This Saturday brings an opportunity that you normally only have during football season. It’s the opportunity for a daylong tailgate, but this time it’s UK basketball. We’re shooting for a record crowd for ESPN Gameday and the tickets to see the inmates ERRR.. Volunteers play the Wildcats are a hotter ticket than UofL earlier in the season. I’ll be there making an attempt to broadcast some of the event’s from my phone, so stay tuned for that ; ).
Tennessee comes to Lexington as the 12[SUP]th[/SUP] ranked team in the country. Playing in Rupp should be enough to get our guys out of the gates early, but it’s a conference game and anything can happen. Everyone should know how much we hate UT, especially those fans from the Southeastern part of the state who live right next door to Rikers Island ERRR…Knoxville. Here’s a video that has become the official “I Hate TN” video thanks to sites like KSR and others.
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Now back to basketball…
Scotty Hopson tweeted (a twitter post) that he wasn’t feeling well and wasn’t sure if he would be able to play. Hopson is tied with Chism as the leading scorer and three-point shooter for the Volunteers. If Hopson doesn’t play, UT will have to get their scoring from Chism on the inside. That’s a definite advantage for UK. Well, only if we keep our heads on straight and we don’t do anything stupid.
Let’s take a look at the four factors of winning and what the contributions from the UT prison yard ERRR…roster looks like….
As usual, UK leads in all categories except for turnovers. Offensive rebounding has made up for this deficiency all year long and I would expect tonight to be the same.
The worst case scenario for UK is that UT gets hot from behind the three-point line. With six players shooting over thirty percent, this could be a defensive nightmare if everyone was knocking down the three.
I picked John Wall to lead the way against Alabama and tonight I’m picking Patrick Patterson. Yeah, I know there’s Boogie and all the rest of the usual suspects, but I have a feeling that Patterson is on the verge of having a breakout game and his experience and leadership will play huge dividends against an opponent like UT.
Here are the pre-game interviews in case you missed them….
[SIZE=3]
[B]John Calipari – Part 1[/B][/SIZE]
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[SIZE=3][B]John Calipari – Part 2[/B][/SIZE]
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[SIZE=3][B]Daniel Orton[/B][/SIZE]
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[SIZE=3][B]Darius Miller[/B][/SIZE]
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