Author Archive for The Fake Gimel MartinezPage 3 of 4

About Time for Game Time

Published
by
The Fake Gimel Martinez
on October 31, 2007
in Billy Clyde News and Current BMOC
. 12 Comments

Running up to tonight’s exhibition game with Pikeville College, I’ve been focused more on the players and less about our coach. Partly because I’ve been concerned with how our players will be utilized. Some folks are wondering if Joe Crawford is pouting about not being a starter. I’m wondering if Joe Crawford’s knee will be back to 100% to allow him to start. I’m wondering if Derrick Jasper may be medical redshirted, and who will be our primary ball-handler. I’m wondering who will be our inside scorer if Patrick Patterson picks up quick fouls. I wonder if we’ll have a crunch-time unit or if it will be a mish-mash of whoever’s hot that night.

With all the focus on the players, I’ve really avoided any discussion about the coach. Today I got caught back up with my BillyClydeRSS and got caught back up with our new amazing coach. Did you know that Billy personally drove Patrick Patterson back home, so that Patterson could attend his friends’ funeral? From the article:

UK Coach Billy Gillispie drove Patterson to Huntington for the funerals. Given the fatal accident, Gillispie felt it was his “duty” to do everything to ensure Patterson’s safety on the trips home.

“We’re entrusted to take care of their children,” the UK coach said. “Even though they’re big, strong athletic guys, they’re still somebody’s baby.”

He’s gonna be somebody’s only light; gonna shine tonight!

Seriously, that’s pretty awesome of the coach to do. Reason #45 of why I’m glad we got Gillispie. Reason #46 is because you know that Billy and Patterson talked about how to stop O. J. Mayo — Patterson’s former teammate — for about 45 minutes.

Reason #47 is Coach Gillispie insisting on practicing at full-speed before games. From the article:

“I really believe that basketball’s a game of habits,” Gillispie said
yesterday. “And I think if you teach people to go half speed, they get really good at going half speed. We want them to go full speed. I think it’s a mind-set deal. Every time we take the floor, we’re going to try to go full speed.”

Remember, you can’t run like crazy without bench help — if I remember correctly, Bruce Pearl’s 2005 team was talented but not very deep, and ran out of steam late in the season. Let’s hope that our bench is as talented and athletic to keep up this potential pace.

With so much reading and thinking, it will be nice to see Billy and the Boys out on the floor tonight. Without taking tonights game too seriously — first exhibition game means there will be sloppy play — I hope we all enjoy seeing this new season start off right.

Virtually Overrated?

Published
by
The Fake Gimel Martinez
on October 26, 2007
in Preseason 2007-08 and The Internets and eBays
. 0 Comments

So the ESPN/USA Today Preseason Top 25 Poll is out. Honestly I didn’t expect us to make the top 25, but I think the Billy Gillispie buzz has pushed us in to #22. That’s a nice gift for a young, talented team with a new coach.

However, the Wildcats are ranked #8 in another important list — the EA Sports NCAA March Madness 08 Top 25 teams. How’s they come up with that high of a ranking? From the sportsgamer.com article:

“We worked more closely with Doug Gottlieb and ESPN this year to create ratings that we believe accurately reflect the college basketball landscape,” said NCAA March Madness 08 producer Sean O’Brien. “Combining our resources with the expertise of the analysts at ESPN has helped us to deliver a more authentic experience while playing NCAA March Madness 08 .”

The EA SPORTS Top 25 ignores current injuries to players and projects all players on all teams to be healthy and performing up to the expectations of the experts consulted when NCAA March Madness 08 ships to stores across the country December 18, 2007.

My guess is our sophomores and freshmen are rated very high in-game, which leads to a high overall score. Plus, having Virtual Derrick Jasper completely healthy helps too.

Another interesting tidbit: EA Sports is releasing a downloadable demo that features Kentucky versus #6 Louisville. That’s awesome; it speaks volumes of how Kentucky and Louisville is still recognized on a national level when it comes to college basketball. I’m not for sure if you can get Virtual Rick Pitino to make an ultimatum about Virtual Derrick Caracter’s weight in the demo; that may be a full-game feature. If you have a PS3 or Xbox 360, you can download the demo in the appropriate places.

Many thanks to Mike at Card Chronicle for the March Madness 08 news.

The Shaw Smith Brotherhood: Holy Shoes, 1-900-4-SAMSON

Published
by
The Fake Gimel Martinez
on October 22, 2007
in The Shaw Smith Brotherhood
. 1 Comment

The Fake Gimel Martinez comes from a real-life family of UK fans. This season Fake Gimel will share some of the conversations he has with his real-life father (pseudonym: Big Floppin’ Rob Locke) and his uncle (pseudonym: Uncle Roger Hardin) in this “The Shaw Smith Brotherhood” column. You can join in on the family’s discussion by posting in the comments. Enjoy!

Fake Gimel:

For this first edition, I wanted to take a moment and give a few semi-anonymous details about my family. My dad (Big Floppin’ Rob Lock), my uncle (Uncle Roger Hardin) and I were raised to be diehard Wildcat fans by their father/my grandfather, who I named Pepaw when I was 2 years old. Pepaw taught us how to watch basketball critically and the art of screaming at the ref through the television. Back in June of 2000, Pepaw passed away. I imagine him in heaven, where he is probably still jawing about Randolph Morris’ 3rd personal foul in the 2007 NCAA Second Round game. (In his eyes, the Wildcats could do no wrong.)

Both Uncle Roger and I are real-life alumni of the University of Kentucky. Uncle Roger and my dad live in Western Kentucky, while I live in Lexington. Uncle Roger and dad also have a sister, who recently married a Hoosier; “Uncle Digger” is a great man despite being a Notre Dame and Indiana fan. When I go visit family, we spend considerable time discussing basketball instead of family matters. Hopefully you readers will enjoy these conversations, and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Continue reading ‘The Shaw Smith Brotherhood: Holy Shoes, 1-900-4-SAMSON’

Weird

Published
by
The Fake Gimel Martinez
on October 22, 2007
in About FireBilly.com
. 2 Comments

For some reason, the guys over at A Sea of Blue have invited me to help contribute. It won’t take away from my posting plans for FireBilly. I will constantly be on the lookout for the funny for my FireBilly.com folks.

If you don’t already have A Sea of Blue in your feedreader, you are truly missing out. In-depth analysis coupled with civilized discussion about Wildcat sports. Its truly one of the best UK blogs, and I’m honored that they want me to ruin it. :)

Unround Brown Ball Report - FireRichBrooks.com

Published
by
The Fake Gimel Martinez
on October 18, 2007
in Non-Basketball Stuff
. 0 Comments

Normally, we do our football stuff at FireRich.com. But we haven’t posted ANYTHING from this remarkable football season, so I feel remiss jumping on the bandwagon. Nevertheless, I found something worth mentioning, and I’ll do so here.

A column written by Herald-Leader’s Mark Story mentioned firerichbrooks.com as one of the many ways fans were voicing their displeasure with Brooks in the past. This site being one of the first of the “firecoachname.com” sites I can remember. Two days ago, the site contained an argument to dump Brooks before the 2005-06 season, along with reader-submitted pro- and anti-Brooks emails.

Today, I noticed the site had updated. Now it references the Wildcats’ victory over LSU and states “We were wrong.” Much credit goes to the owners of the site, who could have pulled down the domain quietly and acted like nothing happened.

A Challenge to the Nation

Published
by
The Fake Gimel Martinez
on October 17, 2007
in Random and Videos
. 0 Comments

I want to see something like this at one of our big games in Rupp this year:

Hat tip: Deadspin.

Students and fans, don’t wait around for UK Athletics to organize something like this. Because you know you’ll do just regular old UK logos and other benign stuff. Engineering students, get yourselves a Facebook group going and start collaborating!

Huh? What?

Published
by
The Fake Gimel Martinez
on October 15, 2007
in About FireBilly.com
. 2 Comments

So, where have we been? Um, not asleep, I promise.

Summer has been bad. We FireBilly.com writers got the BillyClyde Bootcamp treatment from our employers. So we worked and kept saying to ourselves, “gee, we should really post something.” Then we threw up in trashcans and got back to runnin’.

But we’re here. And we’re pumped. Don’t worry your pretty little heads.

Welcome to the Family, KC Ross-Miller!

Published
by
The Fake Gimel Martinez
on July 2, 2007
in BillyClyding
. 7 Comments

KC Ross-Miller verballed to UK over the weekend. KC is the 5th rated player in the 2010 class, as reported by Chris Diggs of the Louisville C-J. With another Texas talent heading to the Bluegrass, I’m sure the Aggie fans are thrilled.

Welcome to the Family, DeAndre Liggins

Published
by
The Fake Gimel Martinez
on June 27, 2007
in BillyClyding
. 5 Comments

If Matt says it so, then it is so. DeAndre is from the Windy City, and is part of the class of 2008. A Sea of Blue already drooled over DeAndre earlier.

DeAndre was at the Father-Son Basketball Camp this past weekend, which probably helped seal the deal. You can see some pics and some pickup game videos on this guy’s site. (Thanks to KSR for the link.)

The Center of the Century

Published
by
The Fake Gimel Martinez
on June 1, 2007
in Current BMOC
. 4 Comments

Today I happened to drive by Wildcat Lodge on my way back to the office. I always enjoy seeing the players out and about, so I make it a point to swing by if I happen to be in the campus area. I have a few funny “just happen to be passing by Wildcat Lodge” stories that one day I’ll document here. But we’ll start first with today’s incident.

As I was getting closer to the Lodge, Jared Carter started crossing the street from Memorial Coliseum side. He was speaking at another player who was still on the Coliseum side; they both appeared to have just finished working out.

OJs Bronco

Then he entered a mid-1990s-ish White Ford Bronco. Wait, a White Ford Bronco?

As soon as the connection is made, I shriek, “This is J. C.! You know who this is, dammit!“

And that’s all it took, really. From now on, my brain synopsises are hard-wired to equate big Jared Carter with the Al “A. C.” Cowlings’ crazy testimony from the SNL skit. To be honest, Jared’s Bronco wasn’t even the same year as A. C.’s, but what else does folks do when they see a White Ford Bronco? When Misssta Cartah has his first block of the 2007-08 season, I think you’ll know what I’ll be screaming.

And yes, I’m a sad man. I realize this. Just laugh at me and have a good weekend.