Fire Tubby?

Wellt, that was interesting.

Of course, a considerable number of our “Concerned” fanbase is going to blame Sheray. For most of this season, some have considered Sheray not a “Kentucky-caliber” player. Others use Sheray as the shining example why Tubby cannot be trusted with the Wildcats. So as the heat builds on Tubby, those fans overanalyze Sheray’s play, looking for each busted defensive assignment, poor shot selection, and turnover. There are also the Perry Stephenson fans, who blame Tubby for favoring Sheray over the freshman. After the Big Blue Boo, Thomas’ play analysis was brought up almost as much as our stars.

And right before his lane violation, Sheray was the hero! With an amazing tap-in to put UK up by 2 with 31 seconds left, Thomas had righted all his Big Blue wrongs! How quickly the fates of this star-crossed player changed!

But was the lane violation Sheray’s fault? After the game, Tubby took the blame for the lane violation. John Clay reported:

Both Sheray Thomas and Tubby Smith said that Smith told Sheray to “get back,” which caused the lane violation before Jodie Meeks’ second free throw with 5.1 seconds left in regulation. Smith said he did not realize that the official was already passing the ball back to Meeks for the second free throw.

Whether that was true or not, its the consistent classy move we’d expect from our coach. “Put the blame on me, Concerned fans,” Tubby metaphorically says, “and leave the kid alone.” And for this incident — the most terrible incident that will probably forever link Sheray’s Wildcat History with the word “choke” — I do believe the Coach; its Tubby fault.

But losing this game was not just Tubby and Sheray’s fault, and it wasn’t centered on just a lane violation. Let’s spread out the blame fairly.

Out of everything that’s happened this season — and last season as well — I am most saddened by the disappearance of the Second Half Adjustment™.

Remember when the Wildcats came out of the locker room after halftime, and would rattle off an 8 or 10 point run while playing stifling defense? It was almost guaranteed that the opposing coach would have to burn a timeout 4 minutes into the second half. It would always put control of the game back into the Wildcats’ hands.

I think the key of the Second Half Adjustment™ was the defense. Defensive assignments were either reemphasized or reassigned. The players’ mindset was set on making plays on D, and going all out to make those plays. Our scoring runs were always sparked by shutting down the team on the other end. The opposing team would always need to adjust their offensive sets around Kentucky’s efforts.

In his Florida post-game comments on the UK Radio Network, Tubby explicitly said he reminded his players that the first 5 minutes after halftime was crucial. However (I’m paraphrasing Tubby’s comments here), the foul situation prevented some players from being aggressive on D (*cough cough RANDOLPH AND WOO cough*), and through the whole game, the defensive effort overall was lackluster.

Is this because our personnel is unable to play Tubby’s D, or unwilling? Whatever the reason, the defensive effort coming out of the half has been uneven. Of course, you can say that the Cats’ play all season long has been uneven at best.

It seems as though our post “Breakin it down Seth Davis style,” has elicited a response from another FireTubby.com fan. This time instead of a ten page thesis, it’s more of a Nick Bakay, “Tale of The Tape” type offering. You may remember some of those columns over on ESPN’s Page 2. I would link to a couple of those articles but they are now being guarded by a sentry bot called ESPN Insider. Bakay was also the voice of the cat on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, but that’s a topic for a whole nother blog. That was uncomfortable wasn’t it. I just revealed to much about myself. By the way, the internets scares me sometimes. Moving on.

It is titled FIRE THE FANS, DON’T FIRE TUBBY!! The all-caps and exclamation points are the emphasis of the documents author. Again, pretty much the same disclaimer as with the Seth Davis-esh document: This was unsolicited by the FireTubby.com crew and none of the stats have been fact checked by us. I won’t use their name but feel free to call them BN. Only one last warning, the document is in PDF format. Just so you know.

Wow, this has been a heck of a week, eh? Buyout rumors, Mitch’s very distant assessment of the program and Coach Smith, and crappy rap videos. We have people saying that Tubby’s contract buyout is possible.

Of course, there are still games to be played. Tonight is Senior Night. Nobody’s talking about giving Sheray, Woo and Bobby a good send-off because we’re all stirring the pot. They have worked and played hard for 4 years. The players deserve for us fans to stop screaming at each other and in the general direction of Memorial Coliseum. The players deserve for us to show them some appreciation for being committed to the Big Blue.

I’ve been thinking for a while about how I can shift gears out of fighting mode and back into Big Blue Fan mode. Given recent events, I think I finally found a path back to being a fan for just a little while longer, until the conclusion of the NCAAs.

(more…)

In that last column, something in Dick Vitale’s Tubby cheerleading article caught my eye:

You have never heard Tubby Smith make excuses or alibis. He never cries or whines … he simply coaches and his team always performs to the maximum of their ability.

But then, I read Jerry Tipton’s article on Sunday’s Vandy Loss and find this:

“We’ve got to get guys to understand the value of the basketball,” Smith said. “That’s something we’ve had trouble with all year long. The same type of turnovers and it’s happening to veteran players.”

…

“One of the problems we’ve had is trying to put the ball in a guy’s hand who can execute under duress when time and score (pressure looms) and the shot clock is winding down,” Smith said. “We have to find the right guy, find somebody who can do that.”

…

Smith punctuated his post-game news conference by seeming to confess his doubt at such moments. When asked about changes he could make to turn Kentucky into a clutch team, the UK coach defended his system.

“We’ve won in the past doing it this way,” he said. “It’s just a matter of personnel.”

Let’s skip the “BUT ITS YOUR PERSONNEL!” argument for once. Also, let’s qualify this with the following: out of all the post-game articles I read, none of the other ones ended with the emphasis on Tubby making excuses about the game. The rest usually ended with comments about Perry’s & Meeks’ play or other positive notes. Tipton has been accused of slanting articles in the past, and I’m not saying he’s doing that here, but I thought I would point that out.

Back to my exclamation: When was the last time you saw Tubby completely hang his team out to dry in the media? To be making excuses about the execution of his system? Like Vitale pointed out, you don’t normally hear him talk bad about the team. Sometimes he’ll mention that somebody needs to work on something, or he’ll use “We” comments — such as “We need to work on our rebounding.” These quotes seemed much more harsher than usual.

(Maybe I haven’t been paying attention. If you have quotes from Tubby in this year or years past that has him making excuses for the team’s performance by blaming the team and not himself, please let us know in the comments. Don’t do the whole “well I heard him say this and that, I think” routine; find me a web page that cites it and paste the URL in your comment.)

Chris Diggs says that we shouldn’t be so worked up about Tubby’s post-game comments. He mentions that Pitino did it. I know Pitino would publicly remark about his players as an incentive to get his players to listen; but it gave the Big Blue Nation somebody to spit fire and brimstone at, and took the pressure off Pitino.

Calling out players in a press conference is not something that Tubby is known for. For whatever reason he is doing it, I think it is sad that he feels he needs to resort to it.

Ah, Big Baby.

Some of you might remember Glen Davis playing weatherman for the SEC Media Days late last year. His predictions reminded me of Ollie Williams from Family Guy.

For Kentucky, he predicted “Ninety-percent (chance of) rain… and then thunderstorms, man.” Somewhat correct, much to our chagrin. For Baton Rouge, he forecasted “Sunshine… Nice 75 (degrees) and a cool breeze blowing.” But that was way off; his season has been more like Hurricane Katrina. (Maybe the LSU Alums can start blaming Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco.)

For Gainesville, he forecasted, “Hot… They’ve got five guys there coming back, so it’s going to be hot. Real hot.” I think he meant Joaquim Noah’s temper, but I guess it also applies to the whole team.

I’ve been looking forward to Big Baby coming to Rupp ever since his forecasts. Not only is he a stellar player, but a worthy adversary. As a cold-front moved into Lexington, affecting our team’s shooting and overall quality of play, I thought LSU had a real shot at giving us another L.

However, the AP is reporting that the weatherman stayed home due to injury. LSU has been inconsistent with Davis in the lineup; without their star, it will be difficult to contain our Almost Famous Wildcat.

And if you look in the skies above Rupp, you might see a break in the clouds.

A firetubby.com reader has sent in a document that he created that breaks down the differences between Rick Pitino and Tubby Smith’s tenures at UK (ala Seth Davis). For now I’ll just call him RP until I hear what he would like to be called or if he would like to use his real name. He wanted to submit this to the site for everyone to read and I said I would look over it.

Well, I opened it up, and damn, it’s a 10 page 3300 word tome. I haven’t read all of it yet but just from skimming, I think it’s safe to say that he misses the Pitino days (as most of you reading this do). Personally, and this is just me, I am not ready to give Tubby the heave ho just yet. Am I frustrated? Oh yeah. I just wanted to say that we don’t endorse the point of view but I am more than willing to put it up on the site just because thats the kind of guys we are. Always willing to start a good flame war since I know there are still a few of you out there who still aren’t quite ready to stick a fork in this team yet.

So anyway, I’m going to go ahead and post it for you guys to read and talk about. Like I said I haven’t read it all so I’m not 100% sure about all the content as far as if there are any curse words if that type of thing bothers you. There are charts and diagrams, and twenty seven eight by ten color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining… no wait, I’ve broken into song again, sorry about that. I’m pretty sure this is the closest to a manifesto that will ever appear on this site. If you get through it all you’re quite the trooper. Ok, here it is.

Have you noticed a pattern lately?

• Start slow and fall behind by 12-16 points.
• I declare the game over and mumble something about “I can’t believe this is happening again.”
• UK then starts playing catch-up until halftime so that they are only down by two to four points.
• They open the second half with a little better defense but still no offense.
• Fall down by 12-16 points once again.
• I declare the game over and threaten to change the channel.
• UK starts the comeback.
• Randolph/Ramel/Joe hit some shots and bring it back to four to six points.
• Right on schedule when UK starts closing the gap, the other team catches fire.
• Kentucky’s defense turns it up a notch just enough to make you feel like there’s a chance to pull out the W.
• Jodie/Ramel/Joe start turning over the ball.

Tubby actually looks like he’s done. He really doesn’t look like he was into this game. Maybe John Clay or someone who was actually at the game could have a little more insight into this point. That’s just the way it felt watching it on tv.

This is something I noticed a week or so ago when I read about how the GPA of the basketball team was 3.2 for the fall semester. Since then I have had several people bring up this point in a “no wonder we lost to Vandy” type fashion. At the time I didn’t even really give it a second thought and gave the comment a cursory “ha ha, yeah I guess so”. Today during the game Gus Johnson mentioned the GPA and Clark Kellogg said something along the lines of how Tubby must be proud or he’s doing a great job.

My question to you is, do you think most fans equate a smarter (as in book smart) team with less success on the basketball court? I think they do. If you can truly say that you responded to Gus Johnson’s comment today with a “well that’s really good,” then good for you. I suspect most people that have either read or heard the GPA information today probably said “well there’s your problem”.

Admittedly, I struggled mightily in every Economics class that I have ever taken but I have put together a simple graph to display my point.

College teams that struggle in the classroom are often paraded around by the NCAA as being unacceptable. Pair this along with graduation rates and I believe programs are now susceptible to penalties. Kentucky in previous years has appeared on these lists for their low graduation rates and I think Bob Huggins while at Cincy was the standard bearer.

Maybe after a 19 point win isn’t the best time to bring up such a topic, but what are the fans that would like to see Tubby gone willing to trade to get back to the final four. Would you trade three year’s probation for a championship? Would you like to have back C.M. Newton or Larry Ivy under which several NCAA violations occurred?

As always, your opinions and comments are welcomed. Agree or disagree. Let us know.

Ok, so we took a month off. We’re kind of like that house in your neighborhood that still has it’s Christmas decorations up. Hell, we just took down our Festivus pole.

In the mean time, the Cats have reeled off the first 11 of 14 in a row. That’s right, 14 in a row is what we are shooting for. Go back and check out that last link. It’s from a post Chris Diggs wrote for a CJ blog after our last loss. On December 3rd. I linked to it that day.

I was being optimistic by saying “I hope he’s right”, our own Hefty Lefty said “Even in my most blindly optimistic predictions, I don’t have UK winning their next 10-14 games” but the best quote of all comes from a commenter to his original post:

“If you think UK will win its next 14 games, you are on crack. I’ll be back on here to laugh at your prediction.”

Needless to say, he hasn’t been back.