Jinkle Podcasts --

Kondor's Revenge

Kondor:

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening and welcome one and all from the heart of Wildcat country here in Lexington, Kentucky. Rainy Lexington, Kentucky. This is Kondor, the better half of the Kondor and Gordon show, or the KAGS shows as it is known.

I wanted to start off my discussion on University of Kentucky basketball with the three goals that are the three goals every season going into basketball season for the University of Kentucky, and that is to win the NCAA championship, goal number one. Cut down the nets at the end of the year. Goal number is to cut down the nets in the southeastern conference tournament in Atlanta, Georgia or if they ever decide to move it from Atlanta, somewhere else. And of course the third goal is to win the southeastern conference outright. Any other gains, any other goals within the season are stepping stones in order to achieve those three goals.

Now, Gordon's philosophy is a little bit different. Gordon will sit here and tell you that if the University of Kentucky men's basketball team does not win every single game, does not win every single tournament, and it does not win the national championship every year, that it is a sub-par year.

Now, the reality of the situation is that if you look back on the history of all of the coaches from the University of Kentucky, at least for the ones that coached while I was alive, you have Adolph Rupp, he seemed to do a fairly good job for his very lengthy tenure, although he didn't win every game, he did win a national championship every year. Succeeded, of course, by Joe B. Hall who won a national championship in 1978. Certainly didn't win every game, or win a national championship every year.

Followed by Rick Pitino who won himself a national championship and, of course, didn't win every game. Led us into having Tubby as a coach, who won a national championship, and this is where I'll take a little side move here where Gordon will say, "Yes, but Tubby Smith won a national championship with Rick Pitino's players." To which I say hogwash! What Tubby Smith had to do was take Rick Pitino's players and then fit them into his style of play and win the national championship with his style of play. So the counterargument to "Oh, he did it with Ricky's boys", is that he actually worked double hard in order to get those players to understand what it takes to win a national championship Tubby-style.

Tubby, of course, is the second winningest coach in the University of Kentucky, not too shabby considering number 1 is the number 2 all-time winning coach, Adolph Rupp. So, I believe that with Tubby Smith as the coach of the University of Kentucky we are grounded and solid in the fact that we can achieve all three of those goals every year when we start the season.

Now, where have we been this season? The season has not been a stellar season by any means. 13-6 is where we sit right now, we're getting read to play the University of Arkansas. We lost earlier on this year in FCC play to Vanderbilt and Alabama in Rupp Arena, that was not pretty. You don't ever like to lose on your home court. What that does is kind of raise red flags in people's minds sometimes when they look at it from the goal of winning the southeastern conference.

Let me back up a little bit, let's look at the earlier part of the season because really there are only 2 games on the early part of the schedule that matter, and that is, of course, to me the number one game is when we play the Indiana University Hoosiers, a long standing tradition between two schools that are proven champions, and then there is of course when we invite little brother to play on the court, the University of Louisville. They bring their A game and summarily get stomped on a regular basis.

So, earlier this year, as you all know, the University of Louisville... well, they showed up, I guess, that was really about all that you could say and if you look at their season to date, you can understand why. They played a soft schedule, they went to the Big East, they finally went to a real conference, and they're seeing real conference play which Kentucky has done year in and year out since it has done since it's very existence. They're starting to realize that, hey, maybe we're just a pretty good little bit major type school that happens to have won a couple of national championships along the way, but so be it.

So, now Indiana handed it to us, and they handed it to us solid and good. I don't for a second believe that Mike Davis can coach basketball. I believe this is an aberration but it still, none the less, that's the one game that really gets under my skin this year so far. We should never lose to the University of Indiana, and I might make that a fourth goal going forward if this keeps up. So, that's kind of where we've been this year. We've struggled to find our identity, we've struggled to find our shot, we've struggled to find an inside game all of these things at different times during the early part of the season.

With the return of Randolph Morris, things have started to edge out a little bit. Now, I don't believe for one second that Randolph Morris is why we've gotten better - solely. But instead I believe what Randolph Morris has done is he has given us the ability to have an inside game, which has freed up the outside game, which has allowed the shooters to gain confidence because when you're in a shooting slump the best thing you can do is keep shooting and shoot your way out of that slump which the University of Kentucky continues to do.

We've also been able to put together a run, we've also been able to play defense, we've also been able to do all the things that you should be doing from the beginning of the season but, when those things aren't working, you just have to work your way through them to be ready for the three goals at hand. Now we're into the three goals and the 3-2 in the southeastern conference east. A game and a half behind Tennessee and a half game behind Florida. We've got them coming up on our schedule, we'll go down to Mississippi state and then we'll turn around and go play those two, as well as a little revenge game against Vanderbilt.

We're in prime position to achieve our first goal which is to win the regular season in the southeastern conference. The second goal will, of course, be to the conference tournament and then we'll of course be coming down to Indianapolis this year, so...

Tubby does his best job when he's got a team that he takes the time to understand the role of the players, to understand what they're doing and what they do best, and how they do it together, and that's what he uses the pre-conference schedule for. He's done it every year that he's been here, he lets the players do what they want to do until they learn and understand that his way is the better way to do things. He's been under the spotlight of criticism lately because of the number of losses, it's a little bit higher than what the University of Kentucky is used to going into conference play as well as starting out conference play. Now, he's still the number 2 coach in the history of the University of Kentucky, he's still a proven winner, he's won with every team he's ever coached and he will continue to improve and continue to live up to the standards and expectations that Kentucky fans are accustomed to.

Our next game is against the University of Arkansas. The University of Arkansas is famous, in the 90s, for the 40 minutes of hell. They still bring that and I expect them to bring that in the Rupp Arena tomorrow and give us a good test on where we are defensively, as well as where we are as a team unit. That really is the biggest factor and that is where we are heading and improving on a game by game basis and we're right on track to achieving our first goal.

Again, for Gordon and for the Tubby naysayers that are our there, it's just not realistic to believe that you're going to win every game every season or that you're going to win a national championship every season. I fully acknowledge that that's the goal at the start of every season, and that any time that you don't achieve the goal you don't really feel good about it, but at the same time you don't get discouraged, you just turn around the next year and you go to achieve the goal again. That's the case here, and again, we'll probably report more after the University of Arkansas game and you'll probably get to hear some more magical gems from Gordon but for now, this is Kondor bidding everybody a fond farewell again from Lexington, Kentucky. Go Kats!

Episode 2: Kondor's Revenge

Kondor's Revenge