Kentucky Wildcats 5 for Tuesday: The "Calipari Effect on 2011's recruiting" Edition
By Paul Jordan
We all know that John Calipari has dominated the recruiting landscape since he arrived in Lexington, but now there is an official name for the effect he has had. Dave Telep of ESPN terms it “The Calipari Effect” and to break it down for you, here is what he means by that:
"This season, the SEC added four top-10 recruits and eight players in the top 25 of the ESPNU 100. That’s the most of any league in America and Kentucky is a driving force behind the numbers. The Wildcats have three of the top six players, and four of the top 16. In fact, in the two years prior to John Calipari’s arrival, the league signed just four top-10 players and seven top-25 prospects. During the three years Calipari has been in the SEC, the league has 11 top-10 prospects and 19 top-25 players. Basically an entire league has stepped up its game in response to UK’s recruiting success"
Ready for some early season smack to talk to your favorite Vols fan? How about this one? Tennessee lost their last exhibition game to Division 2 Indianapolis 79-64 in Knoxville. Meanwhile down at Auburn, Tony Barbee’s (who recently said he was coming after Calipari’s neck) team also lost to D2 Columbus State 54-52. Hey Tony, Calipari will start worrying when you dust off the D2 teams, okay?
Over at A Sea of Blue, Ken Howlett has his list of “Twenty Guarantees” for the upcoming NCAA basketball season. Some I agree with, some I don’t, but that is what we all love about preseason lists.
Need a reason to hate future Dookie Austin Rivers? Well it seems that he is embroiled in his very own “Twitter-gate” and it involves Indiana coach Tom Crean. Yesterday, the following tweet was sent out from Austin River’s twitter account:
Sometimes I wonder why my older brother went to Indiana! Cause tom Creme is a joke! My bro deserves more respect from that dude!
Rivers then sent out a series of tweets saying that his Twitter had been hacked and apologized for the comments. However an Indiana website said that the offending tweet came from River’s Iphone. Seems kind of odd that of all of River’s tweets just one was fraudulent, but who needs another reason to hate the Dookies? Although to be fair, you would thing Rivers would get Crean’s name right since Indiana recruited him.
Finally today, Bleed Blue Kentucky has a look at the 2011 football schedule. Kentucky gets no breaks as Auburn is off the schedule and is replaced by a road trip to LSU. The rest of the SEC opponents are the same, but the location of the games are reversed. The Cats start their season with a neutral site game vs Western Kentucky and then home games against Central Michigan, Louisville, and Florida. Kentucky also has a late season home game against Jacksonville State, the same team that beat Ole Miss earlier this year.
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