Kentucky Wildcats Farmers Almanac for Saturuday (2/12/11)

Well its game day in the barn me and Richie are ready so let’s to it.

The Cats are a one point underdog in today’s matchup but that should not stop our Cats from pulling out a win. The reason for me saying this is the fact that Vanderbilt did play on Thursday, this season in SEC play that has been matched with a Thurs-Sat schedule that team has only pulled out a win twice. Vanderbilt has been one of the five schools who have already fallen victim to this combo once this season hopefully the streak will continue.

It looks like Coach Cal is going into the T-shirt business! Why is that you ask? Well every SEC school that has played the Cats at home have had an (insert color) out. It looks like Vanderbilt is falling in line having a black out for today’s game and will be giving away free T-shirts as is tradition and why Cal made this comment. “I’m going to get into the T-shirt business is what I’m going to get into.” It looks like Vandy is trying to do anything to excite the boring crowd in the barn today.

The key to victory for today’s game will be DeAndre Liggins. He had best bring his best defensive game today as he will be matched up against John Jenkins, Vandy’s leading scorer. He inserts fear into Vanderbilt head coach Kevin Stallings.

“He’s got a sense for what good defenders do,” he said of Liggins. “The really good defenders naturally gravitate to the right positions, kind of like really good scorers. Really good scorers sort of navigate themselves to where they’re supposed to be, and that’s what really good defenders do. And he just naturally ends up in the position where he’s supposed to be in.”

He also went on to call Liggins the best defender in the SEC. Liggins is coming off his best performance all season if he can bring his shooting ability that he showed against Tennessee on Tuesday to Nashville today he will be a forced to be reckoned with and will lead the Cats to victory.

In case you haven’t had the chance to listen to both coaches pregame interviews here they are for you.

Looks like President Lee Todd has finally taken time out of his busy schedule to speak with WKYT about his contract extension for Mitch Barnhart. He mentioned in the interview that his two proudest moments during his tenure at Kentucky was one hiring Barnhart and the second was keeping Rich Brooks. While several people including me think it is the schools next president that should have been in control of the extension Todd felt it was his place to do so. When ask about the response to him giving out the extra years and the extra cash he said.

“Actually, you know it’s been mostly positive,” Dr. Todd s went on to say. “There will always be negativism. That’s something I have learned in this job, that you can’t make everyone happy and you can’t worry about a lot of them who aren’t happy, because they’ll still find something to pick at anyway.”

It looks like he also had a few regrets in his tenure here at Kentucky, that also brought a disagreement between him and Barnhart. It looks like Barnhart wanted to pursue Coach Cal following the leaving of former coach Tubby Smith. But Todd pushed for the Billy Clyde show to be brought to town.

“I still remember the excitement right here in this auditorium, when we hired him for us, the first day. He was a rockstar,” Dr. Todd continued by saying. “Everybody thought he was great. He had done well where he was before. People say Mitch didn’t do enough of a background check. They don’t know all the coaches Mitch interviewed for that job.”

Well it turns out one of the coaches Mitch did interview is our beloved Coach Cal, but at the time Todd wasn’t having that.

“To be perfectly honest with that, that was a time where Mitch probably would have hired Calipari, but I didn’t want to do that at that time, because it was back then when these students were playing basketball that went to, what I call, bogus high schools. So we weren’t brining those students in from those schools, but there were some in John’s case,” Dr. Todd said.

This looks like he regrets signing away two of the longest years of the modern
Kentucky fans lifetime and a year without a trip to the NCAA tournament. But hey, at least he does agree with Coach Cal that Rupp Arena doesn’t need remodeled that instead the school just needs its own facility. I feel he agrees to continue bringing in top of the line recruits that you have to bring in top of the line facilities and as of right now Kentucky doesn’t have that.

“Rupp’s been a great place. It’s got a reputation that I’ve enjoyed during this period of time, but it is time to look at it. We’ve just got to keep our minds open and get it done,” he said.

It looks like the report card is in for the fall semester of 2010 and Kentucky has been ranked the second of the SEC in academics. Here is a list of the honored players. I feel this is an important achievement for the school and reminds the fans that while yes these are athletes but they are students first. This makes the school look great and brings more to the table then bringing in top of the line athletes it also brings in top of the line students.

Well guys it