A Tuesday Update

New Assistant
John Clay says that according to WLEX-TV, Billy Gillispie has hired Alvin Brooks to complete his coaching staff.

Brooks was an assistant with Gillispie at Texas A&M. He also served as Houston’s head coach from 1993-98.

Attention Getter
UK recruit is Olek Czyz is attracting major attention from some of the top programs in the nation.

Czyz played in front of the likes of Billy Gillispie, Rick Pitino and Mike Krzyzewski.

His thoughts from a visit to Kentucky during the Elite Camp.

It’s really an amazing area of the country.” “The coaches there are all wonderful and the facilities are great. The whole state is fascinated with basketball.”

On Kentucky’s practice facility…

I was shocked really. I mean, I have never seen anything like that,” Czyz said, “I had no idea something like that would even exist on a college campus.”

The Kentucky fans…

The fans of Kentucky are crazy about basketball I can tell,” he said, “they are not shy. They will just walk right up to me and start talking about my game. It’s amazing how much they know.”

Uniforms Win Championships
The Extrapolater explains how the colors of Blue and White absolutely kills in college basketball.

Since 1990, Duke and UNC alone have given us five blue/white victory parades. Throw in two each from Kentucky and UConn, and the evidence is overwhelming: it pays to go classic on the hardwood.

Is shorter better?
Best of the SEC Blogs links to a post from an Alabama blog about the SEC fielding shorter lineups this year. They look at Kentucky.

Recruits
Jody Demling provides some tidbits on some UK targets.

He notes that Mason County star Darius Miller is drawing a crowd.

Eloy Vargas, a 6-10 forward reeled off a list of schools interested in his services. They include UK, UL, Indiana, Florida, among others. (He says that there is no favorite.)

Also we get…that Courtney Fortson isn’t worried about Kentucky’s plethora of guards.

He still rates Kentucky high on his list…and says he likes competition.