One More Look At VMI/Kentucky Game

Kentucky was the biggest program to get upset during the opening six days of the season, so it's inevitable that the blogs would be on them. Especially after the Gardner Webb debacle last season. So the blogs are doing what blogs tend to do, which is to talk about what they think are other people talking about something. Here is an example. It reminds me of political blogs when some politician from the other party gets into a sex scandal, and they fill their blogs will posts about how "We're better than to talk about sex scandals, but we're sure that lots of people will be talking about sex scandals."

Now that said, I think people first of all need to realize that the vast majority of sports fans had no idea that this game happened. It's still football season, and even the NBA has a slew of big stories. Nobody is paying attention to college basketball yet. Secondly, people forget that Gardner Webb was just one piece of a terrible first half to a season for Kentucky last year. They were also dropped by UAB, San Diego, Indiana and Houston. Two months into the season they had an RPI approaching 250, and were 7-9 when they turned things around with a win over Tennessee.

So while one game does not ruin a season, I do have to say that I'm a bit shocked by the way this all went down. It's accepted that a good coach can get a one year grace period when they enter a situation where the cupboard is bare. Only a few morons want to throw Rich Rodriguez under the bus at Michigan, because he deserves a year or two to get the type of kids he wants. So nobody was going to call for Gillispie's scalp because they struggled in year one (although in the end, of course, they looked great towards the end of the season). But this season has expectations, which are only higher because of how good Kentucky looked in February and March. And then this dud?

Further, while coaches can get misquoted at press conferences, I have to wonder how this quote happened: "Their guys were on the court just as long as we were. I don't really buy into the theory of a team wearing themselves out more than the other team. We didn't pay attention to the details and missed assignments. I attribute this loss mostly to lack of leadership."

Is he dismissing the fact that conditioning matters? Conditioning is very important in up-tempo games, especially when one team only puts eight guys on the floor. Secondly, he seems to be throwing his best players under the bus by questioning their leadership.

In the end, I don't want to over-analyze this game. All will be forgotten if they take out UNC on Tuesday. We'll get a better sense of this team as the season goes along.