KSR - 2024-04-17- KSR - Hour 1

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

Matt, Ryan, Drew, and Shannon talk the latest UK Basketball news and take your calls.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome, everyone, Kentucky Sports Radio Wednesday. It is April the 17th. I'm Matt Jones. I'm in Louisville, Kentucky here at at the studio with Shannon. I got Ryan and Drew are in Lexington. You can give a shout on the Clark's Pubpit Shop phone line. I can see the names now, Shannon. So I'm going to make sure today to get the people on.

Would you like to do a shot clock, Shannon? You haven't got to do one in a while. Yeah, let's do it. Let's go for it. All right, so let's do the shot clock. 30 seconds to give your stuff, 859-280-2287. Text machine, A Vision Glass is 772-745-4. In this edition, Spotser by the T.J. Smith-Lawvis.

If you call T.J. he'll make them pay. I actually had one of my friends tell me, Shannon, they like you buzzing people on the shot clock more than anything else on the show. Because they know when it's coming. Well, they just like it. A sweet little old lady and I have to go. Yes. And I actually thought that was kind of mean to the rest of us on the show. We put all this content out. And then the thing that my friend likes the most is you just hit the button that goes, erk. That's what they like the most. Well, we'll give it to them today. But if you have, I'd like to hear your thoughts on Pope and the new era And in a 30 second or less, Ryan and Drew are here.

And Ryan, I will tell you last night, it was probably the first time in about two weeks plus that I haven't been glued to the phone the entire day. Sort of we're coming on the down end of everything. But then we got roster, we got staff. And I wanted to see if you agreed with this. It feels like to me, UK fans are more interested in. recruiting today than they've been in like 10 years. Would you agree with that? Yeah.

And I was going to ask you this. Is it because when the other coaching staff was here, we just knew we were going to get a top five recruit, a top 10 recruit every single year? I think that was part of it. I think part of it was you knew you were going to get a ton of good players. Yeah. You also knew that like we wouldn't know how good they are until about December or January.

And I think there was some complacent. But now, Drew, when the portal names are mentioned, it can be a kid from, you know, whatever school in the country and everybody's learning everything about them. And it feels like it's a island of misfit toys of all these people. And I think it's been since probably the early Cal years I've seen people this interested in individual players. Yep. I think it's in part, like Ryan said that with Cal, you just knew you'd end up with something. The floor was always high enough. You didn't have to worry and pay close attention if he didn't want to.

But now it's also just the excitement of this uncertainty with Pope. I mean, we have no clue what direction he'll go with with things, how successful he'll be getting players, even just his comments. Like I think his coaches shows you'll listen to those more just because it's something new and refreshing. Nothing against Cal, but everything kind of got to be repetitive. Now we just don't know what's next. So we're going to hang on to every move he makes.

Well, let's talk about what I know. what I think we'll find out in the next couple of days. All right. So first of all, you have the staff. All right now, as we speak, Mark Pope is sitting in a room. And this is what's happening. You've got Mark Hill, who's the assistant AD to Mitch Barnhart. He is kind of in charge with Mark Pope of trying to hire not just assistant coaches, but support staff. So the two of them are sitting there in a room and then Rock Oliver,

who, Ryan, how has Rock Oliver been here for every coach? I mean, he was here with Patino. Yes, he was. And he was here with Tubby, and he was here with Cal. And I think now he's going to be here with Pope. Is there anyone more consistent in UK athletics than Rock Oliver? No, it's been 30 years he's been on that sideline, and he looks exactly the same. He looks exactly the same.

That picture I posted this morning of Jack Givens at his high school commitment. Did you see that picture? Looks exactly the same. First of all, he looked 40 when he was 18. And he looks 40 today at 60 some years old. Drew, I've never seen a human being not age one instant in 40 plus years. You know, I'm a big alien guy. And I think when we start finding him, Jack might be one of the first people we look at.

Shannon, did you see that picture? I'm looking at that right now. Look at that picture. I mean, first of all, he looked like, as somebody put on my Twitter, he looked like he was 40 with a mortgage in that picture. So he did all of his aging from zero to 18. I think he did. I think in high school he aged.

And then he was like, his body goes, that's it, no more. And then what about that tie? Oh, that tie is awesome. Can you imagine wearing that tie? A thick, short tie. No, like, the tie is only to his nipples. It's a nipple tie. It's a nipple tie.

Is that your clubbing shirt? I think he's wearing the clubbing shirt with the nipple tie, and I think he walked down the streets of Lexington just owning this place, didn't he? You sure that's not a napkin hanging from it? I mean, you know, you put like a little bit like a little. little napkin so you don't spill it all over. That's one of the great pictures I've ever seen of Jack Givens at his nipple top. But anyway, so sitting in a room, this is what I'm told is happening, sitting in a room at UK. You have Mark Pope, Mark Hill, and Rock Oliver. And the three of them

are basically doing everything right now. And if you think about it, Ryan, there's a million things to do. I mean, you have to find a staff. You have to find players. You also have to like move, right? Like, There's all this stuff going. And so he needs help. So they are trying to get to the point where they will have, I think their goal is to have most, if not all the staff by the end of the week. Okay. Even if it's not officially announced, done.

Now, they get five assistant coaches nowadays, which is a difference. One of them is going to be this dude from BYU. What's his name, Drew? Kruger, Chad, Cougar. That sounds good. The analytics guy? you're talking about? No, the assistant coach. There's an assistant coach whose name is something, and then there's an analytics guy, and I don't know what his job title will be. We will probably

find out today about what I think is a pretty big name they're chasing. If they don't get him, I will tell you they went for him and what it was. If they do get him, we'll obviously know. and then I don't know exactly what they're going to do with the other guys. I'm told there's a coach that if they got him, there'd be at least one, maybe two players that would come with him. But I do think Ryan soon will have a better notion of at least what the staff is going to be. And I think Mark is almost exclusively looking for guys who can go get players because I think he feels like with him and the dude from BYU,

he's got guys who can draw up a scheme. Yeah, I feel like the staff, It's step one. You've got to get that staff in place to then go out and fill out your roster. So I agree with you. I think we'll know a lot about the staff by the end of the week. Maybe after the weekend, here's some more players that join the roster. But I think everybody is as excited about developing this staff as they are about the roster.

Everybody wants to talk about, well, who's he going to hire? Who's going to be on the staff? But I would say this true. Everybody does need to calm down. All right. I like the freak out from our fans. But we're freaking out a little much. Okay, it has now been, what, 60 hours since the press conference.

And people act like the season, Drew, is starting tomorrow. Some of the best players to get in the portal got in yesterday. Jeff Goodman says there are high, high-end players still to come that are just waiting on their last NIL checks from their other school to clear. And then they're coming. There's still a lot of time. I'll use the example, John Calapier. just because his press conference was five days before ours.

You know what they've yet to announce for him, Drew? A staff. Like everybody's reporting that all the guys from here are coming, but I've been told one of them might not come. So they haven't announced that. And you know how many players he's gotten so far? One. Big Z.

Big Z. That's it. That's the only player he's gotten so far. So we have as many players as he does. I just say that to say, I do think our fan base needs to take a collective deep breath. I don't need once every 10 minutes someone to write me on the text machine and say, are you worried? We don't have players yet?

No, I'm not. I really won't be worried unless we get to the end of next weekend and not have players. Then, Drew, I might go, okay, what's going on? But I still think we are completely on schedule. Yeah, I'd say the concern is also that passion we saw on Sunday. If we're going to be that crazy to show up like we did at Rupp, a lot of those people are going to want instant results, too, because we're showing how passionate we are behind this era.

But we do have to remember Pope probably if you dropped him off in downtown Lexington, couldn't find his office right now. I mean, he's still learning everything about UK over there, finding his staff, meeting people, learning his way around. He's having those conversations, I'm sure, and those will be announced in due time. But it is still very early in the Mark Pope era. Now, there were a handful of players that I think he contacted almost immediately.

But then yesterday, and it really started coming in last night, they started making contact with a bunch of guys for the first time. And the list now, I think, is like 11 people. It's on KSR Plus. It includes, you know, a kid from Belmont, a kid from Utah State, a kid from Dayton, a kid from Oklahoma, kid from Oklahoma State. But I think the one that got everybody intrigued, Ryan, was Jeremy Roach from Duke. Yep.

And the reason is, it's not that he's necessarily significantly better than any of the others. We just haven't seen the others play. I think of all the kids I've seen, maybe that kid from Utah State might be the best of them. But Jeremy Roach is a guy you might know his name. You know Duke. And I think he has intentionally picked his schools, Shannon, to create drama. It seems it.

I think the dude is like a TV producer and just decided he was. want drama. It wanted drama. So he has his three final schools, Kentucky, Arkansas, and St. John's. I love it. I wish he'd thrown in Tarleton State just for the heck of it. Kentucky, Arkansas and St. John's. Now, when he got in the portal, so this started leaking last week he was going to get in the portal. And the assumption was he was going to go to St. John's. Well, I don't know. Then, before he announced yesterday, the assumption, assumption was Arkansas. I guess that Cal, people thought he's jumping in the portal for Cal.

And now there are people who think Kentucky's got as good a shot as those other two. So, Ryan, I'm not saying it matters, but you know Kentucky versus Arkansas versus St. Johns for a kid is a pretty amazing thing. It got all of our attention immediately when you saw those three schools who he's trying to narrow it down to. So that's like, you know, the first big battle for Coach Pope, you know, going against Patino and Calo Perry for this guy. It doesn't matter who he is, but we've got to beat those other two guys.

First of all, I don't know that we have to beat anybody for him. Because I do think, Drew, we will lose, maybe not against Patino. We will lose a lot, like, Cal's going to win recruiting battles. He's always won recruiting battles. The question for me, Drew, is does he win games? Yeah, I completely agree. We might lose some head-to-heads with Cal. Cal's got more relationships than Mark Pope could ever build in a couple of months here in Kentucky on the recruiting trail.

With Roach, I mean, that's a guy that's played a lot of basketball. When fans are worried about names out there and who UK could get, I don't know how close he is to UK, but that's a dude, average 14 points a game for Duke. I think fans would be excited about him. And another name you didn't mention that I'm pumped about that they called is Baby Pages Stoyakovich out there, Andre Stalkovich. He was a freshman at Stanford. That's a guy I'd like to see them get too.

Yeah, he was a McDonald's All-American and then just didn't have a good year. It's staying for whatever reason. I don't know. I didn't watch their games. But you're right. He's super talented. I'd love to stay in contact with him. Yeah, I don't know what it was that made him not connect there, but he was a McDonald's

all-American. But I would say, Shannon, if you could beat Arkansas and St. John's for a kid to start it. Yeah. That'd be a good start. That would be kind of exciting. Here's my take on it. He already knows where he's going. He's just trolling the other two schools.

the other two. You think so? Oh, yeah. Come on. You think that's a coincidence that those three of all the schools, it's those three. There's a line of thought that says that is giving like Caldevious thoughts saying he's going to Arkansas, but he wanted to throw the other two in so it looks like he beat him for it. Right. You think that's plausible? Yes, that's what I'm saying. I think that he already has his mind made up. And you think it's Arkansas? Well, I don't know that it's Arkansas, but whoever it may be, he's trolling the other two. So maybe it is Arkansas. Maybe it's Kentucky. But I don't think Jeremy Roach would care to, like what does he care about St. John's? If there's trolling going on,

I would think, Shannon, it's at the top, right? It's with whoever the coach is, because they're the one that would care. So you think the coach is telling them also tell everybody that you're considering other schools? Well, I don't think Jeremy Roach drew cares to troll, say, Rick Patino or Mark Pope. The fan bases, though, maybe. Well, I don't know.

Maybe I'm reaching. I don't know. But what you said, it's not too far off from what I was saying. It's an old move in recruit. Cal's even done it. Cal does it all the time. That's a move. I'm not saying that's what Roach is doing, but that's an old tactic in recruiting.

It says, hey, if you include these teams and you pick our hat over them, it gives us a boost moving forward for other recruits. It kind of gives us that win over these teams. If you'll just pretend include them. So, you know, sometimes you learn things over the years. And I know Cal's mojo. Cal correctly would say that schools would add us at the last minute so it could look like that school got a victory over UK.

But Cal does the same thing. All right. Cal does the same thing. Cow likes before he gets a commitment a few days before to have it leak out, that he's considering whatever school he likes that. That's happened. It used to happen a lot. It didn't happen as much recently.

But I don't know what he's going to do. I hope he comes to Kentucky. We could use it. but I do think Shannon's devious mind is in the ballpark of where this is. I just don't know what school it favors. 859-280-2-807. We're going to do a 30-second shot clock. If you have questions, you can ask them, just your thoughts on what's going on.

We'll take a break. It's KSR. Welcome back, Tegi Sports Radio. All right, so I have a comment I want to read here. And this is, I think, I just want to answer this once because I've gotten this a hundred times. And one person writes, Matt, I'm excited about Pope. I think he's going to do a great job. But are you worried we're teetering a little too close to like Billy Gillespie years with some of these teams?

These players are not of the quality that we've had in the past and that worries me. All right, that's a two-part question. First of all, Billy Gillespie years, no. Billy Gillespie was getting these dudes out of high school when they're freshman in high school or eighth grade. You had no notion of if they could play at college at all. And guess what? They couldn't. These dudes that we're talking about have all played in college and succeeded at various levels,

either really succeeded or still been pretty good. So it's nothing like Billy Gillespie. But second, and this is the thing we all have to do, and I'm as guilty of this as anybody. We have to clear our brains of the Cala Perry recruiting method. Cala Perry's philosophy, which worked for many of his years, was get the best players, the highest rankings and there's glitz and glamour in that, right? So you bring in this amazing, shiny object every year. And for some of the years, it really worked. But then COVID happened. College basketball changed. NIL changed. The transfer portal changed. And what happened, Ryan,

when we did that strategy the last five years? Didn't work as well. We sucked. Or at least did poorly compared to the past. Yep. So that strategy, at least recently, has not worked. We're going to do the opposite. The objects we get now are not going to be as shiny and bright. You're not going to see them dunking on people's faces in the McDonald's game. These objects are not going to be shiny and bright.

But you know what? They might be better long term. We'll see. We won't know till the season. but I hope people, I see people say something like, like they talk about the kid from Belmont. I saw somebody and said, oh, we're taking dudes from Belmont. Well, you know what?

That dude from Belmont from Northern Colorado last year was the SEC player of the year. So I just think, Drew, we have to change our mindset because the shiny objects of the Cal era are not coming here anymore, at least not as many. And by the way, those shiny objects all broke and we had to take them back to the factory. when it was over, unfortunately. And I want to remind people, I know I've seen people react to like the Califa guy potentially transferring.

You're like, oh, we're getting the BYU players. Last year, BYU beat Kansas, Baylor, Texas, all these players that you're saying you've never heard of. They won a lot of big games and finished ahead of Kentucky in the Ken Palm rankings. They're like a top 15 offense. So when you're seeing these guys, like, well, I've never heard of him. They were a very good basketball team last year at BYU. use. And now you move Mark Pope over or Parkmope, either one, and he takes the guys he wants

and then puts others around him with Kentucky's facilities and resources. Who knows what he can do? But I don't think we should react like he's just bringing some bums. I mean, these guys want a lot of college basketball games against good teams. When Arkansas comes into Rupp next year, chances are very high. Their objects are going to be shinier than ours. But the question is, who's going to win the game? Because we out shiny object every team in the country with except maybe Duke. And we lost to Oak. You think Oakland's object shit and more shinier than ours?

No, they're pretty dull. No. Until that game. Until that game. So I do think like we just got to reorienting ourselves of, well, when are we going to get the big names? If you want the big names, that's probably not this anymore. We'll get some of them.

But we ain't going to get six of them like we used to. And I just think we need to change. Go look at the way Villanova recruited over the years. or Yukon or even Kansas, although Kansas would still compete for the top dudes, Carolina. I think that's where you're going to see our recruiting less what Kentucky and Duke did in the last few years. All right, 30 seconds. Zach, go for it. Hey, Matt.

You know, I'm excited about where we're going with Pope, but I always dreaded the day that Cal left. But part of me was excited because I thought it might be a good opportunity for you to share maybe behind-the-scenes story. that you hadn't been able to share until this point. We will one day. I'm going to take like, I want to get through Pope getting a roster. And then I think we're going to, I've decided we're going to have a day where Drew and Ryan and I just kind of talk about how it all went down. We'll make it almost like a podcast day where we just kind of go through it all.

I want to give Pope his shine before we're talking about Cal and extensive. But I do think we ought to do a day like that. I think we need to kind of discuss, you know, a lot. of times people didn't understand what was really happening and had one reaction and had they known they would have had a different one and some of that we can talk about now some of the stuff with cal especially the early years when i talked to him extensively i did that in privacy and i owe it to him to never like betray that and i won't but there will be stuff especially of the last three or four years that i think we should discuss to see how it all screwed up

but I want to give Pope his chance to build things before we do that. Seth, go ahead, Seth. Hey, Matt, how are you, buddy? What's up? Hey, so part of our fan base right now is acting like that episode off the office where Dwight starts the fire drill and he says, like, everybody's breaking out where nothing's really happening. Everybody just seems to cool out. Two things really quick, I know when we got 30 seconds.

Kenny Payne, what do you think the possibility of him coming on with Mark Pope to help recruit? And then what are the possibilities of him getting Jeff Shepard? No on Jeff Shepard. Ask me tomorrow on the other one, right? Okay. All right. I thought you might have a comment. I didn't know.

All right. True. Go ahead, True. I'm calling a long-time listener. Who are? What's up? Hey, I was at the press conference to make a long story short. You said older guys were head tears in their eyes, and I was probably one of them.

thought when they were showing all the championships, we was thinking about your grandfather sitting in front of a Silver Tone radio. When he was five years old, you're thinking about your brother who passed away, watched the games. And if Cal, his own statistic says, if he could. Shannon, you wanted to do that. I agree with you, though, true, before Shannon did it. That's what it was.

Yep. It was the connection to what was always so special about this to it. And I think that's partially. why everybody loved it so much. We'll take a break. Be right back. KSR. T.J. Smith, personal injury attorney. Call T.J. He'll make them pay. Now, more of Kentucky Sports Radio presented by Stockton Mortgage.

Here's Matt Jones. Welcome back, Tucky Sports Radio. Text Machine, 772-7474. By the way, it's Wings Day. KS Bar all day and night. Dollar Wings. I think there's trivia tonight. Taylor Swift trivia tomorrow. It's almost full, Shannon.

Only a handful of seats left. I knew the Swifties would show up. The Swiftie show up. The new album's coming out. They're ready to go. One person writes, Matt, I agree with you all that Jack Given's nipple tie looks odd. But I want the four of you to be honest. What's the oddest thing you used to wear that you thought looked good?

All right, I'll answer first because I know mine. When I was in college, especially Shannon, I wore turtlenecks. Yeah. And I thought I looked smooth. Like had a little turtleneck cover. Now, part of it was because when I was a freshman, I had acne on my neck, and so I wanted to cover it up. Yeah. But turtlenecks are a horrible look, and I would go turtleneck sometimes.

So that would be my bad pictures. What about you? You're asking a guy who wears spandex every week. What's the strangest thing he's ever worn with a plane jacket? Yeah, but like back in the day, was there something you wore that you thought was cool and now in hindsight? Like the parachute pants, like back in the early 90s. Oh, you wore parachute pants. I mean, I had a pair of them that I would wear on a.

biweekly basis. Like MC Hammer pants? Yeah. So I thought those were cool. Oh, I'd love to see that. I don't know if I have any pictures if I find one. I wish you. You got to find a picture of you in the parachute pants.

I'm like, what about you, Drew? Trying to think. I'm sure there's something terrible. Immediately my bowl haircut came to mind. That's not clothing, but I don't know why I've seen you with the bowl haircut. Yeah. Well, I was a child, but thank you. Well, I had it when I was at the building.

That was pretty bad. But I'm sure there. I wore Velcro Walmart shoes for a while in college. I don't regret that, though. but that was definitely a fashion faux-faw. Nice. All right, Ryan. You may be shocked.

You know, I grew up in the 70s and 80s, probably the two worst fashion eras in the history of man. In the 70s, I had butterfly collars, bell bottom pants, disco silk shirts with massive amounts. But weren't you only like, you were only like 13, man. I still had them. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. I could go to the middle school dances.

What about the nipple tie? I had a nipple tie. There was absolutely. Oh, you did have a nipple tie. It was a thing back then, a short, fat tie. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. I had one.

My mom's probably got one dressed up for Easter in a nipple tie and a silky disco butterfly collar shirt. Yeah. Hey, turn your mic down just a little bit, Ryan. You're coming. 859-280-2287. Another person writes, Matt, I keep seeing this online, and I know you want to wait on the cow stuff, but I do wonder about this.

Do you think politics had something to do with Cal leaving? This is the dumbest thing that's gone, that's been out there. Is this idea that somehow, you know, there's a story that's out there online. You can find it. And it's not true. And it has gotten passed around as fact, which is unfortunate, about, you know, Cal Perry and the crafts. And it's just, it's not a true story, but it became fact.

I just want to say this for a second just about the crafts as UK boosters. All right. So politically, you know, I'm not sure there are very many people I would disagree with more than the crafts. So, and you know that if you've listened to this show. But when it comes to giving to this university, specifically the athletics department, if it wasn't for them, I don't really know what UK would do. I mean that.

Like, I don't think we, I don't know what we would do. And the buildings that are all over that campus, like, they have either played a big part in building or built the whole thing. So I think it's convenient for some people who were sad to see Cal go to sort of blame them or politics or me or whatever. But it's not, it is not fair to them. And I'll say this. the good things that are going to happen and the things that will give Mark Pope the best chance to succeed, they don't happen without them.

So I just think I do want to take up for them in that regard. If we were to sit here and debate politics, I would have many criticisms. But just as human beings, those are both really good people. And I just hate how this narrative just went out there and people are accepting it as fact because I don't think it's fair.

Let's go to Chris. Go ahead, Chris. All right, guys, two stories. First of all, when Rock Oliver was first here in the 90s, I was a fat little middle schooler running for a city bus by UK campus and missed it. He picked me up and took me home. That's nice. Yeah. Second of all, we are Kentucky first.

We're not players first. We're not fans first. We are Kentucky first. Go cats. I agree. And I said on Twitter, Ryan, it's so nice that whether you were pro or ready for Cal to go, it's so nice to see this fan base unified for the first time, I think, probably since COVID. And like we said this week,

we had become a fan base divided, especially after the season ended against Oakland. We were extremely divided, and this kind of brought us all back together. We're all big one happy family again, it seems like. I, you know, Drew had gotten to the, I mean, you and I talked a lot about this in Pittsburgh after we lost. I just didn't know how this fan base could get through another year. I didn't without like just going at each other. And this is like the old days. Like this is like it was in the early Cal years where everybody was on the same page and like Michael Wilbon says something and you go after him. Like that's what this is now, you know? Absolutely. That's why I was ready for a reset because if Cal had another year in him, if he had lost in the second round,

Lexington would burn. But if Mark Pope or if it had been a different coach than Mark Pope starting something new, if they lose in the second round, you're growing and building. I just didn't think we could go another year and it not work out with Cal because I thought it had already gotten too bad as it was with the Oakland game, with the fan base being separated and people just, not everyone, but a lot of people losing faith in his operation here. So that's why I wanted to change, and I think we're seeing that excitement now,

even though none of us know what's next. Shannon, somebody wrote me and said they used to wear pants to school. That halfway through the day when it got hot, you could take them off. They were velcroed and turned into short. Oh, wow. I remember the kind you could unzip. I think I had a pair of those where you could zip them and turn them in the shorts.

That's like, can you imagine just velcroing off your pants into shorts while you were at school? Although if you were like an elementary school, I would bet people thought that was cool, you know? Yeah. It's like, look, he can take half his pants off, but keep the rest of them on. Convenient. Yes. Seriously, how does Jack Givens look exactly the same? Like exactly to say.

He hasn't aged a year from that picture you posted today. But he did look 40 when he was 18, Shannon. Yeah, that's true. He did. All right, let's go to Casey. 30 seconds. Go. Hey, good morning, fellas.

I just wanted to give everybody some flowers. Your guys' coverage of all this new Mark Pope stuff is been great. And I just wanted to give cash flow some love. And I also wanted to say, what the heck is up with my remit, Caff saying Arkansas is going to make it to a final four before us. Great job getting Sellers in on national radio. Go, cast. Yeah. Myron's ridiculous.

Did you really say that? He did. I think he just wanted to argue with me on the air. I see. But Arkansas's not making a final four. I mean, if Cal couldn't win here, what makes him go? Okay, so let's make the case. Again, I like to say, what's the best case?

Okay, so what's the best case for Arkansas making a final four before Kentucky? Well, it's not going to be that Cala Perry makes final fours because he hasn't made one in 10 years. So the best case drew to me is this. you could say Cal knew he needed to make changes, but he was too stubborn to do it here because he didn't want people to think that he was like giving in. So he gets a fresh start at Arkansas and he can act like any changes he makes

or changes he wanted to make on his own. And then he goes and does him. The problem with that to me, though, is he's went and is at least trying to hire the same guys, although I'm not sure he's going to get them all. But what makes you think he's going to be modern, Drew, if he's not bringing in anyone except the same ideas that were there from the beginning? Yeah, and one, I don't care what Cal does. I know a lot of people do.

Arkansas got a completely different Cal than what UK would have had next year. So if he has a great year, we cannot say that would have happened in Lexington. That's just the way I'm looking at it. I agree with that. Also, he might not get that recruiting class. We might see Cal end up with a bunch of old Porter players, portal players, because he has to when just a few weeks ago he looked into the camera and said he's not doing that Lexington sticking with freshmen. So his, like you're saying, his philosophy might actually

change at Arkansas. Yeah, he may not get all six of these freshmen. That's another thing people. I think all of those guys, Ryan, are looking at other schools. Now, they might still end up at Arkansas, but I don't think the parade was not getting Travis Perry obviously, but the parade of five freshmen that he was, I don't know that he'll get all of them. You know, now he can sell what he did here at Kentucky. Kind of like what Mark Stoops, when he got here, he's like, okay, we were selling what we did at Florida State. But now he has to go win.

Or this impression he's going to get all these top guys every single year, I think we'll diminish. I think he has to put people in the NBA. That's what we'll do. Here's my, all right, let me ask you this. Shannon, does he go to the draft and sit with Reed and Rob? Oh, wow. I'm going to say that he will.

I'm going to say that he will because he was still their coach, even though he's not Kentucky's coach anymore. He was still their guy. I feel like he should do that, actually. I think he will. What do you think, Drew? I have my guess. What do you think?

I think he will, especially if anyone invites him. I mean, if those players won him there, he should be there with him. That's the question. He'll go. He's a good guy. He'll go if invited. Now, I don't think he'll force his way to read's table. Do you think he'll be invited?

I think Rob, Rob, more likely than Reed, obviously. but I have no idea of the relationship. I don't know. I think he actually has, well, I'm not going to speculate. I actually think Reed would be maybe more likely in my man than Rob, but we'll see. Tusha. I don't know, though. It's a good question.

It is a good question. I mean, if he's invited, he should go and he will go. Yes. But I don't know what will happen with that. You know, the energy around Big Blue Nation has been absolutely amazing. Mitch came on our show and he told you about Club Blue. Well, so this was a fan-started thing. You may have seen that fans started giving $41 to Club Blue for Pope.

And they called it the 41 for Pope. So Club Blue is going to do the Pope package. Ryan, are you ready for this? $41 a month. All 100% goes to men's basketball NIL. Subscribers will receive an exclusive sign print from Mark Pope welcoming them to Club Blue. So it's $41 a month, $41 for number 41. Clubblue nil.com and choose the Pope 41 membership.

It includes a signed print signed exclusively by Mark Pope welcoming you in. So that's another thing he's got to do, Shannon, to sign all these things, all right? That's going to keep them busy. That's going to keep him busy. Clubbluenil.com, the Pope 41 membership, a special membership to honor Mark Pope joining. go to club blue nil.com. I bet that's going to be popular.

I'm just guessing, but I'm going to bet it is. We'll be right back. KZ. Yeah, suit and tie. Drew, is this you in this picture? Cory Price tweeted. Oh, yeah. Me and some biscuits and gravy.

That is you right there? That's awesome. I think that's freshman year, maybe eighth grade. That's high school, Drew? It's close, yeah. Probably freshman, I think. Wow. Look at him.

Dude, I thought I was doing it. You and I would have like you and I would have gotten all the ladies. I had offensive line potential. Wow, what a picture. Go to at Corey P. 08. I love it. Wow. You really did have the bowl.

Like, that's a flat straight line. I rock the bowl from age whenever I had hair, probably 10 years past when you should have the bowl. Wow. Shannon, he looks awesome, though, doesn't he? I was going to say maybe like sixth grade. I couldn't believe that was your freshman year. I like it.

It's around that. area. What a what a pimp. I didn't have the car yet, but I certainly shouldn't be looking like that at that age. 859, 2807. How about the UK baseball team? Beats Louisville last night, 17 to 13 in a game that didn't feel like it was ever going to end. They're now number in D1 in baseball. They are number three in the country and will play number four in the country, Tennessee, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The reserve seats are already sold out. Now they have general admission. I don't know if the weather's supposed to be good rhyme, but if it is, I think this is going to be

a crowning weekend for UK baseball. Huge, huge weekend for UK baseball. Already offered the best start in SEC history for UK. That game last night was like batting practice. I mean, it was just like Kentucky every time they got up, they were knocking in runs. It seemed like this is a big series because Tennessee obviously is a really good program. You win this series. I think you'll play Arkansas in two weeks for your chance to win only your second SEC title. Yep. You got to get through this series, though, first. If you get through this series, you'll end up bringing Arkansas here with a shot to win the SEC for only the second time in school history.

So huge weekend. I'm looking forward to it. I'm going to go out there at least one or two of those games. Michael from Dallas, 30 seconds. Hey, what's up, fellas? You know, I spent a while since I got to call into you guys, obviously being a part of the program for four years. It's a little bit different. But, you know, at my time at Kentucky, I had a privilege of being around a lot of great coaches, a lot of great people. And, you know,

I wanted to take a second to give Cal some credit. You know, there's no way you can take away from that guy in fact that he cared about those players, the fact that he was, you know, there to do whatever he could to get them the best opportunity available. But I really do think this is... Extend. It's too late. You already hit it. Even Michael from Dallas gets Shannon's bus. We can still extend them, can't we? He's already hung up. There are rules here. There are rules.

First of all, Michael, it's nice to hear from you. For people who don't know, that's one of the coolest stories in the world. Michael started out as a kid caller to our postgame show in like seventh grade and called us all through high school and then got to UK and got to be a manager on the basketball team throughout college. And just finished, I think, two years ago. that's pretty awesome. Like that's the quintessential like Kentucky dream right there, right? Like you're calling postgame shows and you end up a manager on the team.

We remember when his voice cracked. Yes, I mean, it's unbelievable. And Shannon still, though, the buzzer like the hard break comes for all in the form of the The buzzer is undefeated. The buzzer is undefeated. Diego, 30 seconds. Diego. There goes five seconds.

All right. No, Diego. Let's go to Rick. Oh, Matt Jones. All right. You lose it. seconds you only got 21. Do you think Kentucky will try to get that four-star Jeremy Roach from Duke?

How hard do you think they're going? Yeah, we should have just went ahead and let it happen. Appreciate the game. I mean, we already talked about that. We did a whole segment on it. When Roach picked Duke, was Kentucky one of the finalists? I don't remember, to be honest with you. I don't know.

Let's go to Randy. 30 seconds. Go, Randy. Good morning, gentlemen. There is an old saying with Calip. there's an old saying that a leopard never loses its spots. So just remember that when we go to coaching style and everything else. And also, Matthew, I think you should be on the Mount Rushmore of Kentucky Athletics

for coverage of the media as well. So I'll hang up. You guys have a good one. Thank you. That's very kind of you. I appreciate it. I would say, yes, Cal Perry, Drew, is going to do Cal Perry stuff, right? Like, it's going to be the same.

You know, we had a year here where he had all old guys. the year we lost to what, St. Peter's. That was mostly old guys. So, I mean, he's still going to do the same thing. We're still going to clear out. And it's still going to try to go one on one. They're going to do that. So we're going to see, it's going to be so fascinating to, like, readjust our brains drew to a completely different recruiting style and playing style than what we're used to. That's what's so exciting, even though we have no clue how it will work out, just to change, whether it's good or bad. We're trying something new and we hope it works. I think a lot about that Kellyn Grady year when Kellyn said, I'm going to go back and stand in my corner in that offense.

Whereas this offense, there will be no standing, period, I don't think. I mean, there will be, Kellan might have loved this one a little more because I think there's going to be a lot of movement to free up three-point shooters. It's just a completely different look than what Cal-B. The St. Peter's year was a waste. We should have been better. Should have been better. The year we lost to Kansas State in the second round, I don't know how much that team could have done. But that year we lost to St. Peters and this year, we should have.

been a lot better. Rob, 30 seconds. Go Rob. Yeah, I think like everybody else has said, you got to get out of Cal mode of thinking. The season doesn't start until November. It doesn't matter about recruiting season, the players, the draft, any of that. I'd rather take the X and O coach. And let me ask you, I know what they would all say, but what are the other SEC coaches saying, you think they're more afraid of Cal now or they're afraid of Pope and his style coming in? It's a good question. I talk to somebody appreciate the call who is connected to a coach in the SEC. I won't say which one.

And this was their exact words. The SEC is no longer afraid of Cal remains to be seen about Pope. Everybody thinks he's smart. The question is can he handle that job? But I think the shine on Cal, I think the shine on Cal ended the second that Oakland game in. But honestly, I think it ended before that Like these guys don't come in scared of them anymore because they do think they can out make adjustments once the game starts. And unfortunately, I think that's proven

to be correct the last few years. We will take a break and we will come back. Hour number two, more of your 30 second shot clock calls. This is Kentucky Sports Radio. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk

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