Blue dominates White: Knight scores 37, Jones scores 29

With only ten players eligible to practice upon the eligibility ruling of Enes Kanter, tonight's Blue/White game required every player to play for 40 minutes straight with no subs. It had to be a great experience physically for ten guys to all play 40 minutes and they all seemed conditioned pretty well for it. Brandon Knight had cramps in the final remaining seconds, but his legs were good enough for him to score 37 points and only turn it over 2 times in 40 minutes. Terrence Jones, who played very little in the Canadian exhibition trip because of a nagging ankle injury, had a good showing of his post skills and athleticism for the first time in front of Big Blue Nation with 29 points! The projected starting players were primarily on the blue team, and that combined with 40 minutes of play for everyone may have increased production numbers; however, Calipari had the players switching jerseys and getting accustomed to playing with different guys throughout the game.

Other statistics of note include 26 rebounds by Josh Harrleson combined with 16 points for a double double, Eloy Vargas was also just one rebound short of a double double, and I believe Jarrod Polson scored in double figures as well (but official stats are not yet available). After not seeing hardly any action from Jones or Vargas in Canada, Harrelson was the primary big man. Despite the improvement of Harrelson and the solid play in Canada, the thought of how the team might shape up in the post without Enes Kanter was concerning going into tonight's scrimmage. It's hard to make much of these scrimmages, but tonight certainly showed that the Cats are still very talented in the post with or without Kanter. The Terrence Jones we saw tonight was the Jones we can expect to see in the season, and not the injury plagued Jones that we saw in Candada. All and all, tonight was a tremendous effort and an entertaining display of action tonight for a sub-less ten Wildcats who all gave the fans a good show and some good hustle for 40 minutes straight. We've got another pretty darn good team, folks!

P.S.- tonight at midnight marks the 1 year anniversary of Wildcat Wrap.

A year ago, inspired by Big Blue Madness and the excitement generating around John Calipari's first season in Lexington, I started this site in the early morning/late night hours of October 27th, 2009. The idea just suddenly came to me, and I immediately jumped on it. I didn't even wait until the next morning to get it going. I started it up right then when the idea came to me that night, and here I am a year later.

Who would have thought that writing on this blog would have led me to a new career path? I've discovered I really like to write and am pretty good at it. I'm currently taking a stab at a journalism career, covering sports for the Xavier Newswire. I'm also at Xavier for my Masters of Secondary English Education and if a journalism or sports information career doesn't pan out, I plan to teach English and Journalism and get into sports administration at the high school level. Because of all these changes, I won't be able to update the site regularly anymore, but I will check back and write some stories here and then. Thanks to everyone for all of the support throughout the past year.

Sincerely,
John