Fire Tubby?

In case you haven’t heard already, Tubby has his own web site. Here are some highlights from the tour:

• On the main page, a little virtual Tubby Smith walks out from the left side and welcomes you to the site. The Flash chroma-key effect isn’t what I consider “professional web site design”, so I laughed.
• The ‘teacher’ section of the site starts out with a video showing Tubby chest-bump Brandon Stockton, which is one of my top-five Tubby Actions I’ve Ever Seen.
• If you head to the Catland -> Wildcat Lodge link in the top menu, you’ll see a Flash movie of Chuck Hayes doing a MTV Cribs-style tour of the Lodge. I believe the clip is from Tubby’s TV show originally. Anyway, there are few things about the movie, if you’ll watch the whole thing:
  • Wildcat Lodge has to be next on the makeover list for UK Athletics. It is really showing its age. The bedroom windows are hardly big enough to sneak co-eds through.
  • I’m surprised we didn’t get to see Shagari Alleyne’s room. I can imagine that the real reason Shagari had “academic issues” was because he was addicted to World of Warcraft; if we could have seen his room, telltale signs of WoW addiction would have shown, such as several discarded bags of Cheetos and a big orange-stained PC. (BTW, if you ever see a level 60 gnome by the name of ‘SwatMaster21′, we’ll all know its true.
  • Chuck shows off Marquis Estelle’s old dorm room fridge. He also shows off his Dodge Ram named “Bertha”. I guess he can’t afford getting a pimped-out SUV due to all the shoes he has (which he shows off).
• There is an Ask Tubby page, where he will answer your questions you email in. I’d like to know the percentage of messages Tubby’s message handlers will get that are 1) letters attempting to get him to quit and 2) personal attacks. My guess is it will be at least 15%, maybe hovering close to 20%. You stay classy, Kentucky Wildcat fans!
• There’s also a Tubby’s Analysis page, where he breaks down happenings during the season. Currently only pre-College of Charlston analysis is up, where Tubby reveals that, “Bobby Cremins and I are actually good friends. We’ve known one another for some time and competed against each other annually when I was at Georgia and he was at Georgia Tech. It’s good to have Bobby back in the game, and I know he’ll have College of Charleston ready to play.”

Just ran across Chris Diggs’ post over at the Courier Journal. Down near the end of the post he’s talking about “some of the ignorant” parts of the Wildcat fanbase that are constantly “jumping on and off the bandwagon”.

That part isn’t actually what I wanted to talk about, that’s just the part that will light up his email inbox and the message boards. The part I wanted to discuss is where he believes we will win the next 10 to 14 games. That is a mighty brave statement. Man I hope he’s right. That’s all from me for now. Back to football. Did you see that 60 yard game winning kick against Indy? Wow.

After game thoughts:
It never felt like they could get within striking distance in this game. They were always just playing to stay in it. Randolph Morris was an absolute beast though. 21 points 7 rebounds. This is the type of game it would be nice to see every time out from him, but would it kill him to dive for a ball once in a while?

I was extremely glad to see that we shut down Hansbrough. I haven’t really seen any extended interviews with him, but I swear it looks like there isn’t much going on above the shoulders for that guy. He has that blank look in his eyes, just odd.

Joe Crawford wasn’t the reason we lost but his turnovers stood out the most to me.

We ended up outrebounding Carolina and were dominating them on the boards early in the game. It was nice to see some second chance opportunities at the basket instead of one and done.

You won’t find to much Tubby bashing just for the sake of bashing on this site, but I said from the beginning that we wouldn’t be defending him just for the sake of defending him either. At one point during the game Kentucky fans favorite announcer/commentator Billy Packer said that “Tubby has done a good job of taking the fans out of the game” or something to that effect. My only thought when I heard that was, “yeah, for both teams”.

This is a game I look forward to every year. For several reasons. Games against the Duke’s, Indiana’s, North Carolina’s, and to a lesser extent the UCLA’s of the college basketball world represent benchmarks. In much the same way that the University of Kentucky as a whole compares itself to other benchmark institutions regarding employee health benefits, the basketball team can get a reading of where they are or where they want to be.

On the other hand, I had a buddy in high school who was a huge, obnoxious, ass of a Carolina fan. I’m sure some of you can relate when a friend or family member roots for a team that just happens to be one of the biggest rivals on the schedule. All out verbal war ensues in the days leading up to these games. From whatever the hell the spot on Rasheed Wallace’s head was to how Roy Williams still hasn’t won a championship since he did it with Matt Doherty’s players. Hmm wonder where I would have ever got a crazy idea like that?

Go Cats!