January Madness

Basketball is my favorite sport. I like the way they dribble up and down the court ...

I haven't said much about the roller coaster ride that is UK basketball. It seems very interesting that so much of the blame was given to Tubby while he was here and somehow he is still getting blamed after he left. So moving on to this year's Crippled CATS, this looks like a good team gone bad. There was so much hope with Stewart and Patterson coming in to shore up a Senior/Sophomore rich team. Most people still figured on a 3 or 4 guard offense since the team has guards in abundance, but with Patrick in the middle to keep defenses off balance. Coury and Harris have tried to take up some of the slack from the height deficiency left by Morris's move to the NBA. [A side note: Morris has only played in 2 games this season even though he's pulling down over three-quarters of a million this year.] The team has been a pretty big let down overall. With losses to teams like Gardner Webb and San Diego, back to back losses to UAB and Houston and a four game losing streak that happened last over 2 decades ago, this can not be considered a good first year for Billy G. The team has been plagued by injuries, but many of them have been blamed on the intensity of Billy's practices including on game days. The CATS have shown a little bit of promise in January with wins over top 20 teams in the SEC at Rupp. They will still have to cut a swath through the rest of the SEC and win some big games on the road before they are taken seriously. Many analysts project that they will not be invited to the Big Dance. There's still a chance that a strong showing the rest of the season and deep into the SEC tourney could get them in, but what happens then? If Billy can't keep the key components on the court, then it won't matter if we break into the tournament field. We'll be home very quickly. So here's hoping UK can pull themselves together and make believers out of the Selection Committee and teams across the nation!