I Knew It This Is Only The Start

Maybe Bledsoe’s story will be another “Blind Side”. Kids go from D’s and F’s to A’s all the time. This will not be the last time something like this surfaces from Lexington. They are going to get what Calipari has always given. A lot of wins and a lot of cheating. They will be on probation within 3 years.

UK Basketball will be brought to it’s knees by the NCAA and for what? They didn’t even make it to the final 4. What’s most troubling is that UK will pay the price like Indiana has. Cal like Sampson will skate off to the NBA for millions. There should be a way in the larger scheme of things that if you do wrong on this scale you pay a price…Cal and Sampson really haven’t or won’t. The AD at Kentucky will likely loose his job though if you look at Indiana for a template for what to expect.

I hope the NCAA pulls their head out of the sand and finally do something about Calipari. This will probably be the start of many more issues for Kentucky. UK sold their sole to the devil. Let the fun begin!

Both hands raised here. Crean is doing things the right way people just be patient. Greatness will return the right way.

Can I put my hand down now?

I am completely shocked that Coach Calipari would ever be associated with shady deals, players or otherwise. He has always been above board and just because some of his players have some shadiness in theie past does not mean the World Wide Wes or Coach Cal have anything to do with it.

Bwa, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha….sorry couldn't keep a straight blog response. Allow my hand to join the fray, I just did not think it would be year 1.

Wow! Didn't see that coming; let me put on my shocked face.

I think Cal & Sampson hang out and share notes. The only difference is Cal is smart enough not to get caught so easily and bail out before the mess spills on to him. Expect to see Cal coaching the cavs or nets soon, and you KY fans who were happy at the hire of Cal, your AD sold his soul to the devil and will pay a heavy price, & so will your famous program.

(Also, for a good time, go read the comments on the Lexington Herald-Leader article [linked above] — most UK fans want the author of the piece carried out of town on a rail … the old kill-the-messenger reaction.)

First, let me also recommend reading the piece on this from Rick Bozich (Bozich, I think I've heard that name before,) in the Louisville Courier-Journal today. You'll see where Alex gets it; Rick's one of the best in the business (and he's not going to win any brownie points with UK on this one!)

Second, let me give a typical line from the UK faithful. This is a direct quote (typos and all,) from a guy I know who is a die-hard: “You people AMAZE me. The facts are that it WAS in highschool.If the NCAA has a “clearing house” committee shouldn`t it be once you`re cleared thats it? Just saying!!
It`s one thing to hate a school and believe me I can understand it. If another schooled dominated my team in my life time and my school was a “didn`t you use to be somebody” school. But facts are facts and people most of the time sound ignorant when they use opinions. I`ll wait and see what happens with this. But, I`m willing to wager NOTHING will happen to Coach Cal!!!”

Kentucky is headed where IU is leaving. Kentucky basketball use to be Rupp and Hall, border wars with Bob, in state battles with Denny…..Now for the sake of winning, they hired a guy who, is a known cheater…Sound familiar. How the story ends will be the same, there will be NO title in Kentucky.

I cannot wait til they hire Ford or Pelphry and then go through the 6 and 10 win season like IU. Crean comes in with Juniors DSR, Ferell, and Jurkin and just roll kentucky by 20.

When the story surfaced about Sampson being under investigation at Oklahoma (after we'd hired him), I thought, “Ok, what's a few phone calls? I'm sure he's learned his lesson and he'll never do it again” (yes, I actually thought that), but after reports surfaced about more recruiting phone call violations, i stopped defending him and realized it was time for him to go.

It seems like the Derick Rose story would've been the UK faithful's first heads-up on Calipari (as if Marcus Camby wasn't enough), but they're still defending him … to the death. Innocent before proven guilty and all of that, but the fact is that Calipari already had a great recruiting class — including the nation's top PG — so why go after another PG, esp. if there are academic issues (how in the world get Bledsoe get an A in Algebra2 and Algebra3, esp. after getting NO A's in his first three years of high school?!!) …? He should've recognized that it would look shady since most people thought Bledsoe wouldn't meet the NCAA's academic standards … so even if Cal didn't pay Bledsoe's high school coach, it was just plain idiocy to go after a player with Bledsoe's issues. So even if he's not wrong, he's still dumb. (But seriously, Bledsoe had a 1.9 doing into his senior year of high school … raising that to a 2.5 had to be next to impossible, even if he replaced a D with an A in an online course … and who took his online courses–Biology and Algebra3?!!! Maybe the same person that took Derick Rose's SATs? And if you've got a 1.9 for your first three years of high school, how are you going to do well on the SAT anyway?)

Karma for canning Gillispie after only 2 years perhaps? Kentucky will soon become a crater after they get the bomb dropped upon them. No more Brandon Knight's or Marquis Teague's for a while!

RAOFLMFAO……..As soon as this subsides somewhat I will be throwing up both of my hands faster than Criminalipari can say ” but I'm innocent it's all their fault “. Them being the players he knowingly cheated with and the AD, that hired someone that everyone knows has cheated, is cheating and will always cheat but then again that is why he was such a perfect fit for pUKe university. I hope the NCAA drops a freaking atomic bomb on that so called team of student athletes and that the university still ends up having to pay out the money that they would have paid to Mr. Slimy but that it goes to create a fund whose only responsibility it is is to catch low life !@#$%&*ers like him.

Is that Calipayoff playing the perverbial fiddle, while he watches the almighty big blue nation burn, from the safety of his newly renovated NBA head coaches office. Typical pUKe methods. ” Yea we knew he was playing with a lighter when we showed up and told him to name his price but how was we supposed to be able to see that he was sitting on a big leaky can of gas. When you are counting out as much money as we were, as quickly as we had to, it's hard too see anything else. He seemed like such a perfect fit for our school.”

If they can only prove that Bledsoe was ineligible but no repayment occured, then UK forfeits the season and I'll bet everyone a dollar that UK keeps this idiot unless the NCAA just puts too much pressure on the program.

The UK administration is a reflection of the fans which means they want to win at all cost and they hired someone who speaks their language.

If it walks like a duck…., well then you know the rest of the story.

He sounds like a terrific kid, and I am happy we are focused on bringing in quality young men. But I'm sorry, I've tried for the last 10 minutes to get excited about a DIII prospect walking onto our team and I just can't get myself there….I'll go have a beer and come back and see how I feel.

If you really think about it the blame here falls on the college basketball fans. Sure we whine about it on blogs but what are we really doing to prevent someone like Calipari to coach college basketball?

We all know there are D-bags everywhere in the world. We also know institutions are more than willing to sell their souls for success. I.e., anyone that hires someone like Cal, or Sampson for that matter. We won't go there.

At the end of the day, we live in a society that allows guys like this to roam around and do wrong. I personally do not understand it. But I give Robert Montgomery Knight a lot of credit for pointing out the fact it SHOULDN'T be allowed. Unfortunately, guys like this are survivors and just move along to the next gig. This guy should get a lifetime ban from coaching college basketball. He represents everything that is wrong with the sport.

I hate to say it, but the one and done kids will use Kentucky like Cal uses them so it won't matter. If it escalates, it would not surprise me if Teague reopens. He comes from a very very good family and that type of drama may be a little too much ……

Two things register with me as this Shakespearean tragedy plays out. Remember from 12 grade English that all of Shakespeare’s tragedies were passed on the premise of the main character’s tragic flaw; in other words, his downfall was his own fault.

The first thing is that, as was mentioned earlier, Sampson did not believe that IU was serious about following the rules–WRONG!

The second thing is a “what if” consideration. When a team has to vacate its wins, especially in a tournament that is only half the the repayment for sins. How unfortunate it is for a team who was eliminated from a tournament and never had the chance to play the next game. Of course, there is no way to rectify that injustice but still, it makes a person wonder about what might have been with different match ups and different coaches in the games that followed.

As much as I revel in the possible downfall of UK, my main focus is that other teams who might have played by the rules never had a chance to compete on a level playing field.

Glad to see “hellhounds on his trail” .

Possibly more interesting however are the violations at UCONN which better parallel Sampson.

Lets hope the NCAA uses these initial investigations as “probable cause” to go deeper into both programs.

This is only the beginning!!!

One of the better articles that I have read on this matter and I have read all of them that I can find ! I just hope the writer of that article was being very sarcastic when he said pUKe fans should know that there program is better than this or something along that line. I had to read that part really quick before I threw up.

Cheating going on at pUKe…..same ole story just different players and coach.

Here is some food for thought, best I can remeber anyway, since, and including, old racist Rupp there has been only two coaches from there that have not had some kind of cheating pretty much directly connected to them and one of them (Pitinio) left on his own and didn't want to go back there when he changed jobs again and rather ironically took the job of coaching, what most pUKe fans consider, their most hated rival and they ran the other one off ( Tubby ) probably because he wouldn't act in the way that most pUKe fans consider standard operating procedure a/k/a do WHATEVER it takes, just win baby.

“I just think highly of Coach Calipari [and] the thing$ he'$ done for guard$ in the past few year$,” Marquis Teague said. “I'm hoping he can do those thing$ for me.”

In '76 the NCAA limited scholarships for the next two seasons because of recruiting violations under Hall. I will have to admit that I did not do the real research on this one but rather got it from a post on cbssprots.com. It was from somebody that went by IU554 and he had a Colts horsehsoe emblem under his name. It was written on January 3 of this year. I went back to the web page but could not find it anywhere there but this person seemingly had all the facts on pUKe cheating. He had names, numbers, dates and quotes from everybody from actual court judges and district attorneys to authors and investigative reporters. I'm so glad I made a copy of it knew it would come in handy when the Calipayoff slime started hitting the big blue fan. Started to post it here but thought that 1) Alex might not want me to use up as much room as it would take and 2) Didn't know if anyone was interested in reading a comment as long as it is as it is about the size of a small newspaper article. If some people would like to read it and Alex doesn't mind I will post it. I was thinking I had seen the name, IU554, on here before but couldn't remember for sure. If you are out there IU554 you should put it out there again for everyone to read. I cannot say for a fact that everything in his comment is 100 % factual but it sure sounded like he had done an awful lot of research and fact checking.

One of the better parts in it says that in '85 a story was broke by, ironically, the Lexington Herald-Leader that said UK had been paying players and recruits under Hall and the story was supported by 31 former players admissions of this going on and one of them said that Sam Bowie was playing cards in the hotel the night before the '79 McDonalds all star game and was losing alot of money and when he needed more money he just made a phone call and about 15 minutes later a shoebox with $ 5,000.00 showed up.

If you don't want to post it here, you could send it to me because I have lots of faces in which to rub it.

marcg41470@yahoo.com is my e-mail