It’s a One Game Season for the Kentucky Wildcats

  What’s Kentucky basketball without a little recruiting angle, huh?  Abnormal is what that is and let’s not be that, shall we? The HS Boys Sweet 16 is being held at Rupp and Cal was in attendance to check out Madison Central PG Dominique Hawkins.  Hawkins has left no doubt that he’d jump all over an offer from UK but that hasn’t happened yet, and possibly won’t but his stock is definitely on the rise.  Steve Jones of the Courier-Journal posted this on his blog:

"Madison Central’s Dominique Hawkins has grown up a University of Kentucky basketball fan and hasn’t been shy in calling UK his dream school, so the fact that he was invited to visit the Wildcats’ practice on Wednesday as a potential recruiting target was a memorable experience, to say the least. “It was like going to a concert and meeting somebody famous and passing out,” he said after scoring 31 points in the Indians’ win over Holmes in the Boys’ Sweet 16 quarterfinals. “That’s how it feels. It’s amazing. I can’t even believe I went there. It was like a dream.” UK coach John Calipari has not offered Hawkins a scholarship, but he was at Rupp Arena Friday to watch him for the second straight time this week. Hawkins, a 6-foot-1 point guard who is a finalist for Mr. Basketball, said after Calipari came to his Wednesday game – a victory over Wayne County in which he scored 25 points – that he didn’t even realize the coach was at his game. Hawkins, who has scholarship offers from Western Kentucky, Morehead State, Tennessee Tech and Valparaiso and interest from Purdue, Tennessee and many others, got his first correspondence from a UK coach on Wednesday, when assistant Orlando Antigua sent him a text message inviting him to practice. (Hawkins said he also had “everybody in Richmond blowing my phone up” after the first-round game to tell him good game or good luck.) Once he got the OK from his coach that he didn’t need to stay to scout the upcoming Holmes-Pleasure Ridge Park game, he headed to the Joe Craft Center. “It was really neat,” he said “They look like NBA players when they practice, with all the dunks and all the long threes they make. It was just great to be there.” But Hawkins said he focused on UK’s point guards while he watched and wasn’t intimidated by what he saw. “I was looking at point guards, Ryan Harrow and Jarrod Polson and seeing what they were doing,” he said. “I was like, ‘I can do all the stuff they’re doing.’” Hawkins spoke to Antigua and met only for a few moments with Calipari during the practice and that the coaches didn’t discuss the potential of him landing an offer in depth. “(Calipari) was just telling me how we’ve got a great team and a good backcourt,” he said. “ … Just keep working hard, and we’re going to look at you.  … I don’t know yet (about an offer). We’ll have to see.” Hawkins said he hasn’t personally conveyed to UK that it is his dream school, “but I should say that to them. Hopefully they see it all over Twitter and the news that I’m saying that it’s a dream school.”"

Now to be fair, the PG’s he watched aren’t up to par with the PG’s Cal has had here in the past three (3) seasons but if the kid can ball, bring him in. In addition to having the premiere college basketball program, a football program on a meteoric rise, UK also boasts a Top 10 baseball team and they were in action yesterday against Michigan State.  To say the game was a dog fight would be a gross understatement but thanks to a tweet from Chip Miller,

you all get to see All American OF Austin Cousino do this…