Fire Billy? Nahhh
Congratulations to former Wildcat Chuck Hayes on becoming a new father. Dorian Titus Hayes was born on Saturday before the Rockets played the Utah Jazz in Hayes’ first playoff game.
Word is that Billy Clyde has already sent Chuck a text message and went ahead and sent over a Letter of Intent for little Dorian Titus to put his footprint on as the first signee for the class of 2025.
Hat tip: The Wildcat Blog
Had to pass this along.
Mike Huguenin at Sun-Sentinel.com
One of Billy Gillispie’s new assistants at Kentucky is Glenn Cyprien, who was an assistant to Stan Heath at Arkansas last season. Coincidentally, one of Cyprien’s wife’s best friends is Debbie Lucas — the mother of perhaps the nation’s best unsigned point guard, Jai Lucas of Houston.
Coach Gillispie couldn’t possibly be that crafty could he. Hiring a guy who is known as one of the most tenacious recruiters around. Hiring a guy who’s wife is best friends with a prized recruits mom? You daaaammmnn right. See here.
Kerry Benson a forward from Pleasure Ridge Park High School has turned down scholarship offers to Iona and Morehead State to live his dream of playing for the Kentucky Wildcats. Tubby made him the walk-on offer the day before going to Minnesota and assistant coach Jeremy Cox sealed the deal.
You’ve just gotta love the desire some people have to play for the Cats. This kid turns down two full ride offers just for the possibility of playing time at UK.
Read all about it here - Courier-Journal.com
Billy, I think its time for you to drop your unlimited cell phone data plan:
An NCAA committee has approved a measure banning the use of text messaging in recruiting, potentially closing a loophole that has been used by coaches since the technology became widespread.
…
“It’s intruding on their lives and creating inappropriate relationships with coaches. If you don’t stop it now, what roads are you going to have to cross later on?” Anna Chappell, chairwoman of the Division I Student-Athletic Advisory Council and a former basketball player at Arizona, told the committee. “If you want to ‘keep up with the times’ and ‘keep up to speed with student-athletes,’ you forget that student-athletes as a whole said they wanted the elimination of text-messaging.”
Would somebody PLEASE think of the student-athletes!
This short blurb didn’t mention anything about using the Internets for Coach/Recruit communications. So I guess Billy can still add Pat Patterson to Billy’s MySpace page. But wait, which page is the real Billy Clyde: this one, which appears to be his old myspace site where the Aggies fans went crazy; or this one, which is set to private and is “for friends, networking”?
Hmmmm, I’m no rocket scientist, but I wonder if they could BOTH be Billy’s accounts? At any rate, I’m pretty sure that Billy won’t be adding me as a friend, since I’m no longer academically eligible and have a 1-inch vertical.
The Big Blue Nation did not take Stepphon Pettigrew’s deadline demand (comment?) very well. Cats Pause posters have expressed pretty much unanimously that it’s time for Stepphon to move on because of his attitude. I believe the general sentiment is “Who is this kid to be demanding an answer from us? Doesn’t he know this is “Kentucky basketball”, and he’ll get an answer when Billy Clyde is ready. ”
On the way home from work I listen to The Sports Huddle with Chris Cross. What? It’s the only sports talk show on when I drive home from work. Plus my wife likes listening to it now as well. I don’t have to answer to you. Anyway, one of his questions of the day was asking what people thought about the demand. All the callers I heard along with Cross and Cameron thought Pettigrew was being a bratty kid and one caller compared him to Rashaad Carruth. Ouch. The problem with that is that up until now Pettigrew was a
“Kentucky kid…..without an attitude…..with the ability to score…..and the desire to be a Cat.“
One way or another Stepphon will come out of this with a full ride scholarship to college. Which college that is remains to be seen. Not a bad ending for him either way.
UK has officially announced the addition of two assistant coaches to Billy Clyde’s staff. Glynn Cyprien and Jeremy Cox are the first to be added to the new staff. Read more about it in Victoria Sun’s article in the The Cincinnati Post.
Another Kentucky kid being looked at as a possible recruit. Or so says Rob Bromley. In the video over on the right side of this page at about the 1:54 mark he says that Billy Clyde watched Scott County’s Matt Walls in what sounds like another tryout type situation similar to what Stepphon Pettigrew did. This in addition to talking to Patrick Patterson in Huntington. I’m not 100% sure but I would say that there may be more than one Billy Gillispie out there. It seems like he is everywhere.
Billy Clyde has been moving at breakneck speed since he took the wheel of the Kentucky Wildcats. To be honest it’s a little daunting to keep up with everything. So until things settle down (I hope this never happens), I plan on wrapping up the activities around the program for the last 24 hours to make it easier for everyone to keep track of. Here we go.
Whew, that should do it for today. Like I always say, it is very unlikely that we will ever have the joy of breaking a story here at FireBilly.com but that won’t stop us from showcasing the hard work of other people (with credit of course) and telling you what we think about it. At the same time we don’t want to just be a place that dumps out the links of the day (no offense Aaron) so if this happens to be the first time visiting the site be sure to check in from time to time in case we think of something funny. Oh, one last thing. From here on out recruiting will now be known as Billyclyding.