Could Jarnell Stokes be a mid-year addition to the Kentucky Wildcats?
By Paul Jordan
One of the biggest targets in 2012, Jarnell Stokes may be graduating from high school soon and enrolling in college in January and will be eligible to play in less than a month. Stokes is currently ranked as the 5th best PF in the 2012 class by Rivals and the 11th best player over all. Stokes, who is an honor student, seems to have a few options:
“I’ve set myself up to go to college midyear. I really don’t know yet, but that’s definitely an option. I have other options that me and my dad don’t want to reveal. I walk by faith and not by sight, so I’m just waiting on God to give me the word on what’s my next option.”
Stokes is looking at Kentucky, Memphis, Arkansas, Florida, Connecticut, and Tennessee although some reports have his father saying that just Arkansas, Florida, UConn, and Tennessee have open scholarships available for his son, but apparently Memphis can offer an academic scholarship and have him walk on for the semester. I would think that Kentucky has Stacey Poole’s scholarship available, but I am not an expert on how that would work.
To be honest, I am on the fence about Stokes joining mid year. Kentucky is already adding Twany Beckham to the lineup in late December and I don’t know how adding an extra body can affect the chemistry and lineup of the team. On the other hand, Stokes has to be considered a top target for the 2012 class. We will have to see how this plays out.
For the second Monday in a row, we have a huge game to look back on. We have talked about “the block” enough, but I found a report on the game from Charlotte and found it interesting and they talk more about the final four seconds of the game when the UNC players just sat around and let UK run the clock out.
For some reason, the national pundits have not made a huge deal about the UNC brainfart, but just imagine if the shoe was on the other foot. If Kentucky’s players had just watched UNC run out the clock, there would be pundits screaming about “UK freshman mistakes”. Since it was the more experienced UNC team making the mental error, we don’t hear about it as much.
John Clay takes a look back in time and compares Anthony Davis’s block to an eerily similar block nearly 30 years ago by Sam Bowie versus LSU. It’s a good read.
One of the benefits of having an in-house statistician as Corey Price are the random texts with stat filled goodness I get from him. He sent me a couple of football related texts this morning that I thought I would share with you.
As we know, Kentucky’s Danny Trevathan got no love from the national awards and was not even a finalist for the Butkus award for the top linebacker. Trevathan was the only player in the country to finish in the top 25 in total tackles, interceptions, and forced fumbles. If that is not Butkus Award worthy, I do not know what is.
Also, the SEC is assured of their sixth straight national champion in football when Alabama and LSU face off. According to Corey, this will make 10 SEC National Champions in the past twenty years. In the first 59 seasons of the SEC, there were only 11 National Champs. Can you say recent complete and total domination?
I know you can not wait, but we are only about 12 days away from the start of the college football bowl season and the much-anticipated Potato Bowl in Idaho. In honor of bowl season, I have created a league for the ESPN College Bowl Mania game for WBN Readers. It’s a good place to compete with your fellow football fans and WBN staffers and to make it interesting, I am throwing my own money into it. If we can get at least 100 entries, I will award a $50 gift card to the winner. So sign up and take my money.