Not saying it is justified or not, but the embarrassment is the losing to a 15 and 14 seed in the first round twice in the last three years
got ran off because of saint peter’s and oakland
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he got ran off because his overall slide in quality of program from best in the country to maybe one of the 15 or 20 best was significant. Then throw in the 2 worst losses in school NCAA tourney history with no recent tourney success to offset it.
It’s not that they became bad. It’s that the became worse and that they got embarrassed at the end of the year several times and that there didn’t really seem to be a path to getting better. His recruit all the 5 stars and overwhelm teams with talent despite being the youngest team in the country every year just wasn’t working like it used to and he didn’t have a backup plan.
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Nah i do not believe that Kenny Payne news for one second no siree
what Kenny Payne news?
24/7 Twitter account posted he was an emerging candidate for UK
Kenny Payne is literally on staff at Arkansas lol
I get why they got tired of him. But if their fans think his last 5 years were an embarrassment, they don’t know how much worse it can get…
Only Kentucky fans can run off a coach and then wonder why no new coach wants to take the job
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Matt Jones KSR
Billy Donovan is obviously the only Tier I candidate left. Nate Oats can’t be revisited bc of issues that have nothing to do with basketball or UK. I have no idea what it is and honestly, I am not gonna pry. The timeline is what it is for Donovan and he won’t talk with UK until his season is over. I am sure others can talk on his behalf but he isn’t making a decision until then. His folks however have expressed a definite interest in talking. So UK has to decide whether to wait and risk him saying no, or go. It’s a tough call
Tier 2 candidates are wide. I know that Bruce Pearl, Shaka Smart, Sean Miller and Mark Pope are on the list. Not sure who, if any, they have contacted but they are on the list. Chris Beard is a person that I was told was in that group but today he wasn’t mentioned by my source. There may be more but those are the only ones I know
UK has reached out to the recruiting class to ask guys to hang tight to see who the new coach will be. They think 2-3 will and at least listen. They expect 2 to certainly follow Cal
The biggest decision now for UK is do they wait on Billy. I honestly don’t know what they will do in that regard. I will post more when I hear it but it may slow down just a bit until the decision above is made
Everybody seems to know that there’s unsavory stuff w Oats and approximately 0 of them seem to know specifically what it is
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idk either
Is Billy Donovan really a tier 1 candidate? 10 years away from college with seismic changes in the sport would scare me if I was a UK fan
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I wouldn’t wait on Donovan if you can get pearl or shaka
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I think he’s a much sexier hire than Mark Pope or Shaka Smart would be
Definitely sexier. Not necessarily smarter
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Agreed, although if I were a Kentucky fan I’d probably be rooting for Billy Donovan over the rest of the crew (besides maybe Pearl) because his ceiling is substantially hire. He is far removed from the game though and has no idea what the NIL era is like so those concerns are def valid
I don’t know. Spending less on coach’s salary means a larger NIL bag. With a 12m NIL, Mark Pope can win a lot of games for you.
Pearl, Pope, Shaka. The funny thing is Kentucky has been very successful even recently during the regular season. Fans got fed up with Cal because of the recent tournament failures. So based on that criteria, to then pivot and hire one of these guys is funny.
Pearl - lost to a 13 seed this year in round 1. Hasn’t made it past the first weekend since 2019 (when they did coincidentally beat Kentucky in OT in the Elite 8).
Pope - lost to an 11 seed that really should’ve been a 13 seed if the committee wasn’t lazy. Has never won an NCAA tournament game.
Shaka - Made the second weekend this year for the first time since his VCU Final Four team in 2012. And then proceeded to lose to an 11 seed in a game that really wasn’t competitive. Also has a recent tournament loss to a 14 seed.
I am not saying this to knock Pearl or Shaka as coaches. IMO Kentucky should turn to Underwood or Pearl next. It’s just funny that the fickle Kentucky fanbase would hype up a new coach while ignoring the same things that they got upset with Cal about. At this point it feels like they will be downgrading their coach regardless of who they hire.
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