UK ESCAPES CREIGHTON 65-63!

Amid swirling rumours as to his future as UK’s basketball coach, Billy Clyde Gillispie took his basketball team to Omaha Nebraska to take on a Creighton Blue Jays squad that has been on a roll of sorts winning 12 of their last 13 games. They certainly represented an almost impossible task and a tough out for a team like UK that went in the other direction over their last 13 games, dropping 9 of those…

UK rode the backs of its two leading scores, Jodie Meeks and Patrick Patterson, who sit out most of the first half with foul trouble. Patrick was a warrior inside the entire second half and Jodie won the game, scoring the last 5 points, after being held in check most of the night…

BCG is right, this team has matured over the past couple of weeks, because this is one of those games that they lost all season, but this one, well.., they found a way to win, using their “bunker mentality” says Glenn Cyprien, assistant coach. Example: UK was down by 3 points with 1:25 seconds to play…Jodie Meeks scored a layup, and was fouled on a driving shot in the lane, for the old fashion 3 point play…The final margin of 2, with 7.5 seconds, left was the largest lead for a UK team that fought to stay even all night…

One indicator of team maturity is the fact that UK executed all five of it’s time out plays, including the all important one to Meeks that won the game. “I just think we’re executing a lot better overall, but coming out of timeouts people realize their assignments and are carrying them out the right way,” sophomore Patrick Patterson said. “Coach always has an arsenal of plays and tonight we executed them a bunch of times,” said Patterson, who was on the giving and receiving end of the set plays. “Down the stretch, it enabled us to score when it mattered the most.”

But, again, the biggest story was the way they played in winning their second straight NIT matchup. Defeating what was considered the strongest team in the field, will go a long way for the team’s confidence come Wednesday Night against Notre Dame.

Indeed, UK was the underdog here, and seemed to relish the role, playing in front of a sold-out Qwest Arena…There’s nothing that can quell the rumours like a team that comes out, and plays as if there is none…BCG intimated that he and the players were having fun, “…Shoot, our guys are having fun, I’m having fun and we’re going to go after it.”

BCG seems to be an “old school”, throw- back, type coach, who is not concerned with social graces, hence his problems at UK. There’s is no doubt he could have chosen his words much better in many encounters with the press this year, and with his own in-house media people. Hopefully, the gist of Friday’s meeting will alleviate that situation…

He is a single man who lives and breathes basketball, and two years ago we were told by this very administration that HE would be THE FIT for UK basketball. If he goes, he has not had sufficient chance, by any means, to build a team and the error is UK.

To say that a man cannot change, as some in the media have suggested, is an awful stigma on one’s persona. Patrick Patterson intimates that Billy Gillespie has ALREADY changed, “”Coach will ask our opinions. He’ll ask if we see anything out there and he’ll take it to heart,” Patterson added. “I think he’s come a long way from last year because he didn’t do that too much. But we’re all a lot more comfortable with each other.” THEY better have a top notch coach waiting in the wings, or it might be a difficult search for a new ONE….