Kentucky Wildcats 5 for Thursday: Mark your calendars for Kentucky Wildcats vs Kansas Jayhawks edition
By Paul Jordan
It’s true that in the past, college basketball has lacked fanfare when tipping off it’s basketball season. Well, that apparently is a thing of the past as starting next season, Kentucky will be taking part in the Champions Classic, a made for ESPN basketball event. Over the next three season, the Kentucky Wildcats, Kansas Jayhawks, Duke Blue Devils, and Michigan State Spartans will play in neutral arenas and face each other.
Next year, Kentucky will face Kansas in Madison Square Garden. In 2012, the Wildcats will face Duke in Atlanta and it will be UK/Michigan State in Chicago in 2013.
Excited yet?
If you watched Kentucky’s 72-58 win over Notre Dame last night, you obviously saw John Calipari do as much on the sideline coaching as he has done over the past two seasons at Kentucky. It was a big win for the Cats as they knocked off a very solid and unbeaten ranked team. And it appears UK gets up for the big games. So far this season, UK is 2-0 against teams ranked when they played them, and 4-2 against unranked teams. A Sea of Blue has more post game speculation.
Over the past several days on the site, we have had a spirited nerd fight discussion in our comments sect on Greg’s Monday story and it appears that some UK fans do not like the prospect of having a host of one and done players every year. Myself, I really don’t have a dog in this fight as I want Kentucky to get the best players available, regardless of their one and done tendencies. But it appears the NBA age restriction debate is going to be a key part of the NBA’s new labor deal.
It’s no secret that David Stern wants to raise the age limit to 20. The player association has made no secret of the fact that they want to abolish the age restriction altogether and this could be one of the key elements that could lead to a possible NBA lockout next year. The player’s union is very adamant about eliminating the restriction;
"The players have always been philosophically opposed to [the age limit]. The vast majority of players feel a player should have the right to make a living. If he has the talent and wants to make money to help his family, he should have that right. It’s just a matter of principle."
This weekend is going to be a big recruiting weekend for the basketball Wildcats as the top remaining prospect in the 2011 class, DeAndre Daniels will be visiting UK this weekend. Daniels has visited Kentucky and Oregon in the past week or so and would be a great addition to the 2011 class. There is no real indication as to when Daniels may make his decision, but it’s good to see that Kentucky is in the mix.
Speaking of big decisions, Howard Stern finally made his big decision this morning and he will …… be staying at Sirius for the next five years. I know that Howard may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it will make my mornings a bit easier the next five years.
But that is not really my fifth item ….. tonight, Andrew Hardison will post his last article for the Wildcat Blue Nation. As is the life of bloggers, real life concerns too often get in the way of writing for free on the internet so we bid him a grateful goodbye for his year plus of contributions on the site. Andrew was the first person that I approached about writing for free on this site and he was one of the main forces in keeping this site going the first year or so. He may still make guest appearances from time to time, but from all of here at the WBN, we thank Andrew for his contribution and wish him the best of luck.
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