Kentucky Wildcat 5 things to know for Wednesday: Shabaka Lands edition
By Paul Jordan
Good morning all, and welcome to the WBN’s retooled version of the “Hot Links” . These things may not necessarily be links, but I will go over five things you need to know to get your day started. Today’s first topic is not really a link, but a min discussion of the man known as Shabaka Lands. With two new stories attempting heat on my Kentucky Wildcats, I decided to help through a little heat on our hated rivals to the East, the Dirty Birds.
As reported yesterday on KSR, there are lots of questions now being asked about Shabaka Lands and this is going to be a story soon. Who is Shabaka Lands, you ask? Lands is the former assistant high school coach of Marquis Teague at Pike High School in Indianapolis. Lands was hired by Rick Pitino and the Dirty Birds to the Louisville staff in anticipation of Marquis Teague joining the Cardinals. Teague, of course, never became a Cardinal, and Lands ended up getting fired by the Cardinals (as reported by John Clay), making it evident that Lands was hired to create a recruiting advantage where none existed previously.
While technically, this is not a violation when it occurred, there soon will be a rule against it. So it appears the Cardinals did not technically break any rules, lots of people are going to be casting aspersions towards the whole Louisville situation and maybe sniffing around the Tim Fuller situation. In other words, Pitino is bringing the media heat on himself. We’ll see what Pat Forde has to say about it.
Last years motto of the Wildcat’s was “refuse to lose”. Well, from the sounds of John Calipari, the early season motto of the Wildcats may be “Expect to lose”. As he is a master at doing, Cal is once again deflecting expectations and saying that Kentucky will lose early this season, due to overscheduling on his part. The general tone of Calipari seems to indicate that he may think that Enes Kanter may miss a few early games as well. You would think that a team with Kanter should be able to go on an early season tear.
Our good friend John Clay is reporting that Kentucky Football fans are not very happy with UK defensive coordinator Steve Brown and that the heat is officially on the mustached one. Turns out that UK’s defensive co-ordinator taking the heat seems to be an annual rite of fall. All I’m saying is that Brown better have a plan for Steve Spurrier and Marcus Lattimore this weekend.
OK, enough negativity for today. Let’s get this edition of “5 things to know” off on a positive note. Our good friend Ken Howlett of www.aseaofblue.com also pinch hits over at CoachCal.com and he has a follow up story on Kevin Massey. Massey is the high school student from Indianapolis who has an inoperable brain tumor. Upon hearing about this, John Calipari took a trek to Hoosier country and visited with Massey, who is a big UK fan. Now that the cameras are gone, Coach Cal proves his is the real deal and and not a photo op type of guy and he has kept up a special relationship with Massey and Ken is happy to note that Massey has made remarkable progress. Ken always does a great job no matter he writes, and this is a good read for your Wednesday.
Larry Vaught is reporting on former Wildcat Ramon Harris. Harris recently had a tryout for the Houston Rockets and is hoping to join the Rockets developmental league team this year.
One a different note from Vaught’s story, this is course, is starting to be a trend for the Wildcats: multiple Cats on the same NBA team. Of course, Houston has Patrick Patterson and Chuck Hayes. We also know that DeMarus Cousins is with the Kings, and former Cat Joe Crawford is trying to make the Kings. Soon every NBA team will have two Wildcats each. Sounds good to me.
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