The kids are alright….
By Staff
While Wildcat fans got over the “shock and awe” of Jodie Meeks decision to go pro, a lot of basketball prognosticators have been talking and even the haters in the media have gotten around to showing Calipari and the Cats a little bit of pre-season love.
Joe Lunardi, “Mr Bracketology” is putting the Cats in a Number 1 seed in March Madness next year. His top 4 seeds were Kansas, Texas, Michigan State, and the Cats. The Cats would have the number one seed in the South regionals (in Houston) and would play the Ralph Willard-less Holy Cross team in the first round, followed by the Clemson/Syracuse winner. The Cal Bears would be next, followed by either Duke or Tennessee to advance to the Final 4. The Ville is represented as a 4 seed and the Gators make a return to the Big Dance as a 10 seed.
Scoutingthesports.com listed UK as the number 1 team in the country. Granted, this was released before Meeks decided to leave but in their rankings, they said that the return of Meeks “really has little impact” on the decision to make UK number 1 and said that the return “really does not matter at this point”. In a way, this kind of thinking makes sense. UK suffered a loss of Meeks and gained Wall, Cousins, Dodson, Bledsoe, Hood, Orton, and Calipari. It makes that little 22 win NIT team worthy of the number 1 ranking.
Andy Katz of ESPN shows a little restraint, ranking UK 7th but he admits that that may be a little too low. Katz said that he wants to see the Cats mature before they are “anointed“. It’s a viable point and he foresees a tough UK/UT battle for the SEC East, ranking the Vols 8th. Missing from Katz’s top 25 were the hated Louisville Cardinals.
Even Rick Pitino book writing buddy Pat Forde of ESPN shows some love for UK, ranking them 6th, saying that everything is better for UK this year, even “Better coaching with John Calipari“. The loss of Meeks did drop UK from 2nd to 6th in his view though. Forde did rank just 10 teams but put the Ville in his “Bakers dozen” of teams to watch.
Gary Parrish of CBSsports said he was going to have UK his number 1 team had Meeks stayed. Instead, he dropped the Cats all the way … to number 2. He anticipates Bill Self and Calipari going at it for the national title 2 out of 3 years.
Mike Miller of NBCsports.com has pencilled UK in at a solid number 3, but notes that if the freshmen play like freshmen, UK won’t even be the best team in the SEC. A lot of pressure on Wall and company, but yet someone else thinks they are up to the task.
Even Jeff Goodman over at Foxsports.com dropped the Cats all the way to number 2 and said the Cats are so loaded that Daniel Orton may not see any meaningful minutes next year.
So it goes on and on. Sportswriters like Kentucky again. They really like UK again. Calipari has done the easy part, assembling the team. There is still lots of work to do but looking at where were are now as compared to oh, March 28 or so and it is amazing that we have advanced since then.
Other small bit of UK basketball news. Darius Miller was named to the US Mens 19 and under roster, beating out players like Florida’s highly recruited Kenny Boynton. Fantastic job for Darius as he is one of the players in the mix to replace Meek’s scoring.
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