Fire Tubby?

Have you noticed a pattern lately?

• Start slow and fall behind by 12-16 points.
• I declare the game over and mumble something about “I can’t believe this is happening again.”
• UK then starts playing catch-up until halftime so that they are only down by two to four points.
• They open the second half with a little better defense but still no offense.
• Fall down by 12-16 points once again.
• I declare the game over and threaten to change the channel.
• UK starts the comeback.
• Randolph/Ramel/Joe hit some shots and bring it back to four to six points.
• Right on schedule when UK starts closing the gap, the other team catches fire.
• Kentucky’s defense turns it up a notch just enough to make you feel like there’s a chance to pull out the W.
• Jodie/Ramel/Joe start turning over the ball.

Tubby actually looks like he’s done. He really doesn’t look like he was into this game. Maybe John Clay or someone who was actually at the game could have a little more insight into this point. That’s just the way it felt watching it on tv.

Sign in the crowd at Alabama. Very creative and very hilarious.

This is the closest I have come to changing the Nahhh to an Eeeeh. It was also the most aggravated I have been since I watched the UK v Ohio football game a couple of years ago. Even down by four with 2 minutes to go I didn’t have much hope for pulling out a win. That is a very unusual feeling for me regarding the basketball team. As a matter of fact, it’s one of the only times I have felt like there was no chance. Tack another L up on the board simply because they couldn’t manage to play consistently for any extended period of time. Couple of notes in bullet form and in no particular order.

- Jodie Meeks (still!) can not pass the ball.
- Backdoor cut for layup #1. Damn, can’t let that happen.
- Joe Crawford is a frickin’ basketball chameleon, alternating between scrub and stud.
- Please stop trying to pass the ball to Woo in the lane.
- Alan Cutler is in Knoxville can’t wait to see how he wraps this up (I admit I’m obsessed).
- Backdoor cut for layup #214. Shoot me in the face.

My feeling pretty much from here on out is that if you don’t like Tubby, and you have every right to have that feeling, that you have to root AGAINST Kentucky in the remaining games. Tubby will not be fired for simply going .500 the rest of the way. If you really want change in the captain’s chair (and in your mind) have the best interest of the program at heart, you should be hoping to finish off this season 0-7 and then crash and burn in the SEC tourney.

At that point you are looking at an 18-13 team with only a marginal shot at making the big tournament. So what do you say? Are you willing to admit that you hope that’s what happens?

Many Thanks to FireRich.com’s own Hefty Lefty for the screencap.

So are you ready for some Alan Cutler snarkyness? If you’re not, well to bad. Some sites would call this type of behavior douchebaggery, but you won’t find that kind of negativity on this site. No sir. We will stick with snarkyness. Have a look. Go ahead, it won’t hurt, it’s a really short clip.

Where do you get your Wildcat news? I have a list of sites that I visit regularly to keep up with whats going in the world of Wildcat sports. Here’s a compendium of sites from around the internets. Why would we want to show you links to all these other UK sites? Think of us like that insurance company that gives you three other competitors quotes and lets you choose the best one. We know you will be back.

I originally had a huge list, but I decided to split them up into different categories. These are really in no particular order. Up first:

Blogs
Aaron’s UK Basketball Blog - You won’t find any articles or commentary on this site. The guy (Aaron) just compiles most (if not all) the mainstream stories concerning just the basketball team. He’s pretty good about getting up the latest and greatest info, except anything from your favorite site, firetubby.com. Come on Aaron how bout some link love!

Sports Talk on Kentucky Sports Radio - This site is probably the most popular in the blog category simply judging by the amount of comments their posts get. Also, this site crosses the threshold from fan blog to insider. The man in charge over there, Matt Jones has a radio show in Louisville. He also has “inside sources” and often interviews the football and basketball recruits. This is one site I’m pretty the entire staff of firetubby.com checks every day.

The AOL FanHouse Kentucky Basketball Blog - This is a subsidiary of the AOL NCAA FanHouse blogs and is generally manned by (accused Flordia homer and all around good sport) Ryan Ferguson. Our own Gimel Martinez has had a couple of monumental blog comment battles with him and both lived to talk about it. We all enjoy reading your stuff (agree or not), keep up the great work.

A Sea of Blue - A Sea of Blue is a regularly updated site where you can find interesting commentary. They compile their own “SBN Top 25″ and SEC Player of the Year rankings every week. Good site.

Big Bad Blue Blog - This site is a relative newcomer onto the UK blog scene (since November).

Brett Dawson’s C-J Blog - This site probably falls into the gettin’ paid category but since it’s in blog format I’ll put it here. He is a beat writer for the C-J and has an interesting perspective on things. His “Mother Knows Best?” post about Randolph is pretty funny.

John Clay’s Sidelines Blog - John Clay is a sports columnist for the HL. An excellent feature of his site is that he live blogs every UK football and basketball game. If you haven’t had the chance, you should really check it out. Mr. Clay is also (as far as I know), the first person to send a link our way and he even wrote about firetubby.com in the newspaper. Thanks John!

Damn, I didn’t realize there were this many when I started.

Outside the Huddle - A blog from some of the guys from Lexington radio station Sports Radio 1300 WLXG.

The Wildcat Blog - The Wildcat Blog is a fan blog.

Fire Rich? - firerich.com is the companion site that you see linked over on the side denoted by the picture with Rich Brooks’ head on it. It started with a similar goal as this site. To keep it out of the hands of the football gloom-and-doomers. It is mainly the territory of our managing football editor/firerich.com lead columnist Hefty Lefty. Don’t pass up the opportunity to check out Gimel’s outstanding heckler article. That was also the first link that we ever had Deadspun? Deadspinned? If you don’t understand what that is, don’t worry about it. It’s only a big deal to aspiring bloggers.

And finally…

Fire Tubby? - A mish-mash of a site where you can find anything from a sportscaster eating Wheaties live on air, to a conspiracy about Tubby’s Jacket. We try to update regularly (not counting those month long hiatuses). We don’t get a lot of links from other UK related sites out there I think mainly because people believe it’s another Tubby basher site. (Don’t worry I’ll recap some of those as well. Equal opportunity you know.) If you enjoy what we do around here spread the word and let people in on the joke. Thanks for stopping by. Go Cats!

This is by no means intended to be a complete list. I’m sure there are more out there that you might read. Hell, maybe you have your own site you would like to let us know about. If so, drop us an email or comment because we would like to check it out. This turned out to be a really long post with just the blogs so I’m going to break it up into a couple of posts. Up next: The message boards.

Time to catch up with the weekly standings. The AP poll doesn’t come out until later in the day so I’ll update it when it comes out. update:The AP came out and there was no change from last week. They are effectivley 27th with 106 votes. UK jumped one spot to 24th in the ESPN poll. They were bumped up in both the Sagarin from 9th to 7th and the Pomeroy polls from 14th to 13th. The RPI drops them two spots from 7th to 9th.

There is a three-way tie in the SEC East at second place. Georgia, Vandy, and Kentucky are all 5-2 with steamroller Florida all alone in first at 6-0. Kentucky jumped a spot in scoring in the SEC and dropped a spot in defense.

This is something I noticed a week or so ago when I read about how the GPA of the basketball team was 3.2 for the fall semester. Since then I have had several people bring up this point in a “no wonder we lost to Vandy” type fashion. At the time I didn’t even really give it a second thought and gave the comment a cursory “ha ha, yeah I guess so”. Today during the game Gus Johnson mentioned the GPA and Clark Kellogg said something along the lines of how Tubby must be proud or he’s doing a great job.

My question to you is, do you think most fans equate a smarter (as in book smart) team with less success on the basketball court? I think they do. If you can truly say that you responded to Gus Johnson’s comment today with a “well that’s really good,” then good for you. I suspect most people that have either read or heard the GPA information today probably said “well there’s your problem”.

Admittedly, I struggled mightily in every Economics class that I have ever taken but I have put together a simple graph to display my point.

College teams that struggle in the classroom are often paraded around by the NCAA as being unacceptable. Pair this along with graduation rates and I believe programs are now susceptible to penalties. Kentucky in previous years has appeared on these lists for their low graduation rates and I think Bob Huggins while at Cincy was the standard bearer.

Maybe after a 19 point win isn’t the best time to bring up such a topic, but what are the fans that would like to see Tubby gone willing to trade to get back to the final four. Would you trade three year’s probation for a championship? Would you like to have back C.M. Newton or Larry Ivy under which several NCAA violations occurred?

As always, your opinions and comments are welcomed. Agree or disagree. Let us know.

Whew. Just to show you what a two game losing streak can do to a usually optimistic UK fan (myself), I was nervous with around two minutes to go and a hefty lead that Tubby was taking the “starters” out to soon. Even though the win will be discounted by the “Lofton didn’t play” crowd it was nice to end the game with a sizeable margin in front of a semi-national TV audience. Since Kentucky has performed so poorly in the other nationwide games this one could help with seeding down the road.

As someone that doesn’t go to a lot of the games, I have a couple of questions to those of you that either have better hearing or got to see it in person. Plus, I’m sure some other people are curious as well. What does the triangle, or pyramid that Ramel shows after he makes a shot mean? I know that Woo has his W. Also what was the eRUPPtion Zone chanting at the end of the game. Sounded something like “we want Dwight”.

update: A quick thegoogle search reveals what Ramel’s triangle means via a Jerry Tipton article.

Damn, no midweek game this week. Sucks.

Kentucky has been placed on the box of “The Breakfast of Champions®” cereal. Wheaties paid Collegiate Licensing Company $85,000 for the use of the logo and UK will get an 85% cut of that. Read all about it in the HL. Justin White from LEX18 did a live on-air taste test. Check it out.