UK basketball continued

And because I'm just that obsessive, I worked up this little chart for comparisons.

By the way, I failed to mentioned that I will get to see Coach John Calipari on July 17th (thanks to my parents).

UK basketball

*(warning: I'm a little bit obsessed with my college alma mater's basketball program) April 1, 2009. The day that may soon become a state-wide holiday. The day the University of Kentucky hired their new head men's basketball coach, John Calipari.

What has Coach John Calipari accomplished in his first 8 weeks as coach at UK (since the season doesn't start until November)? Not much... just the recruitment of the #1 incoming class in college basketball (and maybe the #1 class in the recent history of college basketball). (Oh, that and over 95,000 followers on twitter.)

Consider the two classes that have been talked about at the top of the all-time recruiting list: Michigan's 1991 class, "the Fab Five," and Ohio State's 2006 class, "the Thad 5" (named after their coach, Thad Matta). Here are their rankings when they signed with their schools--

* A few things to note about this comparison. First, Raymar Morgan, although offered a scholarship by Ohio State, ended up at Michigan State. They instead signed Junior College (JUCO) transfer, Othello Hunter. Also, the rankings are a little difficult because the major recruiting services (Rivals and Scouts) weren't around in 1991, so Michigan's rankings are based on Bob Gibbons' rankings. Also, this chart uses Scout.com; if you look at Rivals.com, they listed OSU's 4 freshman as #1, #13, #18, and #36 (three 5-star recruits and one 4-star). Either way, these were two amazing recruiting classes, both as prospects and, as we learned from watching them, in actual performance. Four of Michigan's recruits eventually made their way to the NBA, and three of the Buckeyes' recruits were selected in the first round of the 2007 NBA draft.

Both these recruiting classes ended up getting their teams to the championship game of the NCAA tournament in their first year (and Michigan got there again as Sophmores)... though each time they lost in the finals. Michigan lost by 20 points in the 1992 championship game to the Duke team that beat UK in the final four (you know, the game with "the shot" that CBS shows over and over again every year during March Madness). Then Michigan lost in 1993 to North Carolina, with Chris Weber's infamous time-out technical. Then, more recently, the Buckeyes lost in the 2007 championship game to Florida.

Now to Kentucky's 2009 recruiting class. Calipari has signed 6 players for the upcoming basketball season. (I wish I had a creative name for this class, sort of like "the Fab Five"... maybe "the Cal Six"?)

Name- position/ rivals.com ranking (& stars)/ scout.com ranking

John Wall- Point Guard/ #1 (5-stars)/ #2

DeMarcus Cousins- Power Forward/ #2 (5-stars)/ #3

Daniel Orton- Center/ #22 (5-stars)/#17

Eric Bledsoe- Point Guard/ #23 (5-stars)/ #37

John Hood- Shooting Guard/ #40 (4-stars)/ #45

(who recently won the Kentucky high school high jump championship... reminds me of Jeff Shepherd who was a high jump champ)

Darnell Dodson (JUCO transfer)- Small Forward/ nr (4-stars)/ nr

Now, granted, we don't know how this recruiting class will turn out yet, how they'll perform as a team during the game. But the reason I say this might be the best ever is because there are three things that have never happened before (at least since the modern era of recruiting services): one team recruits the #1 and #2 top freshmen in the country, one team recruits four 5-star freshman, and one team has 5 freshman recruits in the top 40 in the country.

Don't forget that this goes along with some strong returning talent. If Jodie Meeks (last year's leading scorer in the SEC), who currently has his name in the NBA draft, decides to come back for his senior year, we will have two returning first team all-SEC players with him and Patrick Patterson. On top of that, we have a leading shot-blocker in Perry Stevenson and a maturing scorer in Darius Miller (who looks like he was made for Calipari's "dribble-drive motion offense").

The only problem UK has is too many players for not enough scholarships. Here's where we stand now.

13 scholarships=

6 new recruits +

Patrick Patterson (Jr.) +

Darius Miller (So.) +

Perry Stevenson (Sr.) +

Ramon Harris (Sr.) +
maybe Jodie Meeks (Sr.) ???

So far we've already said goodbye to Jared Carter and Michael Porter (who graduated) and Donald Williams and AJ Stewart (who are transferring out). So, if Meeks returns and all the new players qualify academically, this leaves only two scholarships for these four remaining players:

Kevin Galloway (Sr.)

Matt Pilgrim (Sr.)

DeAndre Liggins (So.)

Josh Harrellson (Jr.)-- who, according to his facebook status, is officially coming back next year :)

All of this is translating into an amazing turn around in the Kentucky program. At the end of last season, all of the Wildcat fans were bemoaning our poor performance in the NIT, looking at the probable loss of Patterson and Meeks to the NBA, worried about our anemic recruiting, staring at the looming loss of "winningest program" status, and annoyed that we had a coach that didn't even seem to care. Now with the arrival of John Calipari and his recruiting class, we are projected to be a preseason top 5 team, a final four contender, an SEC favorite, and optimistic about remaining the all-time winningest program (and beating UNC to 2000 wins... by the way, it's currently 1988 to 1984, with Kansas at 1970 and Duke at 1876). The future looks bright.

Go Cats!

By the way, here are some good blogs for lots of UK basketball updates and links to news stories:

UK athletics page

Aaron's basketball blog

Kentucky Sports Radio

relationships and obedience

I had an interesting teaching moment this past Sunday during our morning youth Bible study that I've gone back and thought about several times since... and I think it's worth sharing.

We were studying the first chapter of the book of Daniel in the Old Testament. In it, Daniel and his three friends (Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego) make the tough decision to refuse the king's food and instead restrict themselves to a diet of only vegetables and water. Whether the problem with the food was an issue of Jewish dietary restrictions or whether it had been a part of idol worship or whatever, Daniel felt that eating it would have a negative affect on his relationship with God. Obviously the easy thing would have been to keep quiet and eat what everyone else was eating. The hard thing was going against the flow in order to honor God.

And so comes the question: Why? Why would we ever choose the hard task of obeying God when it's more desirable and/or easier to go the way of the rest of humanity?

Before I get to the payoff, you should know that earlier in the morning we played a game in which three of our students tried to get as many followers as they could. Each one had the task of convincing the other youth to do what they told them to do (and not what the other two potential leaders were trying to tell them to do). One of the leaders, Kandice, was getting people to hold hands and was successful in getting two guys who were sitting next to one another to follow her instructions and hold hands (and, being a guy, I know this is certainly not something we normally want to do).

So, when I asked the question, why would we want to obey God when it's hard and inconvenient, this illustration hit me. I asked Tyler (one of the boys who agreed to hold hands with another boy), "Why would you do something that you obviously wouldn't normally want to do?" He said, "I don't know... it's Kandice."

Exactly. It's because of his relationship with her that he was willing to do it. He may not have agreed to do it for most anybody else (including me), but, for her, no problem. It didn't matter that it made him uncomfortable or that she didn't give him a great reason for agreeing to it; he knew and trusted the person who asked him. In fact, if he didn't do it, he knew there was the potential to hurt her feelings... and, as a result, the quality of their friendship.

I tried to explain to the teenagers that this is the exact (and only real) reason for obeying Jesus... out of a relationship with him. So, when Jesus asks me to do something hard or uncomfortable, why should I do it? Because it's Jesus... and I love Jesus. Which, by the way, if this is true, it should never be surprising when someone who is not a Christian, doesn't act like a Christian and doesn't obey Jesus' words. They don't have a relationship with Jesus and have no reason to listen to him. But, on the other hand, if we claim to have a love relationship with Jesus, when we choose to disobey him, we should really be concerned about what that implies about the quality of our relationship. Or as Jesus puts it, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching... he who does not love me will not obey my teaching" (John 14:23-24). Or as John says, "If we claim to have fellowship with [Jesus] yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth" (1 John 1:6).

So, going back to the book of Daniel, one of the things we know about Daniel was that he had a strong relationship with God. If you know the story of the Lion's Den, then you know he was punished precisely because he was more willing to sacrifice his life than he was willing to sacrifice his relationship with God through prayer. Daniel was able to make the tough decisions and obey faithfully because he had a relationship and thoroughly trusted the One who asked him to follow.

The life of adolescence is filled with tough decisions... and "small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it" (Matthew 7:14).

t-ball

So last week, as I was breaking in the boys' baseball gloves in preparation for t-ball season, it really hit me that with Ben and Will I was moving out of the phase of being "the daddy to these little kids" and was now "the dad of boys"! Somehow breaking in baseball gloves made it real that my boys were growing up (though Will's meltdowns bring me back pretty quick).

Here's a few pictures from Saturday's game (btw, if you know me, how great is it that their t-ball team is named the "Cubs"!). Ben is #6 and Will is #1.

(Ben playing 3rd base)

(Will playing "in the field")

(their biggest fans!)

(after the game, watching Saturday cartoons)