Fort Wayne Mad Ants' Friday News and Views

by:Matt Jones11/02/07
mascot_hospital_2_300.jpeg How many of you folks were up all night tonight waiting for the results of the NBA Developmental League draft results? Well if you were, then you had to be excited that the Fort Wayne Mad Ants (what a great name....Mad Ants) drafted the great Woo in the second round. Fort Wayne, Indiana will thus be the home for the Obrzut over the rest of the year as it is the sister franchise for the Indiana Pacers, who have told Woo to stick around the NBDL as they may bring him back up to the big leagues if one of their big men get hurt. For many who saw Woo at UK, the notion that he could play in the NBA seems a little farfetched, however he has found a franchise that believes in him and wants to keep him within in their range of possibilities. If Woo makes it to the NBA, I will be thrilled, in part because he is one of the nicest guys imaginable, but also because there is no one who loves the UK uniform more than the Woo. In somewhat ironic news, also drafted by the Mad Ants......none other than Shagari Alleyne. The twin towers just cant get away from each other..... (1) The next two weeks are huge for UK when it comes to recruiting. Chris Singleton will be making his decision in the next two weeks and it is down to UK and Florida State. Due to the unfortunate passing of his grandmother, Singleton will not be making the trip to Lexington this weekend for another visit (this according to Marc Maggard) and thus whatever impressions have been made so far, will have to be the lasting impressions for Singleton when making his choice. As I have said numerous times on the radio show, UK and Florida State are fundamentally different basketball programs and their methods of recruiting are nowhere close to similar. Yet they seem to meet up often for kids and I am always worried when it happens.....mostly due to the Seminoles' methods. I expected before the news of the passing that we would hear from Singleton by the middle of next week. That may be pushed out a bit now, but either way, we will likely know his destination next weekend. Huge few days coming.... (2) The folks around Garrett Stutz believe they will know whether they have an offer from Billy Clyde and UK by Monday. That puts UK in an interesting situation. They must let Stutz know for sure whether he has an offer to UK before they know for sure what plans Singleton has for his college career. It has been my understanding that the UK folks had hoped to know the Singleton decision and then make a Stutz decision one way or the other. Now they have to place their bets before seeing the river card. Stutz and his family would have no problem choosing to go to SMU or Wichita St, so if Kentucky truly wants him (and some in the program surely do), they must make the call this weekend. Should be very interesting to see what they decide..... (3) For people who get a chance, I hope they go to the Rupp Basketball Museum at 4:30 for the autograph signing with the 1958 Championship Team. The "Fiddling Five" is one of the truly special teams in UK history with Johnny Cox and Vernon Hatton among others, and UK's decision to honor the team and bring Seattle here for an exhibition game is one of the best they have made in some time. I unfortunately cant be at the game on Saturday, but it should be a special moment and one I hope the fans can take advantage of in full. History is what makes UK basketball different and Saturday will be a day that showcases that to its fullest. (4) I hope you saw Tayshaun Prince play tonight. He scored a career high 34 points and absolutely dominated the Miami Heat in all facets of the game. Tayshaun is on my All Time Favorite 5 Team (joined by Jamal Magloire, Richie Farmer, Derek Anderson and Gimel Martinez....Woo is the 6th man) and is one of the great representatives that the University has in the public life. His offense seems much improved and he is likely to be an even more important focal point of the scoring this year. It is time for Tay to have his jersey put in the rafters (along with Tony Delk) and hopefully UK will do it soon. More on the 1958 Championship team later today and a preview for the weekend. We leave you with this gem from the Herald Leader's John Clay. Clay has become the master in his columns of what columnists often call the "Randoms" which essentially means that "I havent taken the time to write a column so I am just going to write little snippets on a lot of different topics to take a short cut." I have no problem with this tactic as it is essentially exactly what we do on blogs.....short and sweet and random....however newspaper columnists often use this exact trait to criticize blogs. But for Clay blogs are now not only to be used to imitate column form, but also for content as well as his recent column cites the blog "Awful Announcing (which is great) for the vast majority of his content. Gotta love John on this one.....why write a column when you borrow another's blog. I do however give John credit for this....he has embraced the world of the "video blog", otherwise known as the "Kige Ramsey" world. He seems to have learned a lot from Kige....the use of props, the extreme close up, the odd choice of background (in his case wallpaper). In fact, after watching Clay's newest video blog (seen below and about the fascinating topic of Billy Clyde's tie), I got to wondering.....Clay sure looks a lot like Kige. Do we know they arent the same person? Has anyone ever seen them in the same place at the same time? This needs to be investigated..... kige.jpeg

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