Fire Tubby?

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.

The always updating Aaron’s UK Basketball Blog links to Larry Vaught’s Danville Advocate-Messenger article, which asserts that UK needs Joe Crawford needs to step up his game in order for the Wildcats to succeed. Joe’s averages are not terrible, but the team (especially Morris) needs him to be a consistent threat from outside and on the drive to keep defenses from crowding down low. Here’s a quote by Joe from the article:

I understand I can’t force the offense, but if teams are going to try and shut down Randolph, I have to be able to help make them pay for that. I have to pick my game up more in the big games.

Vaught’s suggestion is to be like Keith (Bogans); take the ball inside to fire up his shooting touch. It will be interesting to see if Tubby allows this type of game plan for Joe. I think all UK fans want him to step up his game and be more of a consistent threat like Bogans, and — as my friend Jeb put it during lunch today — less of a inconsistent threat like Kelenna Azubuike’s time at UK.

But perhaps Joe should be more like the new and improved Kelenna.

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The Blue/White game was this past weekend. For some post-public-practice analysis, check out A Sea of Blue, Brett Dawson’s Blog, and KSR. And be sure to review Part the First for info about Shagari, Preston and Ravi. After the jump, uh, everybody else who’s gone.

Sorry this post is so long, but I do have 5 people to talk about.

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Since we’re closing in on the Blue/White game on Saturday, I thought we would take a quick overview at the players who either graduated or are no longer playing with the team this year. Join us, after the jump.

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In case you were wondering why Joe Crawford didn’t partisipate last night, he’s recovering from minor surgery. He’ll miss a few of the first practices. Let’s hope that’s it is just a minor surgery. Last year Sheray Thomas had tennis-ball sized tumor removed and really didn’t look like he was able to contribute to the team until the very end of the season.

Also, CBS Sportsline.com is asking if you have a “Choops question”, they may have the answer. For the record, Choops is the worst word combination I’ve ever seen related to sports.

AJ Stewart has verbally committed to UK. Let me quote Matt from kentuckysportsradio.com here:

In the rush for news about other prospects, lets not overlook what happened here. This is a kid who basically wanted Florida forever…..they ignored him. UK swooped in and got him, over other powers such as Illinois. And at the end, Florida wanted back in and AJ said no dice. […] AJ is a great kid and a great get. And oh yeah, he told me that he would be spending the next few weeks, “trying my hardest to get Jai and Pat to come with me.”

Jai Lucas and Patrick Patterson had a great time bonding with AJ during their time in Lexington this weekend, Matt also reports. Let’s hope that AJ’s committment gives Jai, Patrick, Chris Barnes and Marshall Moses one more reason to wear Kentucky Blue next year.

I’m not for sure how badly Illinois wanted AJ. Couple this with Illinois losing Eric Gordan’s verbal committment to Indiana, and I’m sure Illinois boosters (Illini Alumni?) are mighty whizzed.

Edit: Thanks to the Concerned at dynastydefenders.com, here’s a YouTube link of the AJ Stewart chant during Big Blue Madness.

Edit 2: Thanks, Mr. Clay. Also, in case you folks don’t know about the Concerned, here’s our somewhat biased assessment.

It was a most interesting event, as viewed from the rafters. If you want a complete summary, Matt Jones over at kentuckysportsradio.com liveblogged the event. Let me take a few moments commenting on what I noticed.

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Big Blue Madness is just around the corner. Did you get your ticket? Don’t ask me how, but somehow a few tickets funneled down to me. So me and the wife are gettin’ ourselves a babysitter and heading to the Rupp rafters.

I’ll be sure to post my impressions. I’m looking forward to seeing Jodi Meeks in action, and hopefully another dunk contest involving Woo.

Congratulations to Mickie DeMoss and the UK Hoops team for fully recovering from the Bernadette Locke-Maddox plague. They drew a #5 seed and are in the big dance for the first time in seven years. They will face 12th-seeded UT-Chattanooga in Chicago on Saturday.