Billy Gillespie to Kentucky

[TomCollins]

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Gillispe will fail at Kentucky.

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OK. . . I'll bite. . .why?

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http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaab/recap;...92&prov=ap

[bills217]

If Gillispie didn't bring in Alex Legion and Patrick Patterson (the two best players on the team), they would've lost by 30.

The team that Tubby Smith left behind had 14-16 talent - he picked an ideal time to leave (although ideal for me would have been about 5 years earlier). I told people before we hired Gillispie that if we didn't get Patterson, there's no way we'd be in the tournament.

Now, do we have more talent than Gardner-Webb? Yeah. But CBB is a high variance game. The 3-point shot is a layup. A good intramural team that gets hot from 3-point land could beat 98% of the teams in the country on a given day.

And, ultimately (and this is why CBB sucks) - these games do not matter, at all (especially if you're a program with high expectations). You win by 30, you lose by 30...and it ultimately has no effect on your season, unless you're on the bubble, which if you're Kentucky means you're already a failure barring a deep tourney run.

Sure it looks bad, but Kentucky's outlook for the season is identical to if they had won by 30 last night. People who follow UK knew coming in that they are not a talented team, and what talent there is was brought in by Gillispie.

As far as I'm concerned, Gillispie gets a freebie this entire season and maybe part of next, too - he saved the short- and long-term future of this program by getting Legion and Patterson. Tubby Smith had UK headed for the SEC cellar - the roster + commitments he left was a sub-.500 squad, and the commits he had were actually WORSE than the current players - one barely recruited and one basically unrecruited.

If UK gets to the NCAA Tournament, they will dramatically exceed the expectations I had for them on April 1.