I’ve had some weird email conflict all year as in when I would login, I couldn’t post and instead got an error message that said something like, “email is already in use.” I didn’t want to deal with setting up a new email, registering that new email with Rivals, blah, blah, blah, but I finally got around to it. I have fully admitted in past posts that sometimes I’m serious with my posts and sometimes I post craziness (mostly due to constraints of physical health issues and being actually stir crazy). This is a post you can take as serious, but only as far as you want to believe me.
-My brother holds a high up position in nonprofit where he works directly with many of UK’s higher ups and has become somewhat of an acquaintance and friend of Pope. I’m not going to say who my brother is or who he works for because I didn’t ask his permission to post this. Anyway, he says the Hurley offer never happened. Mitch’s hiring priority hiring list was 1) Drew 2) Pope. Maybe there were other feelers out, but no other official offers or conversations. I don’t know what proof there has ever been exhibited to the contrary that Mitch did indeed make that absurdly large offer to Hurley, and maybe there was something as far as proof that I haven’t seen, but I kind of get tired of seeing the lore of a huge Hurley offer and being turned down by him as matter of fact on this board.
-As far as Big Z goes. Z did some volunteer work with my brother’s organization as part of getting eligibility. My brother described Z as essentially lazy or at least as not being proactive. Brother did say that he didn’t think charitable work really was much of a thing in Croatia and maybe that’s why Z navigated the situation the way that he did. My personal opinion after we have seen Z’s body of work the last two years is yea, he’s probably kinda lazy; highly talented, but not that motivated. I bring this up because of how often I see things like, “Cal doesn’t know how to use him.” And because some would still want him to come back here. I think Z’s as much his own worst enemy as anything and would have never worked on a Pope team.
Outside of those two things, I’m not going to claim to have insider information on much of anything else. I don’t know a thing about who’s being recruited seriously, what kind of money is being spent, who’s likely to come, anything like that. My brother and I don’t talk that much, don’t even live in the same state. I also think that really, really strong recruiting news is rare and that for the most part you have to have very close ties to a lot of people in the basketball world to truly know anything. Coaches aren’t going to just give away information, even to work friends, and what’s released or isn’t released is highly controlled. If I ever hear any other random tidbits I’ll pass them on.
