KSR thread from 06

[TT Cat]

Matt Jones was at the Final Four and in his blog before Kansas vs Memphis championship game said he is pulling for Kansas because Cal is a cheater. When someone asked for some proof, Matt said it was well known to any recruiter.
Now Matt didmisses his blogs as jokes that he and Cal laugh at.

 

[rabidcatfan]

Absolutely amazing. What a difference 9 years makes. Crean not only is NOT retiring from Marquette, but he's looking at going into his 8th season at IU. Then, all of the people who didn't want Coach Cal make me laugh. I bet every single one of those nay-sayers are glad he's our coach now.

To be honest, I hate thinking about the four year stretch from 2005-2006 to 2008-2009. We lost 52 games over those four seasons. Not only did we lose our dignity, but we temporarily lost our status as a premiere program. I can't remember a darker time (even the probation-era seemed less bleak to me). There just wasn't any fun in the program. The players seemed miserable and the coaches seemed out of their depth. It's times like those that can kill a top program. Had OTS or the drunk stuck around longer than they did, we may not be experiencing the amazing heights we've been these last 5 of 6 seasons and may finally have ended up like UCLA or IU.

 

[UK_Johnny24]

People were dumb about it. I remember telling people in 08 "We don't need Billy D, We need Cal" I told everybody Cal would get only the best players and win at all cost. I remember a teacher at my high school said "we didn't need Cal cause he got thugs and played thug ball" LOL. Yeah what now. The hell with Billy D, Crean or whoever else.

 

[Jkwo]

http://web.archive.org/web/20090402...SID=888&fid=1383&style=2&tid=126612285&Page=3
^Biggest thread from that period I could find. Pretty universally positive. Not to say there weren't dissenters.

Unfortunately, the Tubby fire era has a bunch of thread links that no longer work, but the consensus then I would say was Donovan 1 and Cal was in the mix with a couple others for a distant second choice on average.

 

[TankedCat]

I wanted Cal for precisely what he was doing at Memphis - for him to put Memphis on the map with recruiting told me what he could do at UK. And yes, I was ready to accept the World Wide Wes stuff - I never really cared - if whatever he was doing at Memphis was in plain sight of the NCAA and they didn't step in, then bring it to Kentucky. Trust in Sandy Bell. I even tracked down the email of some people who I thought could throw some money at UK to get Cal and to my surprise a couple of them emailed me back.

Even then though I would have been happy with Donovan. I think honestly I'd still be happy with Donovan if I knew his heart was still in college basketball (after Cal left)

But once we got Gillispie I was ready to buy in that he could get it done. I stuck by his craziness until we lost to Miami at Rupp his second year. I did have some fun with him after we lost a stunner to VMI.

There was no shortage of people telling me that we are on a 5 year plan with recruiting and give him time to get his team in here.

Before Cal that concept seemed reasonable but completely out of step with Gillispie. There was just too much smoke for there to be no fire about what was going on behind the scenes.

The "grace' period we would have afforded a coach after Tubby was pretty large. Now after Cal, whoever replaces him will have 2 years to prove himself.