Fire Tubby?

Or so says FoxSports.com columnist Yoni Cohen. Ok, so he gets a few key points wrong but THIS is sticking your neck out there.

He says that “years ago” Randolph Morris tried to leave for the NBA. Uhhmm actually that was last season. He also says we had a 10 game winning streak before being pantsed by Vandy. A ticky tack point I know but as a UK fan in regard to such things it’s my obligation to correct him. Sir it was an ELEVEN game win streak. And you thought Chris Cross was optimistic. Woah.

Well, it’s almost here. What’s that you ask? “The Defining Stretch of the Tubby Smith Era“, as some would say. In reality is that the case? Considering this game alone, probably not, but a win tonight will do a lot to soothe the sting of the Vandy loss. Georgia is the favorite at -2 1/2. My personal opinion (and hope) is that the Vanderbilt game was somewhat of a fluke and that it will serve as a kick in the ass to get back on track. I’m going to predict a 10 point UK win tonight. Clearly I drank the Kool-Aid. If UK gets thrashed, you can come back and tell me what a jackass I was in the comments.

Now on to something I like to do whenever UK plays Georgia, which is bring up our old friend Joey Waldrop. Sadly, the uncoordinated looking former Bulldog turned actor is no longer on the team. It also appears as if his website has fallen into disrepair. It also pales in comparison to our own Jodie Meeks‘ site. That doesn’t stop me from reminiscing about the game in Rupp where I got to see him laboring up and down the court looking like an Olympic race walker where you can’t pick up one foot until the other touches the ground. Good times. Go Cats!

Some weird happenings this week with the rankings. Despite the loss on Saturday to Vandy the Cats actually moved up in one of the polls this week. In the AP poll Kentucky dropped from 25th to effectively 27th and into the “others receiving votes” category with Tennessee being the penis-in-betweenus. Did anyone just get that joke? I’m sorry for that, I just had a flash back to middle school.

On to the ESPN/Coaches poll where all the funny business usually happens because most of the time it’s the AD or a staff assistant that sends in the rankings instead of the coach. On a side note, I heard or read somewhere that Tubby doesn’t participate in the coaches poll because he doesn’t believe in them. I couldn’t find a link to back this up but I swear I heard that. Anyway, just the opposite of the AP poll, UK went from 27th to 25th.

In the other rankings Kentucky dropped from 5th to 7th in the RPI, 11th to 17th in Sagarin, and held steady at 14th in the Pomery system.

Lastly, UK is all alone in second place in the SEC East after a Florida win and a UK loss.

Louisville Courier-Journal columnist Eric Crawford says that he only sees one “lock-solid” win left on UK’s remaining SEC schedule. Here’s the direct quote. I picked it up from the excellent Aaron’s UK Basketball Blog.

“And this isn’t the old Southeastern Conference. Look down the remaining schedule and name how many games you think are lock-solid wins for UK. I came up with one.”

Talk about being pessimistic, an eleven game win streak ends and this guy sticks a fork in the teams season.

So I had just finished watching the game yesterday and was writing my little piece for the site when WLEX ran their sports segment. I always like to tune into the news after the game to see Tubby and some of the player’s reactions.

Most of the time it’s Ryan Lemond on the floor at Rupp giving a recap while the UK band is still playing My Old Kentucky Home. Usually I think, “what’s the hurry” how could he possibly have his thought’s prepared 45 seconds after the game is over. I guess that’s why he is one of the nominees for Broadcaster of the Year in Kentucky. I always enjoy Lemond’s reporting because he is usually able to tell a story and make it humorous all at the same time which I think takes a unique talent. Except this time Lemond had desk duty and Alan Cutler was standing outside Rupp. Let’s go to the video. Sorry about the boring Randolph Morris section there in the middle, stick with it and watch all the way to the end.

Do you think he enjoys the wins or the losses more? He really comes off as being a gigantic ass in that clip. Eeemmmbarrrraasssiinnngg

And remember Alan’s #1 secret of being a winner is:
Cut a hole in a bo…. no, no that’s something else. It’s actually:

Streak be damned, but the Cats couldn’t find a way to win this one.

Why wasn’t Jasper handling the ball down the stretch? As I was watching it, I couldn’t remember him committing that many turnovers or fouls during the game, but I thought maybe I had missed something. After having a chance to look at the box score you can see he didn’t have very many of either. I don’t know, maybe there was a reason.

There also goes the streak that the commentators like to bring up about “Kentucky leading at halftime” and going on to win the game. You can tack “and 1” to the end of that streak. It was really good to see both Sheray and Bobby have a decent game. Does it bother anyone else an inordinate amount when Randolph turns the ball over off the tips of his fingers? Yeah, me neither.

Now that we have that pesky winning streak out of the way let’s see how the tide of the TB turns next week.

An update on the stats and rankings before the Cats take on Vandy later today. Go Cats!

Ok, so we took a month off. We’re kind of like that house in your neighborhood that still has it’s Christmas decorations up. Hell, we just took down our Festivus pole.

In the mean time, the Cats have reeled off the first 11 of 14 in a row. That’s right, 14 in a row is what we are shooting for. Go back and check out that last link. It’s from a post Chris Diggs wrote for a CJ blog after our last loss. On December 3rd. I linked to it that day.

I was being optimistic by saying “I hope he’s right”, our own Hefty Lefty said “Even in my most blindly optimistic predictions, I don’t have UK winning their next 10-14 games” but the best quote of all comes from a commenter to his original post:

“If you think UK will win its next 14 games, you are on crack. I’ll be back on here to laugh at your prediction.”

Needless to say, he hasn’t been back.

Our long winter slumber at firetubby.com is over. I know all of you are relieved. More on this later. Since it’s been a while, I wanted to come back with a headline that would grab some attention. Fun game tonight. 87-49 Cats. The picture is a cropped version of a wallpaper from the South Carolina Athletics website. I know it’s now on my desktop how about your’s?