Loge Level

As a season long feature LogeLevel.com will look back upon the 1997-1998 Kentucky Wildcats.  The year marked UK’s last national title and was also the beginning of the Tubby Smith era.

Ten years ago today 8th ranked Kentucky defeated 13th ranked Clemson 76-61.  Wayne Turner led UK with 17 points, while Kentucky native Greg Buckner (pictured above) scored a game high 19.  The game was played in Phoenix as part of the Premier Classic.  The victory avenged the previous season’s overtime loss to Clemson in the BCA Classic. 

The departure of Lloyd Carr has really left me wondering.  Where is the outrage at the crazy Michigan Fan base?  Take a look at Lloyd Carr’s resume, it is incredibly similar to that of Tubby Smith.  Yet when Tubby leaves to take another job UK fans are lambasted in the media both locally and nationally for unreasonable expectations, whereas Carr resigns and not a negative word. 

Tubby Smith at UK

10 Seasons
263-83 76%
5 Regular Season Conference Titles
1 NCAA title Year 1
Biggest complaint: No final fours for 9 years

Lloyd Carr at Michigan

13 Seasons
121-40 75%
5 Conference Titles
1 NCAA Title Year 3
Biggest complaint: Only defeted Jim Tressel 1 time

Now lets look at the schools: 

UK: Most wins and highest winning percentage in Division 1-A Basketball

Michigan: Most wins and highest winning percentage in Division 1-A Football

And a quick google check show that there are 3,800 pages returned for “Fire Tubby Smith” while “Fire Lloyd Carr” returns 10,400.

After the jump we will look at the media reaction.

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As a season long feature LogeLevel.com will look back upon the 1997-1998 Kentucky Wildcats.  The year marked UK’s last national title and was also the beginning of the Tubby Smith era.

Ten years ago the Cats were wrapping up a trip to Maui.  UK opened the tournament by defeating George Washington, then lost to defending champs Arizona.  Kentucky finished up their trip with a victory over Missouri.  Jamaal Magloire led Kentucky with 18 points in the victory.

After the Jump the AP’s write-up of the UK loss to Arizona.

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So, as I predicted, Cat Nation moved quickly to its next recruiting object of obsession following Chris Singleton’s decision to attend Florida State. And it’s Leonard Washington, a 6-6 “power” forward from Louisiana.

Based on the reaction of the bluenatic fringe, you’d think any hope of Billy Gillispie returning the Cats to prominence hinges on this KID, and we definitely mean child-like because he’s as immature as they come. Sure, getting a top-notch power forward to complement Patrick Patterson is a must, but no matter how dark a shade of Blue Goggles we wear I’m not sure how convinced I can ever become that Washington is the answer. (more…)

As a season long feature LogeLevel.com will look back upon the 1997-1998 Kentucky Wildcats. The year marked UK’s last national title and was also the beginning of the Tubby Smith era.

Ten years ago today, The ninth ranked Kentucky Wildcats opened their season with an 88 – 49 victory over Morehead. Allen Edwards led all scorers with 15 points.

I wonder if Peter King has a source on this or its just speculation.  From today’s Monday Morning QB: 

8. I think the first quarterback chosen in a good draft for quarterbacks next April will be Kentucky’s Andre’ Woodson, over Brian Brohm of Louisville and Matt Ryan of BC. All good choices, though. (Link)

We’re back in the saddle after three weeks off. After Mississippi State, Kentucky’s certainly no longer a unanimous top-15 team and Andre’ Woodson’s Heisman hopes are over. But the football Wildcats are still a top-25 team and still in the running for a New Year’s Day bowl. To the Update! (more…)

When UK moved the U of L game, one of the justifications people used to complain was that the move would kill UK’s national exposure.  For a while this looked like it might turn out to be true as UK struggled to find a TV partner for the match-up.   Ultimately, they did get the game on ESPN Classic which became the first of 6 times that the cats were broadcast as a national game.  Thus, I think its safe to say that UK was able to get their exposure this year.

After the jump a break down of UK’s televised games.  (more…)

Lost to Gardner-Webb. Jodie Meeks broke his butt (literally). Ramel Bradley has a foot injury of some kind, according to Adny Katz, although UK denies. Chris Singleton spurns the Cats for Florida State.

It’s hard to imagine things getting worse.

But North Carolina and Louisville are looming.

So, yes, things can get worse. And they probably will get worse before they will get better with Meeks missing more than a month.

But I’m still happier now than I was nine months ago. I want more than this team is capable, but as long as they make the NCAA Tournament and advance past the first round Billy Gillispie will have accomplished just as much as I would have expected from Tubby Smith. (more…)

If you’re anything like us, you were bemused by the media hoopla surrounding Kentucky’s embarrassing loss to Gardner-Webb.

One national writer wrote it was the college basketball equivalent of Michigan/Appalachian State. The Louisville Courier-Journal seemed to agree.

We found this bizarre. An upset like Michigan/App State had simply never happened in college football. Something like Kentucky/Gardner-Webb happens every November. (Note we’re not arguing the loss wasn’t embarrassing for a program of Kentucky’s stature, we just think people went overboard with this. Maybe this is just because it was a really slow news night.) Just last November, you’ll recall, No. 3 Kansas lost at home to Oral Roberts. In 2004 eventual national champion North Carolina lost to Santa Clara. Then there’s the granddaddy of them all — the literal equivalent of Michigan/App State — No. 1 Virginia’s loss to Chaminade, then of the NAIA, in 1982.

And for further proof that something like Kentucky/Gardner-Webb happens every year, look no further than Mercer 96, Southern Cal 81. Mercer, like Gardner-Webb, plays in the much-maligned Atlantic Sun. Mercer, like Gardner-Webb, had a poor season last year. Mercer had an 8-10 conference record (Gardner-Webb was 7-11) and finished 13-17 overall (Gardner-Webb 9-21). The two schools split their games last season, each winning at home.

Southern Cal, although lacking Kentucky’s tradition, was ranked higher than Kentucky, expected to have a better season than Kentucky, and coming off a more successful season than Kentucky.

All of which begs the question: If we’re supposed to believe Kentucky/Gardner-Webb really is the basketball equivalent of Michigan/App State (and everyone not wearing Blue Goggles seems to think so), what is the football equivalent of Southern Cal/Mercer? For now we’re going with the NFL’s New England Patriots losing at home to Notre Dame, but we’ll need more time to think about it.

Onward and upward!

The first year of the Billy Gillispie Era is going to be fun. If nothing else, that’s a major improvement over the last two seasons and approximately half the seasons of Tubby Smith’s 10-year University of Kentucky basketball coaching stint.

So, we kick off this blog with as much excitement for the UK basketball program as we’ve had since arriving on UK’s campus in Autumn 1998. The name of the blog is a throwback tribute to our childhood era UK heroes who donned the uber-cool sports goggles of the 1980s, especially personal favorite Eddie Davender.

But Blue Googles also has some other symbolic intentions:

1. Ironically, the initials are shared by our new coach.

2. It’s a Web log, more popularly known as a blog, so let Blue Goggles forever be known as Bloggles.

3. Most importantly, we’re going to wear Blue Goggles (read: blue-shaded visors) all the time. No apologizing or excuse-making and little objectivity. I spent four years (covering Patrick Patterson’s high school career, nonetheless) doing the opposite, now it’s time to be a fan again. (more…)

UK is off Saturday but could still end up as losers if Navy upsets Notre Dame.  Currently Notre Dame holds a 43 game winning streak over Navy.  This is the longest winning streak by one team over another in NCAA history.  More importantly however this streak is all that separates UK from having the top two active loss streaks.  Currently the Cats streak of 22 strait losses to Tennessee ranks as 2nd while our streak of 21 against Florida ranks 3rd.