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In anticipation of seeing Patrick Patterson play for the first time in almost nine months on New Year’s Eve (I’ll be covering the game for The Cats’ Pause because Matt May is in Nashville for the Music City Bowl), I thought I’d reflect on my personal impressions of how well the freshman forward has played.

How far has Patrick Patterson come? Well, I definitely had no idea who the 6-foot-4 freshman was four years ago, and I was living in the same town and it was my job to know he was.

So, you can imagine where that put him on the national recruiting radar. So, at the end of his freshman year — when he had grown to 6-6 and earned third team all-state honors in West Virginia for Huntington High — I made some calls to see if his impressive freshman season had registered at all nationally.

Brett Dawson, the University of Kentucky beat reporter for The (Louisville) Courier-Journal, who at the time was covering Illinois for the Champaign newspaper, was my first call because Patterson had expressed interest in both Illinois and Michigan State.

Dawson, a good friend and mentor while he was working for The Cats’ Pause and I was a student at UK, had never heard of Patterson, and Patterson hadn’t been noticed by either of the coaching staffs at the two Big Ten schools. And Patterson wasn’t on UK coach Tubby Smith’s radar either, according to TCP’s Matt May, another close friend from my days in LexVegas.

Now, Patterson is the toast of the town. He’s easily been Billy Gillispie’s best player so far this season and the centerpiece of Gillispie’s rebuilding effort.

Patterson’s probably been one of the nation’s 10 best freshmen in a loaded class that includes former Huntington High School teammate O.J. Mayo, Indiana’s Eric Gordon, Memphis’ Derrick Rose, Kansas State’s Michael Beasley, UCLA’s Kevin Love and Arizona’s Jerryd Bayless.

UK fans have been so impressed that they’re afraid he might not stay around long enough for the Wildcats to complete the turnaround with him on campus.

Even I, whom got to see him before the rest of Cat Nation and was impressed enough to figure he’d soon be a top 100 recruit, am surprised with how good he’s immediately become at the collegiate level. Patterson made huge leaps forward each high school season, none bigger than from his freshman to sophomore season when it became obvious he was getting overlooked. But soon UK, Wake Forest and Florida came calling. A year later, everyone would be knocking on his door, including Duke and North Carolina.

It was when Patterson became a recruiting star that I began to have my doubts. I knew he could play, but now he had become more sought after than any high school senior. Sure, he’d be an impact player but not a star (or at least not for three or four seasons). Right?

People asked who he reminded me of, often asking if former UK forward Chuck Hayes was an accurate comparison. Sure, but he’s more athletic and taller than Hayes with a higher ceiling. More like Charles Hurt, I figured. Little did I know Hayes would be an NBA starter.

In fact, Emeka Okafor was who came immediately to mind. Afterall, Okafor was a late-bloomer like Pat, and arrived at UConn as a dominant defender and rebounder with a limited offensive game.

So, that’s how I imagined his freshman season progressing. So, the fact that his defense has been the weakest part of his game is a huge surprise, even if it’s been very good.

But Pat’s offensive game grew by leaps and bounds over the last 18 months. I remember when he was too timid to dunk, then when his offensive game consisted of a 10-foot radius from the basket. But he’s developed a 15-foot jumper, post moves, and I even saw him take a defender off the dribble from the top of the key at least once.

UK might still be 4-5 without him, but who knows. He’s come a long way.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Patrick Reusse can’t get it right, even when he’s trying to correct himself. Reusse admitted he was technically wrong in writing on Dec. 20 that Patrick Patterson and Jai Lucas had given Tubby Smith verbal commitments before bolting Kentucky for Minnesota in March.

But he excused himself by citing the Minnesota sports information director, who asked Tubby himself (a novel idea Reusse should be fired for not thinking of himself), and was told there was no commitment but Tubby “was very confident.” As mentioned last week, I’m sure he was just as confident about Brandan Wright, Tyler Hansbrough, Darius Rice and so many others. And, not sure where else Reusse would have gotten the idea, I suspect he’s only providing a correction because the only logical conclusion is Tubby or someone on his staff made the claim, and Reusse needs to take the blame to divert the blame.

But Reusse littered his correction with more errors than his initial column. For one, Patterson is from Huntington, W.Va., not Morgantown. And his jab at the infamous Chris Mills package, was incorrectly called a FedEx package instead of from Emory Worldwide Express.

WTG, Reusse. We’ll be waiting for another correction, or your dismissal — whichever comes first.

I think too fondly of Tubby Smith to think he’d leak such lies — especially since Smith looks forward to having conversations with sports journalists as much as I look forward to Christmas traffic — but Smith, or someone trying to defend him, has told a reporter in Minnesota that Patrick Patterson and Florida point guard Jai Lucas both had already verbally committed to UK (membership required) and only wavered about their decision once Smith left for the Gophers.

Of course, Lucas chose Florida and Patterson still chose Kentucky.

So, if Patrick Reusse needs a source close to the Patterson recruitment who will actually go on the record, I’m pretty free these days and easy to look up.

It’s as much an attempt to take credit away from UK coach Billy Gillispie, who did in less than two months what Tubby couldn’t in two years — get Patterson’s commitment – as it is to defend Smith. But it’s completely false. First of all, why would Patterson not make his verbal public in order to help support Smith (same for Lucas) if they really wanted to play for Smith?

Not that Patterson disliked Tubby. He may have wanted to play for him, but he most definitely had not made up his mind. He liked Tubby a lot, and his parents allowed Smith and his wife, Donna, to get closer to the family than Mike Krzyzewski, Billy Donovan or any other coach. Tubby was closer with the family than Patterson’s high school coach. So, if Patrick had given Tubby a commitment, then he would have made it public because he knew the coach was potentially in trouble even though the family kept saying they expected Smith to stay at UK.

When I broke the news to Patrick and his mom that Tubby was going to Minnesota, their first reaction was shock that Tubby would do so and not call to give them a heads up. Then, they heard rumors that Tubby was forced out and they were confused. They were close to writing UK off. After they investigated the circumstances and found out that Tubby was never asked to leave they had an even more open mind about UK than before.

From there, Gillispie worked a miracle. UK was fifth among six schools the day after Tubby left and up until Gillispie met Patrick. Yet, with each passing day confidants at his high school hinted that UK was making up huge ground on Florida, who had always been the leader in his recruiting battle.

In fact, there was only about a one-month period (immediately after Patterson’s UK visit for Big Blue Madness) that UK was considered the leader. And that was just because he was so taken aback by 24,000 UK fans chanting his name.

Makes you wonder how many past recruits Tubby thought he had a verbal from that it turned out he never had a commitment from. Brandan Wright sound familiar? Tyler Hansbrough? Darius Rice?

In case you have not seen it.  Here is the Billy Gillispie ad for the Blue Grass Hospitality Group (Link)

Looks like the recent slump and the students’ Winter break has resulted in lots of available student tickets.  If you haven’t sat in the eRUPPtion Zone then this might be worth trying out. But be warned your view is restricted by how tall the person in front of you is. From UK Athletics (Link)

A limited number of eRUPPtion Zone tickets will be available to the general public for the next three men’s basketball home games (Tennessee Tech-12/22, San Diego-12/29 and Florida International-12/31).
Tickets are $5 and will be available at the Rupp Arena box office beginning one and a half hours prior to tip-off of each game. The box office will accept cash only for these tickets and there’s a limit of one per person.

It looks like Woodson’s draft stock might be slipping a bit.

A month ago Peter King wrote: 

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)

However, today he added:

I think Matt Ryan, the Boston College quarterback, is starting to distance himself in scouts’ eyes from the two other top quarterback candidates, Andre Woodson of Kentucky and Brian Brohm of Louisville. Colt Brennan will have the eyes of the NFL on him in Hawaii’s bowl game against Georgia. Second-round mini-sleeper: Joe Flacco of Delaware, who’s got a big arm and could climb the ladder. (Link)

University of Louisville junior wide receiver Mario Urrutia has declared for the NFL draft. (Link)

His decision raises a couple of questions 1) Who will Cantwell throw to next season and 2) how is this Petrino’s fault?

Is this man responsible for ruining Louisville football? 

One of the interesting things that has come out of Louisville’s disappointing season and Bobby Petrino’s surprising move to Arkansas is how a lot of the blame for this years Louisville football team has been shifted to Bobby Petrino.

Kragthorpe started the shift by routinely referring to off the field issues he was not aware of:

“There are only so many things that I’m allowed to say because of legalities. I feel like I’ve been as forthright as I possibly could. But there are certain things that I cannot say whether it’s due to injuries or off the field situations. There are certain things that I would lose my job if I were to divulge them. So I can’t do that.”
“It’s certainly been a challenge in terms of things that I inherited. But that’s the situation I’m in and I have to play the hand I’m dealt. I work hard every day to try to reflect a positive attitude and I’ll continue to do that every day.” (Link)

“Certainly there have been some challenges with some off-the-field situations that I did not anticipate, but we’re working through those.” (Link)

Initially these comments were met by the local media as well as Louisville bloggers with some skepticism.

Vague charges are unfair to Petrino, his assistants and the guys who played for U of L the past four seasons.
What are we talking about? Marijuana? HGH? The clear and the cream? Guys betting on games? My imagination is only getting warmed up.
If there was a drug problem, why not say you’ve eliminated it? If guys were routinely cutting class, why not say you’ve fixed that, too?  (Link)

That skepticism however appears to be short lived.  As Petrino’s behavior in leaving Atlanta brought out an assault on his character the supposed mess he left behind in Louisville is being brought up any many columns.

Stewart Mandel on SI.com (Link)

An ineffective (or, quite possibly, non-existent) disciplinarian. As Louisville’s disastrous 6-6 season played out this year, some unsavory details began to emerge about the way Petrino ran his program. New coach Steve Kragthorpe dealt with a litany of off-the-field issues that his predecessor either overlooked, or possibly covered up, involving some bad seeds he recruited.

Pat Forde on ESPN.com (Link)

Petrino left behind many talented players for Kragthorpe, but sources say he also left behind some off-field issues that the new coach has tried to address. Kragthorpe has suspended and/or dismissed numerous players this season.

And locally

What happens around U of L when you don’t make a BCS game? Ask Kragthorpe.
Fans don’t applaud you for trying to clean up Petrino’s mess. They tell you that players don’t fear you the way they feared Petrino. They tell you that you’re not the motivator, strategist and — gulp — genius that he was.
Let the new coach lose to Kentucky and Syracuse, and people will forget what a liar the old coach was. (Link)

The sad part of this is that Petrino was, and may still be, a remarkable college coach, if he can just get recruits and their parents to stop laughing. Though all of a sudden, all of these off-the-field messes that U of L has been hinting that he left here are much more pertinent, now that he’s returning to the college game. (Link)

While Petrino certainly has some character issues and is clearly looking out for himself. It is a bit disingenuous to blame Louisville’s problems on him.  After all, these are he same players who went to a BCS game just last season.  A season in which things like flipping off opposing fans and spitting on opposing players did not occur.  Not to mention the fact that prior to the season Kragthorpe himself said.

“I don’t think there’s any question we want to play in the national championship game this year. People may say that’s a bold statement. Well, if we don’t have that type of thought process, we really don’t need to be out there practicing right now.”

So over the 9 months prior to the season Kragthorpe didn’t realize he had any off the field problems and felt he could compete for a national championship.  Yet as losses started to mount these problems all arose over a period of 14 weeks.  Luckily for Kragthorpe, Petrino is the perfect scapegoat because he’s so toxic right now he can be blamed for anything.

After viewing the document, (link via ESPN.com) the thing I can not understand is why would you ever pay for illegal substances with personal check?  Haven’t major league players heard of an ATM or sending someone from your entourage?  You know that Turtle would always pay in cash.

Excuse the lame Carlsberg parody (hey, Liverpool demolished Marseille today, and even though this is a college football post, we had to acknowledge it), but ESPN is reporting that Bobby Petrino has resigned his position as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons and will fill the head coaching vacancy at Arkansas.

Considering the source, there’s every chance Bobby Petrino won’t be the next coach at Arkansas, but if he is, well, this is getting ridiculous.

Petrino would join a conference that has four national championship-winning coaches (Florida’s Urban Meyer, Alabama’s Nick Saban, Tennessee’s Phil Fulmer, and South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier), a coach who’s led Auburn to an SEC championship and an undefeated season (Tommy Tuberville), and eight coaches who have won championships in BCS conferences (the five mentioned above, and Georgia’s Mark Richt, Louisiana State’s Les Miles — who could join the national championship-winning coaches in January, and Kentucky’s Rich Brooks).

Petrino would give the SEC nine coaches who have won a BCS league, with seven winning SEC championships, Petrino winning the Big East, and Brooks winning the Pac 10.  The next closest leagues are the Pac 10 and ACC, both have 5. (This list only includes active coaches.  For example Carr is not included because he is resigning.)

So, we say again, this is getting ridiculous.

The good news for Kentucky is that while we’ll have to face Arkansas next year, the Razorbacks will then fall off of the schedule (to be replaced by Auburn, we think, but that could be completely wrong). And by the time Arkansas rotates back on the schedule, Petrino will probably have moved on, as is his wont.

And the great news for SEC fans in general is that Arkansas’s ‘permanent’ SEC East opponent is none other than South Carolina. So college football’s offensive mastermind of the 1990s will face college football’s offensive mastermind of the 2000s (by the way, it’s probably hard for anyone to regret going to the University of Southern California, but do you think Mitch Mustain wishes he would have stuck it out at Arkansas? He’d be the next Brian Brohm). Given each coach’s tendency to run up the score and the fact that neither seems to care at all what anyone thinks about them, that should be an entertaining series of games.

[We know you’re curious: yes, we just checked a certain Courier-Journal columnist’s blog to see if he was shocked at the Petrino news, but, disappointingly, he’s yet to comment. We’re sure it will blow his mind.  If you want to check out the complete opposite view take a look at this column.]

In other SEC coaching news, former Kentucky offensive coordinator Tony Franklin is set to become the offensive coordinator at Auburn, which is quite an opportunity for the man who penned Fourth Down and Life To Go: Lessons Learned from the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Experiences of Kentucky Football.

If you’ve read that book, you know that Franklin and his former boss Hal Mumme did not part ways amicably. Score one for Franklin in that feud.

Onward and upward!

ESPN Insider has an AccuScore projector set up for all the bowl games.  On it UK is favored 56% - 43%.  (Link)

Final Score projection is 31-28

Kentucky is also a 1.5 point favorite on nearly all the online sports books. (Link)

After the UK Louisville football game, Courier Journal UofL fan blogger Tom Heiser took a few shots at UK (Link).  In his post he stated that he felt that despite the loss Louisville was better positioned for the future.  With season over, we felt now is a good time to revisit his arguments. 

Recruiting still seems to be an issue for the Cats, who don’t really have adequate replacements for key people now, let alone come next year

So let’s look at the recruiting classes for next year.
Scout ranks both Louisville and Kentucky at #56. (Link)
Rivals ranks Louisville  #53 and Kentucky at #55. (Link)

And if we take it back a year farther to the 2007 classes
Scout ranks Louisville #47 and Kentucky #58
Rivals ranks Louisville #41 and Kentucky #54
Note that this class for Louisville featured Willie Williams. Who is no longer on the team.

2006 (Next Years Juniors)
Scout Louisville 26 Kentucky 34
Rivals Louisville #34 Kentucky #36

2005 (Next years Seniors)
Scout Louisville #43 Kentucky #62
Rivals Louisville #45 Kentucky #67

While it is undoubtedly true that recruiting rankings are incredibly speculative these number show that UK has closed the gap in recruiting.

Later in his post he wrote:

The Cards are firmly placed on the national scene; Brohm’s departure is fully anticipated — has been since the final seconds ticked off the Orange Bowl clock. Hunter Cantwell is ready to take the reins. Who’s Woodson’s heir?

It is true that Cantwell looks to be a better option than anyone UK has at the moment.  However, who is he going to throw to?  Both teams are losing their top 2 wide receivers and their tight end.  Not to mention the fact that UofL loses NCAA all time leading scorer Art Carmody.

Sure its possible that Louisville might develop some of their younger players into big time contributors it’s also just as likely that UK could do the same.  After all Woodson was not the top recruit Brohm was.  Instead he was someone developed within the system.

A final factor that is often overlooked when it comes to Louisville’s football team is that over the last five years it has been built around two home grown players Michael Bush and Brian Brohm.  It’s rather unlikely that in the near future two great offensive players like these will both grow up in Louisville.

Heiser’s post closed with

Let’s have a debate on the rankings come the end of November. That is, if Kentucky still qualifies for the debate. I like our chances of still being around when the BCS Bowl bids are handed out. Can’t say as much for our Lexington kin. They should enjoy it while it lasts.

Well November has come and gone.  Kentucky is ranked 38th in the BCS, 33rd in the AP, 34th in the Harris, and unranked in the coaches. (Link)  Louisville does not make the rankings in any of the polls.

This was posted Saturday at 11:27.

From No. 1 to Number ???? That’s Louisiana State football

The SEC is supposed to be the penthouse of college football. The only place to be, live, work, tackle and point your index finger toward the sky. The gold standard of college football.

Take another look.

In eight days, Louisiana State has gone from a top-ranked team that expected to win the national title in the Superdome in early January to a school with a coaching staff that can’t wait to get off the field tonight in the SEC title game against Tennessee so its two top coaches can take other jobs.

Why would anybody leave the SEC?

ESPN is reporting that LSU head coach Les Miles is gone. He’ll be named the head coach at Michigan next week.

Yep, leaving the greatness of the SEC for the blah Big Ten.

Ouch.

And Miles might not be the first one out the door. LSU defensive coordinator Bo Pelini will be named the next head coach at Nebraska next week. Guess Pelini didn’t want to wait around to find out if he would replace Miles.

From Number One to Number ??? Some ride for one of the SEC’s sassiest programs. 

(Link)

Well, I guess the answer to the question I posed a couple posts back can be answered with a resounding YES. If you hadn’t heard by now, then you must live in Mammouth Cave, but freshman guard Alex Legion has decided to transfer.

Can’t say I’m shocked that a player is bailing on Billy G already. It wasn’t any different under Tubby Smith, who had a much more motherly approach. It was only a matter of time before Billy finally broke a player into quitting with his no excuses style. The players have two choices: submit or quit.

But I am surprised that Legion’s the first to go. I expected somebody like Jared Carter, Mike (sorry, bud, I’m not making the effort to learn how to spell your given name) Williams or Perry Stevenson might break first. I wouldn’t have even put it past a lazy Joe Crawford to wuss out in his senior year.

But I figured Legion and Patrick Patterson would be among the first players to buy into Billy’s style. Find out how this is nothing new for Patterson, after the jump. (more…)

Kentucky playing in their 5th straight game away from Rupp defeated the 6th ranked Boilermakers. The Cats were led by Junior Nazr Mohammed’s 19 points.

PurdueSports.com still provides their game recap online:

CHICAGO - Nazr Mohammed scored a season-high 19 points as seventh-ranked Kentucky used an 11-0 burst early in the second half to post an 89-75 victory over number five Purdue in the Great Eight Classic at the United Center in Chicago.

Wayne Turner added 14 points and Jeff Sheppard 11 for Kentucky (5-1), which has won three straight games since losing to Arizona in the semifinals of the Maui Invitational. The Wildcats also topped 80 points for the first time since a season-opening 88-49 victory over Morehead State. (Link)