Which rival is UK's biggest??? The Tournament starts now
By Staff
Actually today was a really bad day for a couple of UK rivals but I will go into that in just a bit, but first I have to introduce the UK Rivals Tournament.
I know that Calipari recently stated UK fans should not put as much emphasis on the Cardinals game and kind of further relegated them to little brother status even more (if that is even possible) but all of this got me thinking. Who really is UK’s number #1 rivalry? I know for me, the answer is FLORIDA because duh, I live here. I know that people on the UK/UT border swear their vengeance upon the Vols and if you are near the Indiana border, forget about it. But who is the most hated?
I took it upon myself to compile a tournament of 16 of UK’s biggest “rivals” and they will battle it out in the court of public opinion through the first part of September to see who is truly the most hated of all. Do keep in mind, I tried to go with interesting matchups and I will give my reasons for including the teams in the tournament when I introduce the matchup and poll. I am sure I left some teams out, and maybe they can be included in future polls.
The voting for the first matchup starts now and goes through midnight Friday. Use the box at the right to vote and CLICK HERE for the whole tournament matchup. Let’s take a look at the first matchup in the 2009 Rivals tournament:
1. LOUISVILLE CARDINALS
Simply by virtue of being 70 miles away from Lexington and having UK’s past coach, the Cardinals enter the tournament as the number 1 seed. The competitions on the field have been as fierce as the competition between Calipari and Pitino. UK has won the last two football games, but UL leads the last 5 football games 3-2. Likewise in hoops, the Cards have won the last two basketball games, but UK has won three of the last 5. This year, both the basketball and football games will be in Lexington and the Rupp encounter in basketball will be the game of the year.
16. ALABAMA CRIMSON TIDE
The two teams will be forever linked by their common football coach Bill Curry and some guy name Paul “Bear” Bryant. UK and Alabama have played twice in football over the last five years, both of them Bama wins. Bama rolled over UK 45-17 in 2004 but UK came oh so close to pulling off an upset for the ages last year, barely losing 17-14 at Alabama. Bama has superstar coach Nick Saban coming to Lexington this year and the Wildcats are hoping for some Commonwealth magic. In hoops, UK has gone 5-2 against Alabama in the last 5 years and bounced them from the SEC Tourney in 2006 and 2007. While Alabama stand no chance of pulling off this upset, the mere memory of Wimp Sanderson should get the Tide some votes.
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Sometime around 11:30AM EST tomorrow, we should see the debut of Calipari’s new website. There is a huge clock breathlessly counting down the minutes until http://www.coachcal.com/ debuts.
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Recent news out of Tennessee have Bruce Pearl “devastated” about the recent decommitment of Josh Selby. Tennessee Assistant Tony Jones stopped short of casting aspersions but said “something smells” about the decommitment. Recent speculation have pointed Selby towards both UK and Oregon for a couple of reasons: both are Nike schools and both have connections with WorldWideWes. Both Calipari and Oregon assistant Kenny Payne are tight with Wes, but Calipari has not commented on Selby that I know of and from all accounts, UK really had no contact with Selby when he was committed at UT.
Calipari’s “ex” Memphis suffered the sting of another recruit bolting. And this time, Calipari can NOT be blamed for it IN ANY WAY. ***** Latavious Williams, who was wunderkid Josh Pastner’s first big recruit at Memphis is bolting for China to get paid to play ball. Once again for my Memphis friends, Calipari was NOT responsible for this, but somehow I think that Geoff Calkins and Dan Wolken are pouring through Calipari’s garbage at this point looking for takeout Chinese food containers which in their mind, would implicate Cal in something nefarious. Remember Calipari did spend a whole week in China earlier this summer. Hrmmmmmmm.
Have a great humpday and don’t forget to vote in the Rivals poll!
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