Good weekend for the Cats as they looked strong against a clearly overmatched Texas State game. Whereas I thought last week that there was virtually nothing positive Kentucky could take out of the Louisville performance, there is a lot of good to be had from this weekend. Texas State could not compete with the Cats athletically, but the Cats utilized their advantages and never gave the Bobcats a chance to get in the game (something that didnt happen last year against Idaho St). Many on the team had solid performances and it was good to see a strong bounce back from the Louisville game. Of course Ole Miss will tell the tale, but for now, some optimism is in order. Onto the notes...
(1) Weekend number one and Kentucky escapes without its top recruits committing elsewhere.
JJ Hickson ended up postponing his visit to Florida, thus
Patrick Patterson was in Gainesville without his power forward brethren. The first interview with Patterson has taken place and he was full of praise. But those words are virtually always misleading as almost no one comes home from a school and says that a visit went bad. But the important thing is that no commit took place. Tubby smith has an in-home visit TODAY in Huntington and it begins Coach Smith's whirlwind tour across the country.
(2) March Madness got madder this weekend with the word that the
Morris twins, Marcus and Markieff (pictured above) will be among those in attendance. That makes the official attendance at this point, Patrick Patterson, Jai Lucas, AJ Stewart, the Morris twins and Darius Miller and possibly Scotty Hopson and Bud Mackey. This is shaping up to be the biggest recruiting weekend of the Tubby Smith era. Hopefully the fans will act accordingly.
(3) No matter what Jerry Tipton says, the
JJ Hickson recruitment is going much better than many would have believed. For a long time I have had two sources (one of whom is Rob Gidel) who have said to me that Kentucky was a very strong candidate for Hickson. The non-Rob source has even told me that he believes UK is second to Florida at this point and ahead of the other schools. Hickson will be visiting UK and has the Cats in his top 5....so dont believe the Herald Leader when it is said that he "turned down" UK....he scheduled a visit for a different day than Madness....a fact Tipton conveniently left out. And as for the Gani Lawal "rumor"....we traffic in rumors and I never heard it.....so it must have been from a REALLY awful source.
(4) I continue to hear absolutely GREAT things about
Jodie Meeks. For those of you have missed a couple of our shows, both AJ Stewart and Chris Barnes praised Meeks's game and now a couple of folks that have been watching the team work out tell me that Meeks is truly coming into his own. Often times hardest things for a young player is to get acclimated and comfortable, but Meeks is apparently showcasing his talents and becoming a bit of a leader. When I spoke with a UK player a few weeks ago, he said to me, "Jodie is for real." I think we will all see that is true very soon.
(5) Finally, with the news about our man Mark "Napoleon" Coury joining the team last week, some have asked about the other supposed walk ons,
Trey Frazier and Dwight Perry. Neither of those two were in the team photo but both are enrolled at UK. In addition, Perry lives in Wildcat Lodge and both are said to work out and scrimmage with the team. I have no idea if they will actually play, but they did arrive on campus, so we shall see.
We tape Episode 5 tonight, with a diverse cast of characters, including comedian
Doug Stanhope. It should be interesting to say the least....
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