All Entries Tagged With: "Kentucky basketball"

Louisville, Kentucky play New Year’s Eve

Basketball schedules are being announced as the opening of the football season nears. Who would have guessed?

The University of Louisville will face Kentucky in the new KFC Yum Center on Dec. 31 at noon.

The announcement coming Thursday from UK.

Now back to football.

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Louisville Bias A Factor In Sypher Jury Selection

Wouldn’t you love to be in the courtroom this week as jury selection begins in the federal trial of Karen Sypher? Hard to believe her attorneys haven’t yet attempted a deal for her alleged attempt to extort $10 million from Rick Pitino.

Sypher relishes the gossip, the headlines, the TV cameras, and her high ranking in Google searches. Why else would she want to put herself and family through the ordeal of a highly publicized trial?

Charles R. Simpson, III, the judge, has released a copy of the questionnaire for potential jurors. He’s apparently concerned about individuals with a bias for University of Louisville sports getting on the jury. All candidates must answer four U of L-related questions:

• Did you or any close family member attend and/or graduate from the University of Louisville?

• Have you or any close family member contributed financially to the U of L within the last five years through gifts, donations, or other financial contribution?

• Do you or close family members hold season tickets or frequently attend any U of L sporting events?

• Have you attended a sporting or other event at the U of L within the last two years?

Funny thing is the judge is a University of Louisville graduate, having obtained his bachelor and law degrees on Belknap Campus. He was also editor of The Cardinal and was on the staff of The Louisville Lawyer. He was named Distinguished Alumnus of the law school in 1999.

With his strong ties to the university, one would conclude that the judge is well-versed in local issues, including the antagonism of many University of Kentucky basketball fans toward Pitino. UK has more than a few fans locally who would be eligible for the jury pool.

Yes, some UK fans are still that bitter. If U of L bias is a factor, then any UK leanings or financial ties should be grounds for immediate dismissal as well.

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What Marquis Teague Really Meant

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Mike Pratt Has His Role Model At Kentucky

[Warning. Laden with sarcasm.]

Looks like things are going to get really interesting in the Bluegrass, with TMZ reporting that the NCAA is aggressively investigating two recent draft picks and two current players on the University of Kentucky basketball team.

Is anyone outside of the UK fan base surprised?

The recent developments have to mystify Mike Pratt, the color announcer and former Kentucky player. A product of the tarnished program, Pratt was requested by the UK administration to look into John Calipari  during the coaching search. His conclusion:

“He told us about the NCAA issues when we talked to him. We were well aware of everything that was going on. Lee (Todd) and Mitch (Barnhart) did a great job laying out what they expected of their coach, and Cal laid out for them his plans on how to run a program … Some jealous people are just going after him but he’s going to be fine …”

Pratt said UK wanted a coach who could handle all aspects of a high-profile coaching job: strategy, recruiting, leadership, motivator, public relations and role model.

Calipari fit the bill perfectly as far as Pratt was concerned at the time. Would anyone be surprised if he still feels the same way today?

John Calipari. Ever the role model.

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Sallie Headed To Louisville

Must be transfer week at the University of Louisville. The best thing is the new arrivals are ready to play right away in football and basketball.

The latest is Roburt Sallie, a 6-foot-5, 190-pound senior basketball guard from Memphis. That’s him at right, adorning the box cover of Xbox’s College Hoops 2K9 — a first for a U of L underclassman (albeit wearing another team’s uniform).

He’s on target to graduate in August, which means he doesn’t have to sit out a season at another school.

Sallie posted career averages of 8.2 points and 2.8 rebounds at Memphis. He shot 43.2 percent from the field, 43.8 percent from the arc and 71 percent from the free throw line in his two seasons. His 43.8 three-point shooting percentage is a school career mark.

The Sacramento native initially attended City College of San Francisco, where he played for one season, before going to Memphis to play for John Calipari, turning down Kentucky and Cincinnati at the time.

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Rerun: Cotton Top Adopts Louisville

In the interest of full disclosure.

Cotton Top was 12 years old at an orphanage in Versailles when he became a University of Louisville devotee. Like the other kids he hated the word orphanage, preferring the “children’s home” descriptor. They especially disliked the bus with the words “Methodist Home” in large bold letters on both sides.

Cotton Top would take an interest in everything Louisville, where the cousins lived. Applying his small allowance toward subscriptions to the daily newspapers, keeping large meticulous scrapbooks of every article about U of L, and faithfully listening to George Walsh or Ed Kallay calling the games on WHAS or WAVE radio. He was more familiar with the city map than most Louisvillians.

As a Louisville fan in Central Kentucky, the skinny kid was often a target, confronted with the not-subtle comments from kids of the UK persuasion during televised U of L games, with TV becoming more available during the teen years. More than once, the aggravation became so intense there was no option other than stepping outside to defend one’s honor.

The activities director would get in on the act occasionally. Once while driving the bus from a youth meeting, he loudly proclaimed from the driver’s seat that the University of Louisville basketball team would never win a national championship.

One still regrets to this day never having had an opportunity to remind him of how wrong he was.

As an adult, Cotton Top would obtain a postgraduate degree from the University of Louisville a decade after graduating from Kentucky Wesleyan and a stint in Vietnam. He would marry a girl with a University of Kentucky degree, happily watching her switch her allegiance to U of L a few years later.

They would be in the crowd while U of L was winning its first national basketball championship in Indianapolis, and again in Dallas six years later, this time with their nine-year-old son. They would see U of L become a top 10 football program, win a BCS  Bowl in Miami, only to endure the Kragthorpe era. Witnessing ground being broken for a new basketball arena and the construction and subsequent expansion of a U of L football stadium were also important milestones.

Cotton Top would  see his Louisville-born son become equally, if not even more, enthusiastic in his support of U of L, as well as enjoy seeing four grandchildren wearing the red and black and a daughter-in-law loving the colors.

He’s better known now as the observer. An incurable Louisville fanatic, unable to understand how any Louisvillian could follow another team. Well-versed in the school’s athletic history, he is occasionally outspoken, sometimes over the top, demanding and never satiated when it comes to U of L. But you probably already knew that.

What’s your story?

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Football Key To Louisville’s Future

Largely left unsaid during the conference realignment debate is how the changes will affect college basketball. The lack of respect for the sport has to be giving some administrators and fans second thoughts in states like Kentucky, Indiana, Kansas, Connecticut, and North Carolina.

The demand for success in those states is so great that some universities will hire basketball coaches with questionable pasts, using unique recruiting approaches, gambling with the reputations of their institutions. Another basketball powerhouse is embroiled in a ticket scalping operation, prompting FBI and IRS investigations.

Fans and administrators, blinded by some success in basketball over the years, may have missed the big picture, overestimating the value of the sport. Maximum prestige, power and profits in college athletic programs are secured with success on the gridiron.

Winning an NCAA title in basketball is nice but it pales in comparison with the impact of capturing a national championship in football.

Tom Jurich, athletic director at the University of Louisville, obviously understands, the importance of football. He made a major misstep in hiring Steve Kragthorpe to oversee football but he followed that up with luring Charlie Strong, quite possibly his best hire ever. If his recruiting prowess is a predictor of future success, that is.

Jurich has largely done all the right things, positioning the university to become a more significant player in college athletics. The laundry list includes upgrading all the non-revenue sports with quality hires and improved facilities, aggressive adherence with Title IX guidelines, admission into a BCS conference, and the expansion of Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium to a capacity of 57,000 seats.

At the same time, he knows the importance of basketball to local fans, taking advantage of the political timing for a new arena and will be moving Rick Pitino’s program to a multi-million-dollar 22,000-seat, state-of-the-art facility. Administrators at traditional football schools have to be shaking their heads at this one.

Jurich, however, recognizes that a good athletic program includes the ability to be competitive in all sports. But growth in football is the most important in terms of national perception. TJ understands and that’s why Louisville is becoming a player in the conference expansion chess game.

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Interesting, the views on conference realignment of Jay Bilas, of ESPN; Jim Boeheim, Syracuse; Gary Williams, Maryland and Jay Wright, Villanova during a recent Coaches for Cancer golf outing. These are all basketball guys, trying hard to be relevant on a subject in which football prevails:

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