Kentucky And Louisville: Since the last battle

Kentucky and Louisville met in what may be the hottest in-state rivalry in the country in January of last season in Rupp Arena and definitely brought a whole new heat to the rivalry after the Jared Swopshire and DeMarcus Cousins incident, where Cousins and Swopshire literally put on the best UFC fight I have seen on a basketball court. Kentucky overcame the early emotions flaring and pulled out the win, but what has happened since then?

After the game is over and the smoke is cleared both teams move on to their own paths, own conferences but sometimes, especially this past summer, their paths cross outside of the basketball court.

Oh…Where to start little brother…

After the game:

Last year after the Cats and the Cards faced off, Kentucky went on to finish the SEC with two losses and make it to the Elite 8 with a poor shooting performance was knocked out of the tournament.

Louisville?

They lost to California after getting a nine seed in the NCAA tournament after going 11-7 in the Big East conference.

Before the tournament though, there were rumors flying that Kentucky and Louisville’s paths may have met up again in the second round and it almost did if Louisville could have gotten past their eight seed and they were in another bracket than Kentucky but there was a possibility.

After the season was over, Kentucky lost a ton of talent to the NBA draft when John Wall went first over all to the Washington Wizards and then four other Wildcats followed behind him in the first round. All of the Wildcats are still with their NBA teams barring Daniel Orton who got sent down to the d-league and now is having surgery on his knee and Patrick Patterson went to the d-league but then got called back up.

Louisville?

I have no clue how or why but Samardo Samuels decided that he was on another level and just too good for Louisville because he signed an agent and declared for the draft. He played on the Bulls summer league team and did alright and now somehow he found a deal with the Cav’s where he made about 2.3 million dollars, but soon he got sent to the d-league which isn’t a surprise at all.

And you wonder why Kentucky fans call Louisville “little brother”?

Recruiting

After losing a number one recruiting class and Patrick Patterson to the NBA what did Kentucky do? Sign the number one recruiting class in 2010 and brought in names like Brandon Knight, Doron Lamb, Stacy Poole and Enes Kanter.

Louisville?

They pulled off the impressive recruiting coup of Gorgui Dieng, Russ Smith and Elisha Justice.

Yawn.

THEN Louisville fans began crowing about their 2011 class and how it was going to be better than Kentucky. Marquis Teague was supposed to be a Cardinal and Rick Pitino pulled out all the stops to try and get him at Kentucky, even before John Calipari was at Kentucky. Pitino hired a coach close to Teague and everything, but then everything went haywire for the Cards because low and behold…

Teague inked with the Cats and then came a de-commitment from four star big man Michael Chandler who had already gave a verbal to Louisville, not anymore. By the way he was considering Kentucky for a long time and even though he won’t play for the Cats, his recruitment was followed closely by big blue nation.

But little brother still had hope.

Quincy Miller who is a highly touted forward and one of the best in his 2011 class looked to be a Kentucky lock. He was at games last season wearing Kentucky Blue, down on the court hugging coaches and players, he is from John Wall’s high school, he was doing the John Wall dance and then all of a sudden Kentucky pulled the trigger on Kyle Wiltjer and kind of left Miller high and dry. He had an offer from Kentucky but you don’t leave Calipari hanging.

Louisville fans got all excited when Miller then considered the Cards for some time and was at the Louisville and Kentucky football game, throwing up the “L” as the Kentucky team ran out where he was standing. It was also reported that he was shooting daggers at Calipari and staring him down the whole time as Calipari was doing some TV interviews near where Miller was sitting.

Come signing day the whole thing came crashing down as Quincy Miller and another recruit Louisville thought they had wrapped up in Deuce Bello chose BAYLOR over little brother.

I laughed.

There would be more recruiting wars to come for the Wildcats and Cardinals, the more interesting one coming later, but the recruitment of one of the few five stars recruits coming out of Kentucky, Chane Behanan who is a power forward out of Bowling Green.

Instantly Behanan drew attention from coaches all around and more important the one school that matters in the state of Kentucky, UK. Although Kentucky was very interested in Behanan and as fans we always love having in state kids come in and wear the blue and white, we left Behanan high and dry with the Wiltjer commitment, leaving the dirty Cards to actually pick up a decent commitment and one to crow about to all the UK fans.

Louisville fans can be cute at how relevant they think they are.

The most intriguing recruiting battle came over talented but undersized guard Elisha Justice. He made some noise all year and is an in state kid from Shelby Valley who caught the eye of Pitino early with his ability to take over games and a calm poise on the court where he doesn’t force the action but makes things happen with his skill set.

Pitino talked Justice into a “soft commitment” and while Justice was committed to Louisville there were whispers that if another offer came up then Justice would look into it and sure enough Calipari called Mr. Kentucky basketball. They talked on the phone and afterwards it was reported that Calipari said he would offer Justice a scholarship if he de-committed from Louisville, but Justice wanted a four year scholarship which Calipari couldn’t guarantee so Justice ended up at Louisville.

And forever will be “little brother”.

Summer Lovin’

Although the Rick Pitino and Karen Sypher trial has nothing to do with Kentucky fans it will forever give Cat fans some ammo for insults for the rest of Pitino’s career. I don’t want to go into details because they are rather nasty and I don’t want those images in my head again after following the trial so closely this summer. The trial happened this summer and forever will give Cat’s fans jokes about Pitino’s “15 seconds of fame.”

The Football game

Since last season’s battle between the Cat’s and Card’s on the basketball court they went at it on the gridiron as well. I know, this is about the basketball game but the football game has an effect on the basketball game…

If you are into curses and conspiracies and big foot and that sort of thing.

It’s a bit weird though, since Kentucky and Louisville started playing one another every year in football consistently in 1994 every single year, whichever team won the football game lost the basketball game except on three occasions, 2003, 2007 and last season. But I’m sure you don’t believe in all that stuff, neither do I because it’s a fact that we own the state now. Kentucky won the football game and I am sure the
y will win the basketball game too.

Whether it’s off the court or on the court, beating the Cardinals in every way possible just makes this rivalry sweeter and it’ll continue Friday when we beat the Card’s for the first time in the Yum! Center (don’t even get me started on that) and continue to own little brother.

P.S We turned Freedom Hall blue.

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