Merry Christmas, Big Blue Nation

Columnist Patrick Reusse has a holiday message for Kentucky fans who responded to a recent column he wrote on the Wildcats basketball situation.

Last update: December 24, 2007 - 11:42 PM

The similarities were obvious between the reaction of Kentucky basketball fans to the early failings of basketball coach Billy Gillispie and that of Minnesota football fans to Tim Brewster's first season of misery. Both groups decided to blame the futility on the predecessor: Tubby Smith at Kentucky and Glen Mason at Minnesota.

Throw in the fact a sportswriter has had occasion to be around these Kentucky hoop-heads and it seemed like a good idea to have some fun with Gillispie's home-court loss to Gardner-Webb and a losing streak that last week stood at four.

We now can report this: The Wildcats followers take their recruiting very seriously and don't be willy-nilly in throwing around the term "verbal commitment.''

That's what I did in reference to Patrick Patterson, apparently Kentucky's best player as a 6-9 freshman, and Jai Lucas, a freshman point guard starting for Florida.

I belittled the idea that Gillispie gets all the credit with Big Blue Nation for the recruiting of Patterson, when there were strong indications in Google-world that Smith was a solid front-runner last winter to land the standout from Morgantown, W.Va., for Kentucky.

The same appeared to be true with Lucas, the son of John Lucas, former NBA standout and coach and longtime friend of Tubby. There were even suggestions here last spring that young Jai was so fond of Smith that he might follow him to Minnesota.

That didn't happen, obviously, and Florida is grateful for this fact.

Anyway, when dinging the Kentucky fans for last Thursday's Star Tribune (Dec. 20), I called Tubby's man in the Gophers sports information and asked if our new coach had received commitments from Patterson and Lucas before leaving Kentucky.

The response from the SID office was: "Tubby says that he never received a formal commitment from either player. He also said he was very confident that they were coming to Kentucky.''

So, I stuck with "verbal commitment,'' figuring that "very confident'' was simply another version of "VC'' in recruit-speak.

Several hundred e-mails later, and a short item in a Kentucky newspaper with Patterson denying a "verbal commitment'' to Tubby, this goes down as an error.

It seems that the best that could be said about Smith's involvement in Patterson's presence in Kentucky is that Tubby had him very interested, and Gillispie closed the deal.

Admittedly, given Kentucky's history with FedEx envelopes sent to southern California, "closing the deal'' might be a tacky choice of words, but perhaps that can lead to some more e-mail responses from Big Blue Nation.

From the several I've opened each day rather than immediately deleted, I must say it has been instructive to know these folks remain capable of frothing over some agitation of Gillispie's early tenure offered in a newspaper located hundreds of miles from Lexington.

Meantime, we would like to let Big Blue Nation know that up here in the Frozen North we're just as happy as pigs in slop with what we're seeing from Tubby as a coach -- and as a recruiter, with his five-player group of early signees.

In fact, Billy G. should bring his anticipated endless supply of four-star recruits up here to see us in our old Barn one of these next Decembers. Tubby will show his successor the proper etiquette for stool-sitting on our historic elevated floor, and we'll all have a good old time.

PATRICK REUSSE

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