Steve Lavin will not be on the sidelines for Kentucky vs St. Johns Thursday
By Paul Jordan
I admit, we give opposing teams and coaches a lot of grief at times here at the WBN, but even snarky bloggers like myself are rooting for St. John’s coach Steve Lavin. Lavin has been declared “cancer free” after a seven hour prostate cancer surgery on October 6. Unfortunately, he tried to return to coaching too long and found himself zapped of strength. As a result, he will continue to step away and will not coach versus Kentucky on December 1. Lavin is performing some coaches duties such as taking notes during practice and here’s hoping we see him on the sidelines soon:
"“The good news is being cancer free,” Lavin said. “That was the objective of the surgery. But it would not be prudent at this juncture to return to the sidelines and jeopardize my long term health. It’s not fair to the team if I coach in games when not yet having the necessary strength for competing at the highest level of college basketball.”"
When Dajuan Coleman committed to the Syracuse Orange in the early signing period, John Calipari’s Wildcats were the second choice. Now with all the mess surrounding the Orange and coach Jim Boeheim, could Coleman be on the fence on his commitment? Apparently Coleman is “going to wait and see how things play out” before deciding to honor his commitment. It’s a bad situation all around and I wish the allegations were not true, but the recent audio tape seems to be pretty damning. And unfortunately that affects kids like Coleman as well, who may have to open his recruitment and go through all that stress again.
I have been back from Lexington for about 36 hours and I have yet to mention Shabazz Muhammad yet. Shame on me. It appears that the evil Dookies and Coach Ratface are swarming their way into the Muhammad sweepstakes and are now one of the top four teams pursuing the big man. As of now, it seems that Shabazz has a final four of Kentucky, Duke, UNLV, and UCLA. Muhammad’s dad checked out Duke and UCLA at the Maui Classic recently and then UNLV made headlines by upsetting #1 North Carolina. Seems like it’s time for UK to make a statement now by beating UNC in Rupp on Saturday.
Meanwhile, it also appears that Duke is getting more involved with the Harrison twins as well.
In other recruiting news, John Calipari watched Anthony Bennett score 16 points and pull down 21 boards in a game in Lexington. Then Bennett made an unofficial visit to the Kentucky campus on Saturday. Hopefully he got to take in the UK/Tennessee game and see UK fans at their best.
John Clay has some more stats and love from Kentucky’s win over Tennessee on Saturday. Yes, we are still talking about it. It seems that for Kentucky to win, the magic number is 200 yards on the ground. Kentucky is 11-0 the last 11 times they have rushed for over 200 yards in a game dating back to 2009. Kentucky rushed 56 times for 202 yards Saturday in a game you may have heard a little something about.
If you are headed to the Kentucky/UNC game on Saturday, prepare to get there early, sit in your seat, smile, and say “Cheese”. Something called UKFanCam will be snapping a picture of Rupp Arena 18 minutes before tipoff and if you are seated, this offers undeniable proof you were at the game:
"This high-definition image will capture Rupp Arena in its entirety, and the image takes between 5-7 minutes to shoot. Once rendered, fans will be able to “step inside” the 360 gigapixel image and look around, as if they were standing on the court for a frozen moment of time.The resolution of 5 billion pixels is so high that fans will be able to zoom in to find themselves or friends, “tag” themselves in the photo, and share via email, Facebook and Twitter. Fans can even cruise around the arena to see who else was in the stands."