Shocked, Stunned & Disappointed

I hope terrence ross destroys jones in maui.

Just heard on KJR that he has signed his LOI as well know. Close the door on this. I wish him luck, but this was the worst way to handle this process in the history of college basketball.

Dawg fans.. lets just be happy with what we have which is a top 25 team that still has a great chance to go deep into the tourney. Romar still put together a stellar recruiting class and we have an experienced nucleus returning. We are going to be just fine.

Can’t wait to play UK in Maui now.

I wish he would have just committed to UK from the get go and saved us all this drama…no offense to TJones, but this is a stupid fucking decision. I know UK got way more press and hype and went further in the tourney last year, but that was last year…John Wall is >>>>>>> Brandon Knight, and Kanter might be skilled, but he can’t replace the production of Cousins, Patterson and Orton, even with Jones (who is a perimeter player with PF height. The SEC is terrible at basketball, so I’m sure Calipari will get them plenty of wins, but this team won’t be close to the team we all watched lose to WVU. The Dawgs will be deeper and more experienced and I for one hope we get to play UK in Maui and beat them on national TV.

I agree GrantUW, I don’t understand why he didn’t pick Klantucky from the beginning and got it over with. Just took our entire fanbase for a 3 week joyride…whatever..

Anyways, dude is gone now so F him…If he’s not wearing Purple and Gold then I really don’t give a rats ass what happens to this dude..I hope slimeball cal jumps to coach Lebra and leaves this kid high and dry..

Hope he goes off campus and sees the incredible racial divide that exists in that state and realize that if he wasn’t playing hoops, he wouldn’t even be treated like a person in that god awful backward state..

Hard not to agree with this guy from CBS Sports:

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/story/13417250/flipflopping-recruit-deserves-skepticism-not-sympathy

IT’s latest tweet sums it all up very nicely:

I hope we play KENTUCKY nxt yr n the Maui classic. All I gotta say is ITS BOUT TO GO DOWN (@KevinHart4real voice) A BARK over a meow ne day

True Dawg right there.

I know this will sound like sour grapes, but Jones doesn’t sound very smart to me. I’ll admit I wasn’t very smart at 17, so maybe he will get smarter as time goes on (as I like to think I did).

If he said he was going to Duke or North Carolina, then I would just sigh and forget about it. What can you do, if that’s the case; it’s like losing your girlfriend to Brad Pitt. But Kentucky? Hell, that’s like losing your girlfriend to Carrot Top. Let’s review, shall we:

1) The School — Duke or North Carolina are great schools. As are UCLA, Cal and UW. Kentucky is OK. I’m sure you can get a decent education there, but it really isn’t on the same level.

2) The Basketball Program — In a word: Overrated. Yes, they’ve won a bunch of championships. But all of those were with a different coach. If you don’t care about the coach, then go to UCLA. OK, to be fair, at least Howland has taken his team to the championship. But we are really talking about two different things here, so I have to split this up:

Overrated Calipari — Officially, he has never taken a team to the final four. Seriously, look it up. Both Memphis and Massachusetts had to throw away all the victories for the years that he had the most “success”. This means no banner, no trophy, no pride. The rest of the years his teams were ranked really high, but didn’t go that far. Last year was no exception.

Overrated Kentucky — OK, Kentucky has won a bunch of championships. Like I said, though, the last one was in 1998. Duke, Kansas and North Carolina have all won championships since then. Yes, Kentucky was dominant back in the day, but that was a long, long time ago. You may as well bet on Uruguay to win the World Cup. The games back then were played with different rules and at a different pace. It was an era where the Globe Trotters were not only the funniest team in basketball, but often the best. Just about any division one team from now would destroy the old Kentucky teams. This is in big contrast to UCLA. You take an old UCLA team, such as one with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then Lew Alcindor) on it and most teams (including Duke) would have a tough time beating it. But I digress. Not only were the old Kentucky teams from a different era athletically, but from a shameful era socially. The first black player for Kentucky was signed in 1969. Six years after King’s march on Washington, five years after the civil rights act was signed and 22 years after Jackie Robinson integrated baseball. It wasn’t as if Kentucky didn’t have a chance to sign black players or notice that some of them had talent. In 1966, their all white team lost to an all black team (Texas Western). For the Kentucky faithful to take pride in such an era is like a German fan pointing to their success during the 1932 Olympics. Do you really want to bring up those days as a point of pride? Really?

Oh, and as far as Kentucky being “a lot better team”, they weren’t last year. They lost to West Virginia, we lost to West Virginia. Who knows what will happen next year (I sure will miss Quincy) but they lost a lot of talent. It wouldn’t surprise me if they missed the tournament.

3) NBA Preparation — I think this is the thing that kids get wrong all the time. Unless the team plays a really weird style (e. g. Princeton offense) then it really doesn’t matter where you go. Consider Carmelo Anthony. He played for a team whose defense was illegal (in the NBA) at the time. Did it hurt his draft chances? Not a bit. For some players, they may have to think about playing time. Even then, plenty of teams manage to play their talent regardless of position (like Georgetown having two NBA centers on their roster). If a player has talent (for his size) then it doesn’t matter. Steve Hawes, for example, played for a mediocre Husky team (one of the worst in the Romar era) but their aren’t that many seven footers with that kind of range, so it didn’t matter. So if a guy is planning on being a one-and-done player, then it doesn’t matter. But for most players, the main consideration should be whether he can develop over time to be good enough for the NBA. I don’t know about Calapari, but Romar’s record in this area is great. There are so many guys that didn’t look like they could be NBA players the first couple of years who turned out to be outstanding their Junior or Senior year. These are guys who are borderline, as opposed to household names. If I was one of these guys, I would certainly play for Romar.

RossB

I hate Carrot Top, the comparison of Kentucky and Carrot Top made my weekend, that was awesome.

-Go Dawgs