The Cliches of Kentucky Basketball; or the Aura is Back

Today we bring you our second ever keynote speaker here at LCB. His name is Quincy Jones, and he writes the blog Thoughts of Q. He's also an avid Kentucky basketball fan, which is his topic for today and the start of our many discussions on the 2009-2010 college basketball season.

“A program synonymous with winning.” “The stars are aligned.” Let’s stick with clichés for awhile. It makes for good reading when viewed through blue lenses. Kentucky basketball is famous for both its winning ways and bottomless appetite for national championships. Try to imagine racing a Ferrari and a Maserati on a ¼ mile track. You’ve been given the keys to a Lamborghini. Three great thoroughbreds. One small problem for the Lamborghini: the wheels have fallen off. That basically sums up Kentucky basketball for the past half decade. It defined the Billy Gillispie era.

The fumes of victory had long since dried up before Gillispie rolled into town. Tubby Smith, the last coach of a UK national championship team, won it on the backs of Rick Pitino’s players: Scott Padgett, Michael Bradley, Wayne Turner, Jamaal Magloire and Tayshaun Prince. He was still able to recruit the great player every now and then (see Rajon Rondo and Randolph Morris [who was a bust, but nevermind that]), but struggled to bring in a complete class of great recruits. Gillispie brought in Patrick Patterson and developed Jodie Meeks into a more than solid two guard, but it was a steep downhill in talent after that.

So what do you do if you’re Kentucky’s ADUP (Athletic Director Under Pressure), Mitch Barnhart? Well, you find, hook, plead, beg and do everything else legally and illegally to get a coach that will absolutely put you on a path to success. Quick aside: Mr. Barnhart has a self-termed “15x15x15” plan that he is banking on for proof of his success. Basically, the goal for UK Athletics is to win at least 15 conference or national championships and rank among the NCAA’s top 5 athletic programs by 2015. Let’s take a reasonable guess and assume that Kentucky basketball wins the conference championship oh, I don’t know, every year from the 2009 to the 2014 season (6 conference championships). Let’s take another leap of faith and assume they will challenge for the NCAA title oh, I don’t know, every year through the 2014 season. And let’s say they will win two titles (2 national championships). Well that’s 8 championships from one sport. I’m sure the rest of the sports teams can pick up another 7 between them.

After another down season for Kentucky basketball and the shadow of Rick Pitino growing in Louisville, it was time for a change. The plug was pulled on ol’ Billy Boy because, as the Kentucky administration put it, there existed an “incompatibility between the school” and coach. Billy Boy is now in the John Lucas After Care alcohol rehab program in Houston. Talk about “drinking away your sorrows.”

Strolling into the limelight and pressure is John Calipari. He’s never won a national championship, but he has also never coached a program as high profile as Kentucky. And, as Rick Pitino showed us by winning high praise with his Kentucky teams (but also tanked in the NBA and whose Louisville team has yet to reach the predicted heights), when you surround yourself with great players, you just need to be good enough to “manage the game.” And, of course, you don’t really need to have great recruiting pitches to attract the nation’s finest basketball players to the bluest part of the Bluegrass state. Just ask the FOUR five-star recruits that will be playing for Coach Calipari this year: Eric Bledsoe, DeMarcus Cousins, Daniel Orton and the will-he-or-won’t-he-play, illegally recruited, played 5 years of high school, maybe ineligible, highlight reel point guard, John Wall.

There exists my favorite of clichés: “No one knows that the future holds.” The college basketball landscape is forever changing. When you have someone as seedy and loathed as John Calipari (For the record, I love Kentucky basketball, but when does integrity give way to the “win at any costs” philosophy), an illegal violation waiting to happen, you’re not even sure of next week. For Billy Gillespie, the cliché, “Pressure busts pipes,” came true. Can Calipari turn an old stone back into a diamond? The 900,000 fanatics that follow Coach Calipari on Twitter each and every day are eager to find out.

Rick Pitino Pays for Chicken Fingers, not just Abortion

Louisville coach Rick Pitino told police that he should have known not to have sex with a woman at a restaurant that served him a sub-par chicken fingers basket.

Police support the idea that if Pitino had heeded such omens, then he would not have given Cunagin Sypher the opportunity to falsely accuse Pitino of rape and to try and extort millions of dollars from the basketball coach.

A local customer, who wishes to remain anonymous, told reporters, "No one orders the chicken fingers at that place; they're always too dry and are filled with those chunks that make you wonder if you're eating bone, cartilage, or some old lunch lady's lost tooth."

An LCB study of the chicken fingers did show them to be 27% dryer than what's considered the optimal level of moisture for a chicken finger. Tests also proved that the chicken fingers caused constipation, which might explain why Pitino was in the bathroom so long before having sex with Sypher.

Of course, the dryness of the chicken fingers was not the only warning that Pitino's actions on August 1, 2003 might not have been in his best interest. The bartender who served the coach his drinks tried to warn him about Sypher's tasteless personality, stating, "She's not a b!tch, but she definitely runs with the wolves. I mean, I tried to signal Coach Pitino by winking at him and motioning towards the lady with my head, but he didn't catch on. I just wanted him to see that she was double-dipping in his honey mustard."

When asked about the warnings from the bartender, Pitino responded, "If I cared whether or not the woman was double-dipping in my honey mustard, then I probably wouldn't have put my sperm in her. If the bartender had my best interest at heart, he would have cut me off before I took some crazy lady to a bathroom stall; I would have appreciated that and some better gourmet chicken fingers. They were worse than the sex."

Coach Pitino added that he looks forward to concentrating on the upcoming Louisville basketball season and teaching boys how to become men.

Cunagin Sypher has been indicted for extortion and is now divorced, but does maintain that double-dipping is not a crime, especially with chicken fingers that are "cock hard."

Armani hopes to capitalize on the fact that Pitino was wearing one of their suits the night he met Sypher: "The ad campaign will work as long as we have Coach Pitino ordering something more classy than chicken fingers. We may just have him stick to a very masculine drink, like a Jack and Coke. Hopefully, he'll sign off on the idea; the ad campaign could earn him some extra money and really put a positive spin on this story. It might even help with recruiting."