Jinkle Podcasts --

Intro Show

Gordon:

The Kondor and Gordon Show was originally designed to be "a rambling review of topics ranging from University of Kentucky Wildcat men's basketball team to rampant voter apathy. These two guys talk about everything between heaven and hell, religion to relapses, and somehow manage to slip in a few pearls of wisdom along the way." Unfortunately, those were listed in pretty much the order of our importance, and the first thing off of that was the University of Kentucky Wildcats, specifically the UK Mens basketball team, NCAA tournament action this year looking pretty bleak for the Wildcats, and since that was going to be the main focus of the show, well, gosh, we've been quite a bit... We haven't had a whole lot to talk about this time.

For those of you who haven't been following University of Kentucky Wildcats and honestly, this year, why would you unless you're UK alumnus, which both Kondor and Gordon are, it's just been a rough year. They started out in the middle of November, they actually won against South Dakota state, as we all expected they would, and then they played Lipscomb and my friend Kondor was just nuts. He's like, this is great, we're going out beating, everything's great.

Now, to understand, I'm Gordon, Kondor's not with us today because he's off today having, well, he's recovering from yesterday's celebrations - we'll get to that in just a second. Short version is, we came out of the game 2 and 0 and he was just thrilled. Now, I'm of the belief that the University of Kentucky is a great institution. It's got a fantastic basketball team, and it's got a really ...okay... coach. Problem is, he's just - I got this whole thing about Tubby Smith, love him, he's a great guy, has great integrity, really cares for the kids, but probably isn't up to what I believe University of Kentucky Wildcats men's basketball team needs as far as a NCAA winning coach. If Kondor were here he would already be screaming at me because Tub Tubby's won, and I would come back with my old rant and ramble about, no, no, Tubby won with the Pitino's team and then he would call me a Pitino fanatic and all that good stuff. Turns out I'm not a Pitino fanatic, but, again, we're going to get to that in a minute.

Right now we're talking about the UK Wildcats and their season up to this point, and you may be asking yourself, hey, wait a minute guys! It's the 22nd of January, why in the world did you wait this long in the season, you know it started back in October. In the University of Kentucky world, midnight madness is a great thing in basketball season - it cannot start early enough. So there we were, middle of November, everything is great, we're 2 and 0, and then we played our first ranked team, Iowa. Ranked number 17, and Iowa, which isn't a real powerhouse when it comes to basketball in the first place, managed to beat us. That wasn't a good day, but everybody can stumble, the record's 2 and 1, off we go the very next day to play West Virginia. Now, West Virginia, for those who have been following, they've really been tearing it up. I'm terribly impressed with them, they were ranked 13 at the time and we won, as we did against Liberty, and High Point, and all the High Point villains out there that are saying, hey, we keep telling you, why are you beating us up? You know what? Life's rough and off we go.

Then life really did become rough, how do I say that? Because then we played North Carolina. Now, remember, this is not last year's North Carolina, they weren't even ranked at this point. North Carolina was rough, and turns out, it looks like we lost that one on the 3rd of December, and I should have known right then that things were looking bad, but wait! We came back against Georgia, correction, Georgia State. Georgia State on the 6th of December, and everything's great, and so our record at that point is 6 and 2.

Now, being a UK fanatic Wildcat fan, I'm thinking, well we've lost 2 games that we shouldn't have. Where in the world is Iowa, why in the world would we lose to them? And North Carolina, OK, maybe everybody can have an off day. But, off we go and now comes the fun part because we're going to play Indiana. Now, Indiana is just Hoosierville from right to left, and nobody in Kentucky likes anybody in Indiana unless they came from Indiana and even then they manage to escape so it's only lip service that they're paying. Indiana is clearly the one that we have to defeat, the only one that we hate even worse than Indiana is Louisville, both colored red, we're blue, it's all red state blue state thing. Now, Indiana comes along on the 10th of December and cleans our clock. 79-53, we weren't in the game, it was the CBS, it was the second time CBS has shown us and the second time we've lost to a national audience.

And, I've got to tell you, from a west coast guy that sucks because the few games I get to see we're losing, this just isn't working out for me. So, we lost against number 16 Indiana and then we went in to the way over ranked Louisville, the Cardinals, ranked number 4. Now, this is the middle of December, if Tubby wins only one game this year, this is the game he's got to win. Now, UK fans have to be a little nervous there because we also made that statement on our football team one year. We've got to beat Louisville, if we don't beat any other game this year we've got to beat Louisville - we did, but in fact, we didn't, because we won that game against Louisville and we lost every single game after that. I'm afraid that, well, at least I was a little worried that kind of bleak scenario we had coming up from the UK Wildcats. Here we are, 12-17, we go in against Louisville and we do a really good job. The team for the first time that I've been watching them all year actually played as a team as opposed to 5 people out there trying their best to save the day.

Off we go to the 23rd, just before Christmas, Iona, we beat Iona. Yay! Then again, it was Iona. Sorry Iona folks, but, really, we're UK and as far as I'm concerned the NCAA is ours to lose which, unfortunately, we've been doing quite a bit recently. So, then we get to the 30th and we play Ohio. We won that game 71-63 against Ohio, and then we played Central Florida, 59-57. Now, those are wins and Kondor was like, ha, ha! See! We're going to go, this is it, we're on a streak! And I'm like, dude, we're not on a streak, we're playing unranked teams that are very, very close games. Must closer than they should be. We should be running out a 15 point lead and running with it from that point on, and everything should be great. But, hey, you know what? When Kondor gets around, you'll know, there's just no convincing him that Tubby isn't just the greatest thing since sliced bread. That the University of Kentucky Wildcats aren't just going to be cutting down the nets, and, oh, by the way, these losses are just small bumps in an otherwise glory road to paradise.

Then we came, actually, we went to Kansas, the 7th of January. Now, Kansas and UK have a great traditional history, and UK has dominated Kansas time and time again. I know, Kansas, you have a great ball team, and oh, by the way, you cleaned our clock this year. I mean, that wasn't even a close game. Kansas kicked Wildcat butt all up and down the court with the final score 73-46. Not a banner day for Kansas, I'm sorry, not a banner day for us, for UK at Kansas.

But, you know what? I just said, you know what? That's the wakeup call we need. That one was on ESPN, ESPN is another national audience, again I'm not enjoying this whole getting smacked in front of the entire nation, but here we go. I'm thinking, Vanderbilt, I used to date a girl that had credentials both from Vanderbilt and UK so she can't lose, but in her heart she would root for UK. Well, turns out she should have voted Vanderbilt that day because, I can't believe it but Vanderbilt, we lost against Vanderbilt! Oh, please! That's our first, now we're 0-1 in the conference and look, we've got this 57-52 point loss.

Then we turn around at Alabama 4 days later. You're thinking, they're going to pick themselves up off the floor at some point but no. We lose against that one, our streak has begun, Kondor was right - problem was it's a losing streak which mercifully was broken last week, the 17th of January at Georgia we finally managed to win one. Again, it was a softie win. Georgia pretty much let us win that one more than we earned it but, hey, you know what? I'll take a win.

But, yesterday, January 21st, we played South Carolina. Now, I got to be honest with you, South Carolina - I'm sorry, South Carolina's just not that great a team, but then again, this year as even Tubby has said, we're not that good. It's true, we're not, we haven't been playing up to speed, and oh, by the way, we fell out of the rankings a long time ago. I've asked Kondor to go off and find out when the last time we weren't ranked is, and I was thinking it would be years and years and years, maybe back after the whole NCAA ban. We had a little recruiting action going on that cost us to be unranked for a little while. He hasn't come back with that so I'm thinking it wasn't that long ago and it was under his Lord and Liege, Tubby Smith, but hey. That's just me.

South Carolina yesterday it was a better. I couldn't have scripted a better day in NCAA basketball. Three unbeaten teams, NCAA teams, we had Duke, Pittsburgh, and - oh come on, somebody tell me the other one. Oh! Florida, right! Florida. OK, so there we are, the big three. Now, Florida is doing great in the SEC. All the other SEC teams are pretty much biting it in the big one this year, including ours truly, the University of Kentucky. But, comes along yesterday three unbeaten teams - Duke, ah Duke. That was a great game, that was a FANTASTIC game. I was so happy about that game, well, then I need to say, well I probably don't need to tell you but oh, by the way, Duke lost. And Duke lost, and Florida lost, and Pittsburgh lost. Even better? University of Kentucky won against South Carolina with an 80-78 win even though it was a last second shot by Rondo who's got, still, too much of a glory hog in him I think.

The fact that Patrick Sparks was on the floor, he made a couple of clutch 3's. If he steps and he's a 3 point shooter, but if he's not shooting his 3's get him off the court, get him out of the stadium, put him on the sidewalk, put him in the parking lot if you have to. Just get him away from the ball because he makes poor shot selection, poor decisions but Kondor is going to come back to me on this. Kondor is not here because he is too happy about the way things turned out yesterday. Not only did Duke lose, not only did Pittsburgh lose, not only did Florida lose, not only do we no longer have an unbeaten streak, but UK won AND, hallelujah, Louisville absolutely got their clocks cleaned.

So, it was a great day yesterday for NCAA basketball. If there's ever going to be a best time to kick off the first of the KAGS show, Kondor and Gordon Show, we're going to talk about NCAA basketball, that is University of Kentucky men's basketball because I consider them equivalent, this is it! We wanted to run about a 10 minute show, this is about 10 minutes and 30 seconds, I apologize for the oversight, but we will see you next week on KAGS where Kondor comes back and tells me why Tubby Smith doesn't suck.

Episode 1: Introduction Show

Intro Show