Wildcat Wrap x2, featuring John Wall's debut and a nice win in Commonwealth.

In the exhibition opener against Campbellsville, the Cats put together a dazzling first half performance but looked tired and sluggish in the 2nd half. This week, Coach Calipari addressed the conditioning issue with two-a-day practices beginning at 6:15am each day. It apparently worked after the Cats put together two fantastic halves of basketball in a 65 point win over Coach Cal's Alma Mater, Clarion. John Wall made his debut with an unselfish 27 points, 4 rebounds, and 9 assists. Wall could have scored a lot more if he wanted to, but he's a team player and his presence made everyone play better and that is why he's a favorite to win National Player of the Year as a freshman. Demarcus Cousins added 20 points, as he and Wall combined for 47 of the team's 117 total points.

Eric Bledsoe sat out for precautionary reasons after a minor ankle injury that occurred against Campbellsville. With Wall ineligible for the regular season opener against Morehead State, the Cats didn't want to risk anything with Bledsoe. As good as this team looks right now, we still haven't even seen our two best guards playing together and that will be quite a treat to watch in the second regular season game against Miami (Oh). Daniel Orton also left the game early with chest pains, but is listed as day-to-day.

The only other player who did not see action was DeAndre Liggins, who also didn't play against Campbellsville. One of the top point guards in the country from the class of 2008, Liggins started a significant number of games for the Cats last season and led them with 18 points in a loss to Miami (FL), but the guard seems to be in Coach Calipari's doghouse. Liggins, Stevenson, Harrelson, and Harris all started a lot of games last season and are having to earn their minutes this season. Everyone except Liggins have made the most of their opportunities and Stevenson has gotten back into the regular rotation of substitutes. Mark Krebs has also impressed in the limited time that he has seen.

We may not see another 65 point win this season, but with the incredible depth of this team it's safe to say that there will be many 30, 40, and even some 50 point wins against decent competition. Just think about this: four of our so called "mop up" players started games for us last season. Teams better start off well against Kentucky this year or it could be a very long day for them as very experienced former starters will come in later in the game and not make things any easier for them at all.

Not much can be said during exhibition play, but I will say this....this team's best player (John Wall) is better than anyone on the 1996 team, arguably the best college basketball team ever assembled. This team also has much more depth at the bottom of the roster than the 1996 team did. If this team wants to win a National Championship and be compared to the 1996 team, it all depends on how all the role players develop.

Who will become this year's Mark Pope? We know Wall, Cousins, and Patterson are going to be great just like Walker, McCarty and Delk were. We also know we're solid all the way down the roster. Mark Krebs is a lot better than Steve Massielo and a few others on that team. But it will be the guys that average 10-15 minutes a game that will make the difference. Guys like Jon Hood, Darnell Dodson, Josh Harrlelson, Daniel Orton, Darius Miller and Ramon Harris will determine where this team will stand in history. Those guys all have a long ways to go, but if they can contribute in a way like Mark Pope, Jeff Sheppard, and Anthony Epps did, than this team could go in the history books as one of the best. Unfortunately, the one thing that most of those guys lack is experience, which could be the difference of these 2 teams. But as Coach Cal says, "I'll take talent over experience any day of the week". At least when you're talking about this kind of talent, I think he might be right.

We've talked about the Cats' performance against John Calipari's alma mater, now lets talk about the football Cats and their performance over MY alma mater, Eastern Kentucky University.

WILDCAT WRAP

UK VS. EKU

Throughout the first half, it looked like the Colonels were about to put another scare on a Division 1 FBS team for the second time this season. With three minutes left in the 1st half, they only trailed the Cats by a score of 10-6. The Cats didn't come out as mad as I thought they would after losing to Mississippi State. They did march down the field in their first possession but then turned it over on downs when Coach Brooks elected to go for it on 4th and 1 in the EKU redzone. It also should be noted that they were without their two best players on offense, Randall Cobb and Derrick Locke, who usually account for about 90% of the Cats' total offense. The Colonels played with a lot of heart and passion, and at least in the first half, seemed to have wanted this game a lot more than some of the lackadaisical Wildcats.

However, the Wildcats came to play in the second half and wore down on the Colonels as the game went on. True Freshman QB Morgan Newton ended the day with 20 completed passes in 29 attempts for 187 yards, two touchdowns, and zero interceptions. Newton threw his first career touchdown pass to tight end Maurice Grinter and later found Chris Matthews in the corner of the endzone. It was great to see Newton make some progress just before next week's SEC matchup with Vanderbilt. The future looks brighter than what some people may think, in my opinion. Mike Hartline is expected to possibly return and take over as the starting quarterback against Vandy. A win on Saturday in Nashville would make the Cats bowl eligible for the fourth straight year, with two games remaining with Georgia and Tennessee.

In the end, the game ended up exactly how I thought it would and how I hoped it would. EKU played tough and kept it close for a while in a pretty well played game by both teams. They showed a lot of heart and made me a very proud alum out there today. I honestly think Eastern might just be the 2nd best team in the state. I certainly think they would at least give UofL a very good game. If UK had committed the amount of turnovers that they did against UofL today, it could have been very close just as the UofL game ended up being. I also definately think Eastern looked better than two FBS schools on UK's schedule, Miami (Oh) and Louisiana Monroe. The Cats looked sluggish in the first half, but without their two best players on the field, ended up with a 37-12 victory and now find themselves one game away from bowl eligibility with three games remaining.