Kentucky Wildcat's 5 for Thursday: Wall, Cousins, and Bledsoe reunited for one night

Mark your calendar for Friday night, February the 18th.  That night only, John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, and Eric Bledsoe will be reunited for one night only in the T-Mobile Rookie Challenge.  The annual game is held as part of the NBA All Star weekend and has a team of rookie all stars compete against a team of second year all stars.  The game has been in it’s “Rookies vs Sophomores” format since 2000 and the rookies have their work cut out for them, winning the event just three times.

There is lots of speculation right now about what is going to happen with the NBA and one of the sticking points is the NBA age limit.  Tony Barbee, head coach of Auburn, is one of the coaches that believe that the age limit will be abolished soon, resulting in the preps to pros phenomenon heating up once again.  And as expected, it does not make the college coaches job any easier:

“A lot of times you can waste a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of resources recruiting that young man,” Barbee said. “At least now if you get him, you know you’ll at least have him for one year, which is better than having to put all that time and effort into that young man and not get him at all. That’s a lot of time wasted you could have spent on someone else.”

Andre Woodson is returning to the Wildcats.  According to Kent Spencer, he has accepted a position as a graduate assistant and will be working with the quarterbacks.  Personally, I think this is very good news for Morgan Newton.

Even with the near misses of Jon Davis and Lamar Dawson, Kentucky’s 2011 football recruiting class received a grade of “B-” on the SEC, which actually put them in a virtual tie for 8th in the SEC with South Carolina, Mississippi , and Mississippi State.  Technically, the Wildcats were listed as tenth, but received the same letter grade as the other schools.  And believe it or not, the top letter grade given in the SEC was for an “A” which in some way shows that we are gradually closing the talent gap.  I know we say this every year, but a journey of a thousand mile begins with a single step … and at this point, I would say we are at about mile 500. 

Yes, I know it’s basketball season and the Cats have a big game against Florida on Saturday.  To be honest, I am still in an Ole Miss funk and did not want to link a lot of stories stating the obvious and sometimes having a negative slant.  But I would be flogged if I did not include on story so here goes.  Coach Cal is looking for a few tough men.  Granted, don’t get me wrong, I am as Blue as ever, but I am a bit numb of all the stories repeating the same theme when we know all the Cats need to do is go work on Saturday. 

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