Did you happen to catch the Miami-Kentucky game last night? The debut of Jesus on the basketball court, Mr. John Wall?

Well, if you did, you would have seen a tremendous performance by the Redhawks. They went into Rupp Arena to face the No. 4 team in the country and played fantastic. After building a large lead in the first half which you just knew was going to crumble, they held strong in the second half. It was a back-and-forth see-saw battle from there, and just when you thought Kentucky, with all their talent and surefire NBA talent might pull away, the Redhawks responded. But with the game tied after Miami hit a late clutch three, Wall went coast-to-coast and hit the game-winner just before the buzzer for a 72-70 win. Heartbreaker for Miami.

So, after the game, you might expect reporters to ask Miami coach Charlie Coles something like this: “How were you able to keep it so close against a team like Kentucky?” But no. Some bro went the other way, “How did the game get away from you?”

Coles then launched into this:

Amazing. Amazing in every way.

College coaching is one big fraternity. Some of the members like each other better than they like other members. Some members can’t stand each other. Some members float from friend to friend and never really catch on. Some members have a coke problem. But when it comes down to it, all of the fraternity brothers stick together. If they didn’t, they’d just be another group of dudes. What was all that hazing for, anyway?

I’m losing track here, but the point is that college coaches, even if they don’t like each other that much, usually work awfully hard to avoid offending anyone. Because if you get fired, and you need a job, you don’t want power coaching-tree-type people freezing you out. You have to kiss the ring, or at least avoid spitting on it. That’s just how it works.

UK football coach Rich Brooks? He is not concerned with these primitive rituals, and he was clearly never in a fraternity. This is GDI talk:

Oh, snap. I mean, forget all the connections nonsense: I wouldn’t want to piss off Mark Mangino and Bill Self. Have you ever seen either of those guys when they’re upset? Self will stare a hole through your forehead. Mangino will crawl down your throat and devour you from the inside-out. Why anger that which may destroy you? Bad move, Rich Brooks.

Or, conversely, awesome move. There are several interpretations here.

When Kentucky hired John Calipari, Gregg Doyel wrote a column saying college basketball was over as we know it. Combine Coach Calipari’s recruiting prowess with a big-name program like Kentucky, and it was a recipe for world domination.

I did not want to believe this. I hid from it. But it’s only been a month or so on the job for Calipari, and Doyel’s proclamation is ringing true. John Wall, the most talked about recruit in the nation who’s got ambidextrous handles, is reportedly heading to Lexington.

E has the details on Coach Cal’s first class:

Turns out, you never underestimate Calipari when it comes to recruiting. He is unstoppable. It’s frightening, really. After convincing Patrick Patterson to forgo the NBA — despite an outside chance of being a lottery pick — Calipari will bring in four five-star recruits to next year’s Kentucky team, including the best player in the country, a guy who plays a little bit like a smoother, ambidextrous Derrick Rose. Kentucky was already going to be good next year. This is terrifying.

Kentucky plays Indiana before Big Ten season gets underway. I hope we can keep it within 25 points.

My argument for the merits of Internet memes would be that they have afforded an opportunity for the common man to appreciate absurdist humor. My argument against the merits of Internet memes is that when the same joke is told simultaneously by millions of people, it gets driven into the ground with a ferocity never thought possible.

We briefly mentioned “The Door” yesterday, but in case you’re unfamiliar: this week, Memphis basketball coach John Calipari was rumored to have taken the University of Kentucky’s coaching job. As a byproduct of their reporting, Deadspin fixated on a camera that a Memphis TV station had placed outside Memphis’ athletic office. The video stream was available live over the Internet. Occasionally a reporter would step in front of it and report a crumb of news, but the majority of the stream looked like this:

A rarely-interrupted shot of a door. That lasted for days. The Internet went wild over it. Wait, hold on, are you hearing this? Everyone went wild OVER A DOOR. And everyone’s still going wild over it. I took this screen shot just a few minutes ago:

Keep reading →

There’s no question John Calipari is a terrific score for Kentucky, for reasons that have been beaten into your brain the last few days: He recruits A-list talent and is a great coach. Couple that with the brand of Kentucky behind him — his shady recruiting tactics notwithstanding — and you have a recipe for success. I hear it tastes like a delicious candy-topped sundae.

But does the Wildcats’ hire mean they’ll now run college basketball for good? That college basketball as you and I know it is over?

Gregg Doyel of CBS Sportsline argues just that:

College basketball as you know it? It’s over. That sport doesn’t exist anymore, because that sport had a semblance of parity. One year North Carolina is the dominant program. One year it’s UConn. One year it’s Duke or UCLA or Florida. Maybe those teams don’t win the national title the year they’re dominant, or maybe they do. Either way, every year there is a team that, on paper, is the dominant program in college basketball. And every year it’s a different team.

Until now. Until John Calipari merges with Kentucky.

Again, Kentucky is going to be great with Calipari. Combining the two is kind of a scary thing to think about. But, I’m not sure much changes here. Calipari recruited A-list talent at Memphis; he can’t really recruit any better at Kentucky. So how do his teams become exponentially better and change the landscape of college basketball forever and ever amen?

Keep reading →

(UPDATE: The Memphis Commercial Appeal had it first with ESPN soon after: Coach Cal is headed to Kentucky. News conference is set for tomorrow.)

Yesterday, a TV station in Memphis reported John Calipari to Kentucky was a done deal. But, until Andy Katz or others had it as fact and there was a presser called, I wrote I was a bit dubious to that claim.

And here we sit 24 hours later without a decision from Calipari. There has been no presser. What there has been a lot of, however, is some deep thinking from Calipari. He hit up a donut shop and chatted with some friends this morning. He’s calling former coaches at Kentucky and hearing about the school’s tradition. But yeah, as of this late afternoon, Calipari is still mulling over the reported $5 million or so a year he stands to make, which would make him the highest-paid NCAA basketball coach in all the land. Is it possible Memphis can counter with something just as sweet? And would a matching offer make him stay in Memphis? I’m doubting that, though I imagine they are drumming up as much gold as they can for boosters and hitting up Cash4Gold.com like whoa today in an effort to match that offer. Meanwhile, the Door continues to gain a cult following.

Simply put, the dude is just taking his time. And he deserves that. It’s kind of a big decision. And no matter what any news outlets reported yesterday or continue to report, until Calipari steps in front of a podium in Lexington, or Kentucky announces his hiring, we’ll still be holding our breath.

We’ve been writing about John Calipari to Kentucky all day, but up until now, there have been no reports that he’s actually accepted the job. Until now.

WMC-TV in Memphis is saying just that.

WMC broke into regular programming with a report from their sports director, Jarvis Greer, who said he has learned from a reliable source that Calipari will be the next coach at UK and that two Memphis players, Wesley Witherspoon and Roburt Sallie, will transfer to Kentucky.

Now, reports are just reports at this juncture. Everybody wants to be the first to break this story. If other places besides WMC-TV start reporting this independently, or if there is an official announcement one way or the other, I will update this post accordingly.

UPDATE: ESPN is saying Calipari will sleep on the offer.