12-14-2005, 05:33 PM
10 reasons not to be blue over the Blue
By Mark Story
HERALD-LEADER SPORTS COLUMNIST
Doom, gloom, agony hang heavy over The Kingdom of the Blue.
Humbled by the Heels. Humiliated by the Hoosiers. Now braced for a haymaker from He Whose Name Is Never Spoken.
It's a gnarly time for the vast fan base whose emotions are pegged to the basketball fate of the Kentucky Wildcats.
Fortunately, you know how we media types operate -- when everyone else gives in to despair, we're always looking for the positives.
So I rise this morning with a Top 10 of reasons to look forward to the rest of this Kentucky basketball season.
10. No team is as bad as it looks when it has one of those atrocious shooting days. So Kentucky, which hit 19 of 61 shots (2 of 27 three-pointers) in getting spanked by Indiana, has to be better than the team that appeared in Indy.
9. The 2005-06 Kentucky Wildcats remind me a bit of the 1986-87 Kentucky Wildcats. That '87 UK team, which featured strong but streaky guard play (Rex Chapman, Ed Davender, James Blackmon) and limited front-line scoring (Richard Madison, Rob Lock), made the NCAA Tournament.
(Yeah, yeah, they only won 18 games overall and went out in the first round of the Dance, but we're being positive here.)
8. If you are among those who carp about Tubby Smith's recruiting track record, the apparent lack of talent on the UK roster among those who stand taller than 6-foot-3 buttresses your case.
7. If you are among those who tend to defend Tubby Smith's overall record at Kentucky, you can reply that the picture would look at lot different if Kelenna Azubuike and Randolph Morris had not both made ill-advised decisions to prematurely enter the NBA Draft.
6. We'll find out something interesting about Smith the coach this winter.
If it turns out that the best chance this team has to win games is to go small. To trap, press, get in passing lanes defensively. To compensate for a lack of low-post scoring offensively by pushing tempo and getting shots before other teams can set their half-court defenses.
If all that's the case, we'll see if Tubby is flexible enough to adjust his preferred playing style.
5. At least some of the Kingdom of the Blue became so spoiled by the unnatural level of tournament success Kentucky had in the late 1990s, they've acted like the last three years (which saw Kentucky go 87-15, advance to two Elite Eights and enter the NCAA Tournament as a No. 1 seed twice) were failures.
Maybe that element of UK fandom has earned a reality-check of a season.
4. I still think the 7-foot-2 freshman, Jared Carter, has a lot of upside.
3. But if the rest of this year progresses as the first nine games have, surely elite front-line prospects can now see that there is playing time to be had in abundance at Kentucky.
2. If there's any pride at all on the current Wildcats roster, a major stand will be made Saturday in Rupp against the University of Pitino.
1. And if that doesn't happen (or if UK just isn't good enough to win regardless), Kentucky lost to Louisville, Indiana and North Carolina in 1989-90.
Nobody died as a result.
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/spo...394599.htm
By Mark Story
HERALD-LEADER SPORTS COLUMNIST
Doom, gloom, agony hang heavy over The Kingdom of the Blue.
Humbled by the Heels. Humiliated by the Hoosiers. Now braced for a haymaker from He Whose Name Is Never Spoken.
It's a gnarly time for the vast fan base whose emotions are pegged to the basketball fate of the Kentucky Wildcats.
Fortunately, you know how we media types operate -- when everyone else gives in to despair, we're always looking for the positives.
So I rise this morning with a Top 10 of reasons to look forward to the rest of this Kentucky basketball season.
10. No team is as bad as it looks when it has one of those atrocious shooting days. So Kentucky, which hit 19 of 61 shots (2 of 27 three-pointers) in getting spanked by Indiana, has to be better than the team that appeared in Indy.
9. The 2005-06 Kentucky Wildcats remind me a bit of the 1986-87 Kentucky Wildcats. That '87 UK team, which featured strong but streaky guard play (Rex Chapman, Ed Davender, James Blackmon) and limited front-line scoring (Richard Madison, Rob Lock), made the NCAA Tournament.
(Yeah, yeah, they only won 18 games overall and went out in the first round of the Dance, but we're being positive here.)
8. If you are among those who carp about Tubby Smith's recruiting track record, the apparent lack of talent on the UK roster among those who stand taller than 6-foot-3 buttresses your case.
7. If you are among those who tend to defend Tubby Smith's overall record at Kentucky, you can reply that the picture would look at lot different if Kelenna Azubuike and Randolph Morris had not both made ill-advised decisions to prematurely enter the NBA Draft.
6. We'll find out something interesting about Smith the coach this winter.
If it turns out that the best chance this team has to win games is to go small. To trap, press, get in passing lanes defensively. To compensate for a lack of low-post scoring offensively by pushing tempo and getting shots before other teams can set their half-court defenses.
If all that's the case, we'll see if Tubby is flexible enough to adjust his preferred playing style.
5. At least some of the Kingdom of the Blue became so spoiled by the unnatural level of tournament success Kentucky had in the late 1990s, they've acted like the last three years (which saw Kentucky go 87-15, advance to two Elite Eights and enter the NCAA Tournament as a No. 1 seed twice) were failures.
Maybe that element of UK fandom has earned a reality-check of a season.
4. I still think the 7-foot-2 freshman, Jared Carter, has a lot of upside.
3. But if the rest of this year progresses as the first nine games have, surely elite front-line prospects can now see that there is playing time to be had in abundance at Kentucky.
2. If there's any pride at all on the current Wildcats roster, a major stand will be made Saturday in Rupp against the University of Pitino.
1. And if that doesn't happen (or if UK just isn't good enough to win regardless), Kentucky lost to Louisville, Indiana and North Carolina in 1989-90.
Nobody died as a result.
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/spo...394599.htm