Headlines and Happenings

Signings

We ended signing the two expected recruits in Darius Miller and DeAndre Liggins. (No surprise there) We also lost one in Chris Singleton, who chose FSU. This shouldn’t be a big shocker, because as of late everything was pointing him that way.

Some good news is that Scotty Hopson is delaying his signing. Maybe this will lead him to take a closer look at the Cats. Who Knows?

We do need a big man and hopefully there’s one to be found somewhere.

Noted is this article

According to Scout.com recruiting analyst Dave Telep…

Gillispie might have trouble finding a big man for the spring signing period”

From Scout.com recruiting analyst Jeff Goodman…

If a player does emerge during the course of the high school season, UK will be on him.” “Their staff is the type that will turn over every stone to find the player”

Now, with these additions yesterday some rankings have come out. According to Scout.com we have the 13th-best recruiting class. Rivals.com ranks it the 19th-best.

Billy Gillispie held his presser yesterday and talked about the signings and gave his thoughts on that. He also talked about the injuries of Jodie Meeks and Derrick Jasper. You can find more quotes from the conference here.

We are really excited about the two guys that we added today. They are guys we were interested since we got here. I worked very diligently to get those guys on board so I am really excited about getting these two guys to come play Kentucky basketball. They are good players. It is always good to get guys that are close to home, but not for that reason. I think every single school would like to get guys that are close to home, but we don’t recruit guys just because they are from a particular state, but because they are good and Darius (Miller) (from Maysville, Ky.) is really good.”

On Darius Miller…

I think Darius is a tremendous athlete. He can do anything. He has been very well coached and very well taught. His dad was a really good player. I don’t want to brag on him to much. He still plays all the time with him. He has great knowledge and he is tough. The tougher the game, the better he is. He can score from the perimeter and he can really shoot the three. He can drive it to 15 feet and jump over a defender because of his size. He has great athletic ability and he is tough enough to get inside to get some of those baskets. You could not draw up two better players for me than he and DeAndre (Liggins).”

On DeAndre Liggins…

Both of them have great versatility. DeAndre is a guy who can initiate offense. He is going to be a tremendous ball-pressure defender, as Darius can be as well. These guys are basketball players. They have things that they need to continue to work just like everyone else does but are great basketball players. They have great feel for the game and they have great understanding of the game. They work hard and I think that gives you great versatility when you have guys like that on your roster.”

Thoughts

JL Blue of A Sea of Blue, gives his take on not landing Chris Singleton. (What Singleton means, and what he doesn’t …)

The Courier-Journal’s Rick Bozich, gives his analysis of yesterday’s signings.

Rupp

The National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame will be honoring Adolph Rupp Sunday night at Kansas City’s new Sprint Center.

He will be one of four “Founding Fathers”, along with Phog Allen, Henry Iba and John McLendon to be honored.