UK Wildcat Country

53 weeks ago, Kentucky endured a sports weekend from hell. The basketball team lost to VMI in a season opener of circus ball. The next day, the football team lost a must-win game against Vanderbilt in some of the worst weather conditions in Commonwealth Stadium history. That game featured a slow start, then when the UK players woke up, special teams mistakes and terrible officiating made sure Vandy would get their first bowl game since Chester Arthur was President or whatever. I’m a trivia dork, but don’t care enough about Vandy football to look up that stat. This weekend was different. It was so good that the Black Eyed Peas could have written that song “I Got A Feeling” about this entire weekend. I’m starting with Thursday because I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up Sam Houston State.

THURSDAY: UK 102, SAM HOUSTON STATE 92

My mother was actually in attendance for this game, her first in nearly a decade. She must have been good luck. Why would that be good luck? Well, when a team hits 18 threes in a game and said team is never in said game and the outcome is never in doubt, somebody was on the side of the good guys. And the game really was never in doubt. The closest Sam Houston State got in the second half was eight points. Kentucky scored 102 points, the first time we’ve scored 100 in a regular season game since the 2003-04 season, which is incredibly hard to believe. Sure, SHS hit 18 threes, but didn’t UK do a great job defending two-point shots?

I make light of it because the UK offense brought the pain. This game was a far better demonstration of the dribble drive than either of the first two, and I’d still only rate about a 3/10 in terms of pure dribble drive. The outside shooting, especially without Darnell Dodson, was a pleasant surprise. Darius Miller shot the ball with a tenfold increase in confidence and Eric Bledsoe hit more threes in that game than I thought he’d make the entire season. DeMarcus Cousins was so good that he made a 20-point, nine-rebound effort from Patrick Patterson look quiet. I know John Wall has been a human highlight reel so far, but Cousins needs more positive attention than what he’s gotten so far. It doesn’t matter if the other team had a bunch of short guys, 27 points and 18 rebounds is a great night at the office, and nobody played harder in that game than DeMarcus Cousins. He dove on the floor more than Brian Cardinal. This made me happy.

SATURDAY: UK 92, RIDER 63

Now this one really pleased me. It’s about time this team blew somebody out. I might be the only one, but this game had me ultra-nervous because of the ability of Rider to shoot the three. They blitzed Mississippi State from three and pretty much owned that game from beginning to end. Ryan Thompson looked to be a matchup nightmare because he’s a small forward with point guard skills. Why do we worry about these things anyway? John Wall really set the tone for this game by getting to the rack at will, scoring and drawing fouls. Throw in a timely bucket by Bledsoe every now and then and Patterson and Daniel Orton cleaning up inside and it was over after the second TV timeout.

You pretty much know what you’re going to get with Patterson every time. He’ll get the big rebound, he’ll follow up misses and just be generally reliable. The 19 points were to be expected, but the 18 rebounds were not. I was hoping he’d crack the 20-rebound mark, just because I’ve only witnessed one (Jared Prickett vs. Arkansas), and I always associate that with a painful loss. So Patterson was just his consistent self. But with two freshman post players, you don’t know what you’ll get from them. Cousins came out and struggled early – no problem, enter Daniel Orton. He came in, established a strong post presence, rebounded and passed well and even showed a nice outside touch. And if you believe Patterson, Wall and Coach Cal, Cousins was the one who insisted that Orton start the second half because he was playing so well. For a kid whose biggest flaw is supposed to be immaturity, this was an amazingly mature and classy move for a freshman to make.

I want to give extra props to Darius Miller and Ramon Harris for the way they guarded Ryan Thompson yesterday. Sure, he hit all 14 of his free throws, but holding the preseason MAAC player of the year to one bucket is fantastic defense, and those two guys are largely responsible for it.

SATURDAY: UK 34, GEORGIA 27

When this game was over, I went to YouTube and looked up a video that I could put in this column to express my excitement. Here’s what I came up with.

It’s the greatest scream in rock history, it usually follows David Caruso removing his shades and making a witty comment about a dead guy, and now it has a new meaning, that being “WE JUST BEAT GEORGIA IN ATHENS!” The last time that happened, I was –9 years old. Jimmy Carter was president. The Arizona Cardinals were in St. Louis. 99% of the UK football players who have played in this decade were not born. Five Von Erich boys were alive, for you wrestling fans out there. I could go on, but let’s just say it’s been a while.

I don’t like talking about the X’s and O’s of football because I’m not good at it. But here are some things I know.

If Sam Maxwell doesn’t make All-SEC, he should. The SEC is loaded with great linebackers. Sam Maxwell has been one of the most active backers in the conference this season. In my opinion, he’s played better than Micah Johnson has, and Johnson has been no slouch. Not only did he get the game-winning interception, but he flew all over the field to make his 11 tackles.

In a close game situation, if Derrick Locke and Randall Cobb get an adequate number of combined touches, they will not let Kentucky lose the game, end of story. I’m not even sure that the talented bunch of 2007 seniors had the ability to will the team to win like Locke and Cobb do.

Morgan Newton has yet to have a game where he has blown up the stat book the way DeMarcus Cousins does in basketball, but he just wins games. And he makes clutch throws too. LaRod King is turning out to be a heck of a receiver. I can’t wait to see the Newton-King connection for the next three years.

Corey Peters was a terror at the line of scrimmage. How often do you see a defensive tackle blow through his gap and swipe an attempted handoff from the quarterback, especially against a Georgia offensive line? Peters was the best lineman on the field last night.

How the defensive line did it, I have no idea, but Joe Cox had shown all year that if you applied a little bit of pressure, he’d throw picks. The line applied pressure and Cox threw picks.

Matt Roark deserves props for falling on that fumbled kickoff to start the second half. Kentucky always tries to pick that ball up and run with it. It is as consistent as death and taxes. Roark did the right thing and swung the momentum so much in Kentucky’s favor that Georgia didn’t really recover from it.

My favorite part of the game were the shots of the Georgia fans after the Shane McCord interception (another awesome play). Georgia fans don’t think their team should ever lose to Kentucky in football, and why would they? We’ve been playing football for decades and until last night, had only beaten Georgia ten times. They were incredulous, and once the Bulldogs fumbled at the goal line, they filed out of there in droves. Tom Leach said that it was the fastest he’d ever seen a road stadium turn off its scoreboard.

I can only hope to have another sports weekend like this. Maybe if UK plays basketball on Super Bowl Sunday and the Vikings make the Super Bowl I’ll get to do it again.

Thanks for reading. Beat Tennessee and prove me wrong.

Let’s just go ahead and get all the negatives out of the way, because it’s never fun to close with negatives and leave a bad taste in my loyal readers’ mouths.

Allowing Miami to shoot 15-26 from three is just awful, and while it is true that some of the shots were contested and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about guys making contested threes, there were still too many good looks. When a guy like Nick Winbush hits the first three the way he did (in, out and back in – the quintessential “I’m on fire” bounce), you have to deny him the ball. That’s everybody’s fault, not just the wing guys assigned to guard Winbush. When a team depends as much on the high screen as Miami does, it’s up to the defense to communicate on those screens so nobody gets lost. The only way this will improve with such a young team is practice, practice, practice.

John Wall and Eric Bledsoe will quickly learn that they are not in high school anymore. A majority of their turnovers have been the result of just trying to dribble through people. That’s all fine and good at the high school level, but Miami is not the Washington Generals, and not even Marcus Haynes could dribble into crowds and do something productive like John and Eric tried to do last night. Again, the biggest factor in changing this is time. Defensively, they need to watch some game tapes of Cliff Hawkins. Far too often Wall would allow his man to drive by him so he could attempt to slap the ball away from behind. Against competent Division I guards, this strategy will work probably once out of 20 times. Stay in front of your man, guys. It will take you places.

Free throw shooting was bad, no dancing around it. But this one actually doesn’t concern me as much. John Wall and Patrick Patterson are better FT shooters than what they shot last night. Then Bledsoe, Cousins and Orton all missed either an and-1 or the front end of a bonus. The one I’m most worried about is Patterson, but he shot them well his first two years when free throws weren’t a part of practice, and he’ll start making them again.

The best thing about these negatives is that all of them are correctable, and many of the mistakes were mistakes of inexperience.

What I liked the most about this game was the fire with which Kentucky played in coming back against a hot opponent. My game MVP was DeMarcus Cousins. He got two quick fouls, the second of which was a pretty tough call, then he got upset and went to the bench. That’s something we’re all just going to have to deal with. The best news is that he didn’t let that adversely affect his game in the second half, quite the contrary, actually. Six offensive rebounds and ten second half points might not seem like much, but everything was timely, and when the chips were down and Miami kept answering runs, Cousins took over.

I loved what we got out of the small forward position last night. Darius Miller hit some clutch shots during the comeback, plus he guarded Nick Winbush during the last five or so minutes and held him scoreless. This must not be ignored. Darnell Dodson came into the game with his team down 18 and immediately made three threes. He was the biggest reason why that 18-point lead became three points in less than five minutes. He’s a great offensive player, and he just has to play more. I don’t know why he was one of the last players off the bench last night, but I’m just a guy on the internet, so all I can do is speculate.

Last year’s team would have let Miami blow them out. When the times got toughest (down 36-18), any of the post-Chuck Hayes UK teams would have folded up the tent and lost by 8-12 points. That’s why I’m so happy about last night’s game. There could be no better “kick in the pants” game than last night. When it was time to crank up the intensity, the team cranked it up on both sides of the court. Miller deserves huge props for holding Winbush scoreless in crunch time. Cousins and Patterson owned the glass. Wall plays with the kind of fire you rarely see from freshmen, and when he got the ball in a tie game with five seconds to go, I knew he’d score. This will be so much more of a learning experience than if they had blown out Miami, even though they really should have blown out Miami. But if you’re going to have a learning experience game, better to have it against Miami than North Carolina or Connecticut, right?

That’s what I thought.

Thanks for reading.

One down, 39 to go.

If you were to grade Kentucky’s performance in this game, an accurate grade would be an “I” because the team is incomplete without John Wall. But since that’s not any fun, I’ll go with a C+. There were too many turnovers and the team screwed around in the last two minutes enough to let Morehead beat the spread. But all in all, the rest of what happened last night was pretty much what I expected. We’ve got a young team, Morehead has an experienced team and it showed.

The thing I enjoyed the most about the game last night was the fast start. When Patrick Patterson came out and hit that three, it seemed like a weight was lifted off the shoulders of the ungodly huge crowd. And it looked like it gave the players a lift because they really picked up the defensive intensity after that. Kenneth Faried ended up having a pretty good game, but he got overwhelmed down low to start the game with all those blocks. Combine that with everybody in a UK uniform looking to Patterson and Darnell Dodson hitting some insane shots and it was off and running. Morehead didn’t get closer than six points behind for the rest of the game, and that was late in the first half. Did you feel worried? Be honest. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being “Joker Phillips in the 4th quarter of a tight game” panic, you shouldn’t have been anything higher than a 2.

Coach Cal said after the exhibitions that he might have to end up feeding the post this season more than he ever did at Memphis. This might have contributed to some of the turnovers from last night, but it still worked like you would want it to work. Faried is an outstanding player, especially for the OVC. Patterson really seemed to frustrate him early on. DeMarcus Cousins and Daniel Orton also did a nice job although they combined for nine fouls. The defensive footwork necessary to avoid such foul trouble will get there, but in the meantime, we might have to fight some growing pains with those guys.

Eric Bledsoe is built like a burlap sack full of bricks, and more than anything he did last night, I was impressed with his brute strength. He had a rough first half, so Coach Cal must have had an individual “Come to Jesus” meeting with Eric at halftime. The play that stood out for me was when he drove into the paint with no numbers, got fouled by three different guys and still got a shot up in the air. The shot didn’t go in, but he drew the foul. My point is, how many point guards have the strength to even get that shot up when three guys are grabbing on their arms? You could probably count it on one hand.

Don’t ream Darius Miller, people. He just had a bad game. It doesn’t mean he should be relegated to Svoboda duty. And when Darnell Dodson plays the way he did last night, it doesn’t matter as much if Darius or any other wing or guard has a bad game. I really enjoy watching Dodson play. His game would probably make Joe B. Hall cringe, but you want a guy with a reputation as a shooter and scorer to have the utmost confidence in his shot. He’s going to take some bad shots this year, just get used to it. But he’s more than likely going to make some of them, so get used to that as well.

I’m looking forward to Monday’s game like no other regular season game than ever before. That’s how pumped up I am for John Wall’s first game. Bledsoe set the freshman debut scoring record last night with 24 points. Considering guys like Rex and Mashburn couldn’t pull that off, I’d say that’s quite an accomplishment. But it also wouldn’t surprise me if that record only stood for two more days. Miami would probably lose to Morehead on a neutral court. They were a lower level MAC team last year and lost some significant contributors from that squad. So even though I like Charlie Coles as a coach, I think his team will witness the full power of our arsenal.

Thanks for reading. Go Cats, beat Vandy.

Well, we’ve had a couple exhibition games to let everything sink in. I’m ready to bring back the World’s Greatest Postgame Analysis, but last year proved that doing the WGPA for exhibition games is pointless because VMI could come in at game 1 and destroy you. One could argue that without John Wall and with Eric Bledsoe not at 100%, Morehead could come in and do the very same thing. After all, they are the defending OVC champions and are not breaking in as many new players or a completely new system like Kentucky is.

Read this very carefully: It is time to get rid of that Smith/Gillispie attitude that’s been a toxin injected into the fanbase for the last ten years. Those days are done. If I had to guess how the team will look, I’d say that we’ll play better than we did against Campbellsville, but not as well as we did against Clarion.

There is one thing I’d like to point out about the progress between Campbellsvile and Clarion: dribble drive looked a whole lot better, and while John Wall had a lot to do with this, so did the play of Darius Miller. If you watched the Clarion game closely, you would have noticed that on many of the plays where Kentucky scored, the motion was started by Darius Miller taking his man off the dribble and kicking out. An assertive Darius Miller is an extremely important element to a successful 2009-10 season, so hopefully we got the first look at that in the Clarion game.

One thing that was surprising was that I got more than one “What’s wrong with Patrick Patterson?” after these exhibitions. What’s wrong with Patrick Patterson? Is there really anything wrong with him? It looks to me like he’s just trying to adjust to a new system. At this stage of the game, the DDMO is like a new pair of pants to these players. You first put on the pants and they seem uncomfortable, but then you put them on a couple more times and they’re the most comfortable pants you’ve ever worn. Right now, everybody is in that first stage. They’ve just bought the pants and they’re trying them on, and it’s most evident with the upperclassmen, most notably Patterson. Another thing to consider about Patterson is that the guys he’s played against in these exhibition games would have had a hard time cracking the starting five for Hickory High in “Hoosiers” – not because of the talent level, but rather their size. Don’t you think Patrick can take advantage of being guarded by bigger guys in the DDMO? I know I do. And finally, if he can’t adjust well enough to Coach Cal’s liking, he’s said that if push comes to shove, he’ll feed the post and let Patterson work with his back to the basket as only he can. What’s that? A coach can make offensive adjustment? What sorcery is this?

So that brings me to the season outlook. Right now, I have us losing exactly 4.5 games. Sure, this isn’t fair, but let me explain.

I say there will be two surefire losses. One of them will happen in the December stretch of North Carolina, Connecticut and Indiana. Obviously, it would be terrible to lose to any of them, but it will be tough for this team to survive this stretch without one blemish. Since we’re only up two games on North Carolina in the race to 2000 wins and my family in Indiana can be unbearable when the Hoosiers beat the Cats, I guess the preference would be Uconn, if I were to even have a preference. The other loss will probably happen in Starkville when we play Mississippi State. Any preseason poll that doesn’t have Mississippi State in the top ten is useless to me. That’s how good they should be. Jarvis Varnado is the shot-blockingest scoundrel I’ve ever seen play the game. The four guards that led MSU to the SEC Tournament title can all fill it up and go off for 25 points on any given night. If Renardo Sidney gets cleared, the Bulldogs won’t have a weak link on their squad, as if it were easy to win in Starkville in the first place.

The other 2.5 losses come from five toss-up games where I just split the difference. Those games were at home against Louisville, at LSU, at Vanderbilt, at South Carolina and at Tennessee. Louisville will be awfully good if Rick Pitino plays Peyton Siva more than Edgar Sosa. LSU will be down on talent, but I’ve only seen Kentucky blow out LSU in Baton Rouge once, and Trent Johnson is the best pure coach at LSU in my lifetime. The games at Vandy, South Carolina and Tennessee are all division games in hostile environments against the best competition in the division (sorry, Florida and Georgia – just my opinion).

With that in mind, let’s take a look at my season predictions.

SEC East

1. Kentucky
2. Vanderbilt
3. Tennessee
4. South Carolina
5. Florida
6. Georgia

SEC West

1. Mississippi State
2. Ole Miss
3. Alabama
4. LSU
5. Arkansas
6. Auburn

NCAA Tournament bids: Kentucky, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, Tennessee and whoever has a better record between South Carolina and Alabama.

ALL-SEC

1st team

Kenny Boynton – Florida
Devan Downey – South Carolina
Tasmin Mitchell – LSU
Patrick Patterson – Kentucky
Tyler Smith – Tennessee
Jarvis Varnado – Mississippi State
John Wall – Kentucky
Chris Warren – Ole Miss

2nd team

Wayne Chism – Tennessee
DeMarcus Cousins – Kentucky
Ravern Johnson – Mississippi State
AJ Ogilvy – Vanderbilt
Jeffery Taylor – Vanderbilt
Trey Thompkins – Georgia
Michael Washington – Arkansas
Terrico White – Ole Miss

All-Freshmen team

Kenny Boynton – Florida
DeMarcus Cousins – Kentucky
John Jenkins – Vanderbilt
Renardo Sidney – Mississippi State (if cleared)
John Wall – Kentucky

Coach of the Year: Anthony Grant, Alabama

Freshman of the Year: John Wall, Kentucky

Player of the Year: John Wall, Kentucky

Thanks for reading.

I’m Seth Stogsdill, and this has been my opinion – nothing more, nothing less.

Thanks to ukathletics.com for transcribing this so I didn’t have to. I’m still high from the UK and Vikings games. This is from their site, but it needs to be posted on as many sites as possible as far as I’m concerned. Forgive any mistakes in syntax, but I wanted to post it as transcribed.

On behalf of Ellen, Erin, Megan, and Bradley, I want to thank the entire family of the Big Blue Nation for your warmth and hospitality. you have made us feel like we have been in the commonwealth forever.

A vision that sees the you, greatest fans in all of sports once again puffing your chests and chanting in whatever language you choose, and however loudly you want to shout it, Go Big blue! Go big blue! Go Big Blue!

Now I’m sure detractors will say that this was the biggest serving of Kool-Aid in the history of sports, and it might be. But at least for one night, I’ve never been thirstier for Kool-Aid, and it tasted great.

24-17, War Wildcats.

I told everybody I know that this past Thursday was Christmas Eve, because that’s probably how most of Big Blue Nation feels the day before Big Blue Madness. But there was something different about last night that’s hard to explain. There’s always a cheese factor with Midnight Madness that is unavoidable, whether it’s Roy Williams doing the cabbage patch as only he can in Chapel Hill or the opening ceremony at Kansas that’s more reminiscent of the opening scene in “Dead Poets Society.” At Kentucky, there’s usually some outdated MTV-style videos or that one dreadful year when cloggers came out and scared off every recruit that was not Patrick Patterson. And sure, there was some cheese last night, with the fan interviews and Matthew Mitchell auditioning for a New Kids On The Block reunion with his dancing. But relative to past years, the cheese was cut short.

Then the lights went down, the players were introduced and they debuted on top of the stage. They got tons of pyro. That was by far the most pyro I’ve ever seen for a basketball event, and the NBA uses a lot of pyro at some places. John Wall did his little dance, DeMarcus Cousins looked like he was ready to cut a throat or two (his quote, not mine), Josh Harrellson looked as giddy as any player I’ve seen at Madness since Mark Pope in 1996 and Patrick Patterson, as always, appeared locked in. It feels good to have this kind of talent again.

The speech that followed from Coach Cal was, without hesitation, one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. It was just regal in appearance and delivery. It felt like a presidential inauguration or a keynote address at a Democratic or Republican convention. This will probably come off as a terrible thing to say, but I promise I mean it in the nicest possible way: It’s the kind of conviction and crowd response that could only be matched by the fascist dictators of the 1930s, only Cal doesn’t want to wipe entire peoples off the face of the planet. In fact, going one step further because Cal is Italian, if Mussolini had given speeches like that one, maybe the Italians wouldn’t have been so woefully inept in World War II. All kidding aside, if you’re a UK fan watching that speech and you don’t get pumped up, you are a corpse.

So after all that pomp, pageantry and pyro (I can’t say enough about all the pyro – it was like a WWE show), it was time to let the guys play. I assume that they put the kibosh on the dunk contest after seeing John Wall throw down contest-worthy dunks in the layup line and conceded it to him. And really, if you were out there, wouldn’t you concede it? God forbid they had actually gone through with the contest and somebody had landed awkwardly and blown out their knee like Dominique Wilkins did in the ’91 All-Star Game. And for those of you still pinching yourselves because you don’t know if it’s real, it doesn’t get much realer than John Wall in a Kentucky uniform dunking on a hoop in Rupp Arena, looking like he could have pulled the rim down with his teeth.

I don’t have something to say about all the players because the scrimmage was so loosely played. I liked what I saw from Eric Bledsoe. He’s every bit as aggressive with the ball as John Wall is. Josh Harrellson shot it well (5-6 from three if I’m not mistaken). I know that the big man isn’t necessarily designed to be the shooter in the DDM offense, but Wall and Bledsoe will be able to penetrate enough that anybody can get open. Hopefully Patterson was only shooting threes just to screw around. It just looks unnatural. He looked good everywhere else though.

There was one guy who stood out, and in a good way: DeAndre Liggins. In a game where the specific instruction was not to play much defense, Liggins did. He broke up at least three fast breaks in a short period of time and looked a lot more comfortable with the ball in his hand. Of course, all the guys get a clean slate this year. Counting out DeAndre Liggins would be a bad idea. After all, Kentucky only stole him from John Calipari and Memphis, so I think he could end up being a nice fit in the DDM.

There’s so much else to say, I’ll have to do another piece, either later today or tomorrow. But I want to explain the title. I said that last night was a lot like Christmas, but in actuality, it might be more like Hanukkah this season. I’m sure all the Louisville fans who read this site can correct me here, but aren’t there eight nights of celebration in Hanukkah? When Christmas is over, you get bummed because it’s 364 days until Christmas comes back. After the first night of Hanukkah, you still get a whole week’s worth of celebrating. That’s how it feels for me. Last night was the first day, and the next day will be the 28th with the Blue/White game. That’s when you’ll know a little more about the players and the system, and I’m already fired up for it.

Beat Auburn. Beat Baltimore. Thanks for reading.

MAZEL TOV!