule will take care of that. They’re still soft inside.

? Gonzaga – 12-4 (3-0), 35 votes. I’ve made my case against Gonzaga already. Next, please.

? Utah State – 17-1 (5-0), 31 votes. Utah State has played one good team all year. They lost that game. There’s a good chance they’ll only drop a couple games the rest of the way, or they might even run the table in the WAC. I don’t know if they’re as good as the record indicates.

? Ohio State – 12-3 (3-2), 22 votes. The Big Ten is much improved, and so are the Buckeyes. They got a quality road win over Michigan last week and have another chance to do so against the joke that is #24 Illinois. Should they play Kentucky, I think it’s a good matchup for the Big Blue, so I think Kentucky should have gotten more votes.

? BYU – 14-3 (3-1), 22 votes. The Cougars are pretty good, just like they have been for the last few years. Unfortunately, they’re in a position where they can’t lose too many more games because of their conference. I honestly don’t know if they should be ranked ahead of Kentucky or not.

? Dayton – 16-2 (2-1), 16 votes. The win over Marquette is good. The loss to UMASS!!! is not good, and the loss to Creighton is probably one of those toss-up games, considering it was in Omaha. I’d take Kentucky and the points.

? Missouri – 15-3 (2-1), 13 votes. Missouri is another tough one to call. None of their losses are too terrible except maybe for the game against Nebraska. They beat USC when USC was #20 in the country, and they won at Georgia…by seven. Truth be told, they probably should have gotten some of Gonzaga, Utah State and Ohio State’s votes, but Kentucky should have as well.

So other than Cal, which I pushed due to lack of knowledge on my part, I don’t see how any of these teams got more votes than Kentucky. Kentucky got more positive publicity from the media this week than any other team. You’d think that one or two of these coaches took notice.

Win some, lose some, I guess. All we have to do is take care of business. I know Kentucky is one of the 25 best teams in the country, and so do you. It’s just a matter of time before the rest of the world does. A good, old-fashioned curb stomp against Auburn would go a long way.

Trust me,

If any of Billy Gillispie’s peers in the SEC have votes in the USA Today coaches poll, you just gave UK some great motivation. I’m not kidding.

One week after the absolute trashing of Tennessee, who has beat such teams as Marquette and Georgetown this season, in Knoxville and then easily dismantling Georgia at home, UK goes from no votes to…. 12?

Really, 12?

You already have Jodie Meeks trying to show everyone how much of a superstar he really is (and he is, especially if he drops a few more 40, 50 point games. We could be speaking about the best UK player, ever). Patrick Patterson COMMANDS sagging defense and double, triple teams.

Do you really want to give these guys anymore reason to go off?

Well you did.

Here’s the thing, in Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology (which is usually almost 100 percent right, down to the seeds every year) has UK as a six seed. That would put them somewhere between the 21st and 24th best team in the nation. Right now, the AP has them as the 28th best. The coaches? 34th.

Gentlemen of the SEC, be prepared. Your fellow coaches just starved a hungry, hungry monster.

And the double-headed dragon of Patterson and Meeks has you in their sights.

A couple of tidbits from today’s news.

First off, my post before must have been way too premature because the polls have been released and the Cats are nowhere to be found in either.  In fact, the SEC’s sole representative is Florida at #24 in the AP Poll.  The Cats received 105  votes in the AP Poll but only 12 in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll.  I guess the only that the Cats can do is continue to win and see if Jodie can score 60+ in his next two games to get some more national spotlight and convince the voters this team is pretty good.

Jodie Meeks also got some more recognition based on his performances in last weeks games.  He was named SEC Player of the Week on Monday for the third time this season and the sixth time in his career at UK.  Meeks led the Cats in scoring at both Tennessee and Georgia.  At Tennessee on Tuesday night, Meeks broke the Kentucky single game scoring record, netting 54 points, and broke the school record for most three pointers made in a game with 10.  On Sunday, Meeks scored 22 points, going 8-16 from the field and 3-8 from behind the arc.  Jodie is 1st in the SEC and 4th nationally in scoring, 25.7 ppg, and 5th in the nation with 70 threes made.  From the line, Meeks is nearly automatic, shooting a league best 90.8 % from the charity stripe.  He snapped his consecutive free throws made streak on Sunday, ending it at 36.