2026-04-16- KSR - Hour 2

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Welcome to hour two of Kentucky Sports Radio presented by Stockton Mortgage. Now here's Matt Jones. Welcome back hour number two, Kentucky Sports Radio, 859-280-2287 here at KS Bar and Grill, open for lunch. And remember tonight trivia seven o'clock. Get your team. It should be a beautiful evening of fun and excitement. And then you know, what are you laughing at? You said Judge Gabe is bringing in some ringers tonight. Judge Gabe is coming. We got all kinds of people. This is going to be a celebrity filled, filled trivia, which I'm going to spend a lot of this afternoon, afternoon getting ready for. One person writes, Matt, is there a chance Otega would come back for a fifth year if we have the five year rule? I think Otega already, wasn't there already a fifth year thing that he set out or something a year? Or do you know? I'm not aware if he did. Well, let's talk about that rule real quick. Otega, so the NCAA is going to adopt according to reports the five, you get five years of eligibility, but it's five years, no exceptions unless you go on a religious mission or military service. So except for, so if you get hurt, it counts towards the year. Yeah. If you graduate or whatever, it counts towards the year. Everything is, but you can play for five years, which means there's going to be a lot of guys play for five years. Sure. You know, you know how we'll see players and be like, that guy's been in school forever. Get ready. That's going to be even more of that. But no, no injured reserve. I think it's really only religious mission trips and service in the military are the only things that will not take away your five years. And it's five years from when you graduate high school or if you're overseas from when you turn 19. So I guess the theory is there won't be any college players or 25, 26. It'll be, it'll be that. So do you like the rule? I like the rule. I don't stats nerds are not happy about it because it's going to make all the records seem a little obscure. Some of the records will fall. Yeah. Some of the some of the Pete Marovitch, he kind of records will probably fall. Yeah. But most guys, you know, especially in football, they redshirt anyway, and they're there for five years anyway. You can't, you can't make changes about the future of the sport just for stat sheets from the past. No doubt. When you do that, when you do that, you're just, you're just, you know, that's what with the same argument I made about the triple crown, you can't keep saying, well, the pretense could be two weeks later if none of the horses run in it, then what's the point? Right? Now, the question is apparently all players in college now will get an extra year. So like take Trent Noah, he's been in college for two years. Trent Noah is going to wake up and now find himself with three years of eligibility instead of two, which is kind of interesting for a guy like Trent that's not going to make the NBA. He can make a lot of money in three years here. Exactly right. So these guys now have a lot more time to play basketball. Now, the counter to that is they don't know what they're going to do with seniors right now. So guys who just finished went through their senior days, Denzel Aberdeen, and apparently the decision has yet to be made. Do you think the guys that just graduated that would think their career was over, you think they should get another year? I mean, you got to draw the line somewhere, right? So I mean, if this is the new rule effective today, then if it was yesterday, it's too bad. I think it's effective today. Okay. So nobody, nobody gives us an option to maybe get some more players. I mean, I will say if they decide the guys that are seniors get another year, all of a sudden you're going to have a whole new group of people that have the ability to play college basketball. No doubt. No doubt. So the portal all of a sudden gets a little bigger because you're going to get although, you know, Denzel Aberdeen is the only guy I saw that that got in the portal. What's interesting is the portal closes on Monday. If they decide after Monday, you get an extra year, but the portals close, that would mean those people could only play at the school where they were. So you'd have to come back to Kentucky. So it'd be interesting to me to see as these reports that it's going to happen, do some of these graduate seniors do what Aberdeen did and jump in the portal really quick just in case, just in case. Very interesting. I mean, I don't know. Aberdeen might end up have been a smart one. He might be one of the few that would have the ability to go somewhere else. You're right. You would think others would follow suit. You know, just in case this will pass. Now, let's talk about a couple teams real quick. Florida is going to be stacked next year. Stack. Yeah. They're bringing back their whole team except for that Lee kid. They brought in Aberdeen to replace him. All those guys came back. Condon, Hal, what's the big guy? I can never pronounce his name. The strong guy. A gluli. That's not close to the name. So I'll just get you to stop. Just stop. But they're all coming back and now they add Aberdeen. I think Aberdeen's better than Xavier and Lee. So they might be better next year than they were this year. Is Boogie staying also? Boogie stay are all staying. Oh my goodness. So they're going to be good. Louisville is going to be good. Does that bother you? Yes, it does. I asked you this during the break. Where is Louisville getting all this money to sign these kids? I don't know. Louisville just decided Louisville fans got mad because I put out they were going to have the most expensive roster in the country. I put that out a couple days ago and they were like, you're coping. You're lying. It's just coast pat. Kale's just great. Ball time. And then of course, yesterday, Goodman and Norlander said Louisville is going to have the most expensive roster in the country. How? Tell me how. You know what I think Louisville is doing? Yeah. You know, we talk about Pope. They have some of the same questions about Kelsey. Like, is this, I think they're like, we're going to give you a squad, Pat. Let's see what you do. Like, we're going to give you, and if you can't do it with these guys, then you can't do it. So we'll see. I mean, they're going to have a really good team, but they're also, you know, we'll see. I don't know. But they've got it. The Louisville's always had money. It's just they've spread it around a lot of sports, but they're going all in on basketball. They're going to have the most expensive roster in the country. Well, they had a good transfer portal team put together last year. This one's better. This one's better. This one's going to be better. All right. So I have a question. A name from the past popped up a few minutes ago, and he wrote something. And I actually think there's, it's not bad. And I want to get your take on it. Okay. This is from Mark Maggard. Wow. Mark Maggard. Yes. Mark Maggard. For those of you that were on the internet for Kentucky fans, he was, if you go back to the Billy Gillespie years and the late Tubby Smith years, if you were to said, who are the big names in UK online sports? Mark Maggard would have been one of them. Oh, he absolutely was one of them. Three or four. And he was one of them. Yeah. Kind of disappeared. But he wrote this. This was he said on Twitter today. Look, for better or worse, and I think a case can be made for worse, Mark Pope has info on lockdown. He's been that way for a while. He doesn't tell anyone anything. No leaks, no whispers, no friend in the media to help drive the narrative. When you do this at UK, the void will be filled by others who drive a narrative. And normally that's not better. When you don't leak to reporters, they're going to find a way to have something to write. They'll tell a story, a side of the story that benefits those who do cooperate with them. That is one of the reasons you hear so many false stories about UK. The truth is nobody knows what Pope is trying to do, who he's prioritizing, etc. He doesn't even tell close friends who he's spoken with. So when you hear detailed accounts of stuff that's supposedly happening, I take it all with a grain of salt. Most of its rumors placed together as people make wild ass guesses. I think he's, I, Mark and I have rivaled over the years, but I think he's 100% correct. I think he's dead on. I think he's 100% correct about this. People, Mark has made a decision that I don't think any other coaching staff in the country has made, which is talk to no one at all. Every coaching staff will talk to different people. Like for a while, Cal talked to me, then he stopped and then he talked to Kyle Tucker and then he stopped and then he talked to Seth Greenberg and Andy Katz and then he's, well, I think he still talks to those guys, right? Every coach has their guy or guys, but Mark has taken the view we're speaking to no one. And I don't know that that's a good idea. I actually think it's a bad idea, but he clearly thinks it's a good idea. But so people, when they're getting mad at reporters, like they all got mad at Jeff Goodman yesterday, I think Mark Maggard makes a good point. It's natural that Jeff Goodman is going to get information from other people. And when he puts it out, it might not have a great spin for Kentucky in part because Kentucky's not giving them any information. And so, you know, I actually think that's a bad PR strategy, but it is clearly Mark's PR strategy. Do you think it's good or bad? I don't like it. I mean, I gotta give Cal credit. He kind of knew how important it could be to leak certain info out. You know, hey, Matt, I want you to pump up this Indiana series or whatever it might be. You know, he'd use your voice to kind of help promote something. Pope can also use our voices today with recruiting news or scheduling news or whatever it is, an overseas trip. He just keeps it also quiet. We fill the void with noise. Shannon, what do you think? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you need to. I mean, we saw what happened with the football team last year, right? I mean, we were making up our own good point thoughts on what the football team was going to be like because they were the same thing. Mark Stoops did the same thing at the end. And I think there's a narrative sometimes online about me specifically where people will go, well, the, you know, these staffs have stopped talking to you because you're whatever. They don't talk to anybody at the end. Stoops was talking to no one. Pope's doing the same. And I just don't think it works. And I'll use the realm of politics because I think it's the closest equivalent. The Republicans have been very good under Trump of many years of kind of getting the information out they want through their mouthpieces, whoever it is. And I think the Democrats did it wrong in 2024. So Trump like went on these podcasts and he got his message out to all these people and Democrats kept it to themselves and they didn't use like they used to. And I think it hurts you. I think you have to have voices out there promoting you. Absolutely. And he, Pope is not doing that. Now, it may in the end work out, but I will use the Rob Wright thing as an example. I knew what had happened with Rob Wright. And as I was watching people get excited, I knew that internally folks around UK weren't as confident once he got on campus. And everybody got themselves worked up in a frenzy. And I wanted to kind of calm everybody down, but I couldn't get the confirmation that I needed from UK. So I didn't say, and then when he went somewhere else, you saw what happened. And I, you know, I wish that I wish they would do a better job about that because a lot of the anger that comes out at Pope and the staff could be managed better. And I've expressed this to them and there are people at UK that agree with me, but I don't think the head coach does. So this is how it is. And usually there's even an assistant coach that may talk to him. It's always an assistant. Yeah. With Cal. So in his, Cal would talk directly to me, but that's rare. Usually it's assistants. And let me say who's doing a great job of it. Will Stein. Yeah, you're right. Like Will Stein is doing a great job and he talks to that, like his people talk to it. But like, have you noticed all the good publicity? Will Stein, how many times do you see a national college football reporter going, things are going well at UK? Well, why do you think they're doing that in part? It's because they like him. That's right. And cause he's talking to him and he gets some excited. He's talking to him. The assistant coaches are going on shows, talking to people. It definitely helps spread your message. I think it helps. Who's up next? Let's go to Brady. Brady, go ahead, Brady. Hey, Matt. Listen, was it being asked anything Thursday? I have a question that I've been wanting to ask for the past few years. So to revert back to a previous roster, when we got Zee into school, you alluded to the fact that there was crazy stuff that went on behind the scenes to get him in now with him being involved in move from Kentucky. Can you get into that at all? All right, I'm going to jump off here. So that's a great question. I appreciate the call. So remember when Zee got into school, the semester had already started. Correct. I heard you could tell me if you agree with this. It was past time you could register someone for school. The deadline would already had already passed. I heard that they registered a fake student. This is just what I heard. I can't swear this, but I think it's true. They registered a fake student and then when Zee decided to come, filed a paperwork that said, we got the name wrong and put Zee as the student. Well, if it's true, it worked. No, I don't think this was like pulling one. I think everybody agreed kind of under our UK bylaws. This is what we have to do. So Shannon, and they registered like, you know, Zach Isaac, and they got him registered. And then when Avicic decided to come, they went and did a name change form and said, John, whatever, how you pronounce the first name of these, the first player I've ever heard that could just come in whenever you want. So I mean, you can pull that off. But they did it. So somewhere there was the name of a student that was not a student. Zach Isaac. Let's just say Zach Isaac so it could become a visa. It was kind of miraculous how suddenly in the middle of the semester, I can swear to that, but I've had multiple different people tell me that story. I kind of love that story. Everybody was like, we got to get somebody registered about Zach Isaac. Oh, yeah. And then they wrote back and go, listen, we got his name wrong. It was, you know, translation issues. Shannon, it was translation. It was lost in translation. So that's what I heard happen. I love that story. I hope it's true because I love the fact that's what Kentucky did to get him in. The weather's warming up. The days are getting longer. So why not cornbread a few seltzers? Can you imagine just sitting back on your porch? Yeah. You know, Dwight Yolkham and ZZ Top, I can sit on my porch and watch it just have a seltzer. Yeah. That's what you can do. Everything cornbread makes is expert crafted third party lab tested made with all natural ingredients. First time customers, cornbreadhemp.com, code KSR for 20% off. What is it? Code KSR 20% off for cornbread hemp.com. You get your gummies, you get your oils, but now these seltzers are flying off the shelves. Cornbreadhemp.com. This is the good life. We'll take a break. Be right back. Let's take you to sports radio. Welcome back. Turkey Sports Radio 859-280-2287. One person writes, Matt, if what you said is true, why would we listen to anything you say if Pope doesn't talk to anybody? That's actually a fair question because I'm not getting my information from Pope. So everything comes second hand, but that's a fair question. I mean, that's part of the reason we don't say as much is because we want to make sure it's right. And if you don't get it direct from the source, you have to go through other directions. He's not talking. His assistant coaches aren't talking. So we have to fill the void with what we think. Whisky Thief tomorrow in Frankfurt. Yes. What's the address? Crab Orchard is the name of the street out there. Crab Orchard Street. We will be there tomorrow with the crew. So come see us tomorrow at Whisky Thief. It's awesome out there. Now they've got live music like two nights a week. They've got food trucks out there on the weekend. So it's awesome. Yeah. I love it out there. Is Derek Anderson going to be there? I don't know if he's going to be there, but they've got like one of these bourbon lines getting ready to start. Okay. Is he supposed to be there? I don't know. I think Derek Anderson will be there. Good. So you can meet Derek Anderson. He can do the little. There he is. He says he'll be doing a signing right after the show. We saw autographs. There we go. We saw signing autographs. Look at that. So we will see. So Whisky Thief is always a fun one. It's beautiful out there. It is beautiful. It is really, really beautiful. So come on out and join us there tomorrow. Before we go, the 859-280-2287, Diana Rossini resigned from the athletic for the finger locking thing. Do you think she should have had to resign, Mr. Journalist? There was a lot of pushback because their stories that they told didn't seem to add up. They said they were there with a group of six people, but yet there were no. But you think cheating, let's just say that they were cheating. Do you think that should be, should you have to resign as a reporter for that? If it's with someone that you cover, maybe. So you think it's not so much the cheating it would be because it was someone you covered. Yeah. Somebody that she has to work with on a regular basis. What about you, Shannon? Do you think that? I mean, I'm obviously not going to condone the cheating part, but I don't think you should lose your job because you're covering somebody that you're dating. But I mean, let's be, can we be honest here for just a second? Like, can we be honest? If every reporter that has cheated on their spouse had to be fired, I mean, this is not, they're going to be a lot of people that are not going to be having their jobs. And I ain't saying anything, Shannon, about the people who, but like, there'd be a lot less people in positions of employment. I'm sure there's a lot of this that goes on behind the scenes that most of us have no idea about. You may know. I mean, leave aside though, leave aside, it's who she covered. You can't be firing people for cheating on their spouse. You'd be firing 80% of the reporters out there. No, I just think it's the fact that her beat was NFL and covering his teams. So it's the fact that she's covering his team. Yes. When they give her a different team to cover. They could just shipped her out to Los Angeles and the quake cover the Rams and the chargers out here. Why doesn't he get in trouble? Don't know. Yeah, you guys get a new coach. Yeah, I mean, like, he's continued to not deny, to deny, deny. Well, I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I thought their explanation like that, like they were just friends and first of all, they have no pictures of the friends. Zero. Like they said, they were all they said, there was a group of six people. We haven't seen one picture of the friends. None. We've seen no, no proof that friends were there. There come the AI photos. We're gonna Photoshop people in. Yeah. I mean, no people have come forward as having been there. And then the interlocking fingers like it is what it is. But I don't necessarily think she should have gotten fired for it. But I guess she didn't get fired, but they were, she resigned because she thought she was going to get fired. Yeah, they may have had that conversation with the people at the athletic like, look, we will give you the chance to step down. If not, we're going to fire you. So to save her career, she falls on the sword. Although I will say the explanation of we were with friends, I don't buy that anymore. No, because you would show some picture of you with your friends. Two of them laying by the pool by themselves. No friends. That wasn't very friendly. Who's next? It's gonna Dennis Dennis. Go ahead, Dennis. Dennis. All right, no Dennis Bob. Go ahead, Bob. Good morning from Madisonville. Hey, why guys? What's up? Couple questions about Travis Perry. Hey, I heard him through his name in the portal. Yes. See, do you all see a landing spot for him? See, did he save his power for career with his play in the SEC tournament and Dean could Travis get him at Arkansas Little Rock? Were you listening to our conversation during the break? He had to be sitting right between us. You have to be sitting in this restaurant because we just had this conversation seconds ago during the break. I appreciate the call. You were saying you've heard he might go to Arkansas Little Rock. That's the rumor I think people are throwing out there because of Travis and the connection with Western Kentucky with Travis being from Madisonville and Travis Ford. Yeah, I think he's better than that. Yeah, I think I listen, he played well in the SEC tournament. He did. I just don't think the SEC is the league for him. But I do think he could play. If I were him, especially now that you got five years of eligibility, I would go to a school like Western or Wichita State or a school like that. Go be really good. Maybe you love it and you finish your career there or then you get one more chance at a big power school. That's what I would do if I were you. Western Kentucky would make total sense. He'd probably get a lot of money, probably get a lot of playing time, probably score a lot at Western. I mean, if he goes to Western though, he could be really good there. Yeah. I don't know. Has some NIL deals, probably. I don't know if he's an SEC starting point guard. Can he play in like the ACC or the Big East or the maybe depending on the team? Maybe. Yeah, I don't I wouldn't give up on him yet. We'll take a break. Be right back. KSR. TJ Smith, personal injury attorney, call TJ. He'll make him pay. Now more of Kentucky Sports Radio presented by Stockton Mortgage. Here's Matt Jones. Welcome back to the sports radio. 859-280-2287, text machine 772-7745-254. Somebody wrote me and said that Travis Perry is between Vandy Dayton and Murray State. I asked, did my crazy or did he almost go to Vandy when he went to Ole Miss after he left Kentucky? It seems like Vandy was one of his choices. Maybe. Yeah, I don't know. Can he play at Vandy? Yeah, he can play at Vandy. I don't know if he can start. Although, again, you know, he played really well in the SEC tournament. So maybe that's a level that we haven't seen him. We haven't seen him hit before. One person writes, this question is for you and Ryan, since you've been covering UK. What were the two teammates that were on a team together that disliked each other the most? That's an interesting question. Gerald Fitch and Corey Sears. Yeah, so because they were the two guys that got in the fight in the plane, right? On the airplane. Was that like though, did they really dislike each other or was it just they got in the fight? Could have been an isolated incident, yeah, on the plane that night, that day. When I think of rivalries that defined a team, I think the severe wheeler, Oscar Sheebaugh, is the one that sticks out to me. That's the first one I was going to say. They really just didn't get along. And Oscar was the best player, but the team kind of rallied behind severe. And that's that was a bad combo when when the much better player is not the one the teammates like. I think there was some issues between Rondo and a couple guys, maybe Patrick Sparks. Yeah, that was definitely true. But that didn't really affect the way the team played. I felt like the severe Oscar thing affected the team. I think it definitely did. There was a definite divide in the locker room that year. Yeah, that's probably the one that would stick out to me as being the most important. One person writes, Matt, I got a question that I think would be fun, funny to hear, especially from Ryan. You get a free trip anywhere in the world for two weeks. No questions asked. Where is everyone taking it? Shannon, you go first. Where are you taking? You get a free trip anywhere in the world for two weeks. Two weeks. Good question. I'm going to say Australia. I don't know why, but I just feel like it would be fun. It's a place I'm going to go. So I'm going to go Australia. Good call far away. Yeah. I'm going to say I'm going to say a yacht in Greece. Oh, because I'm trying to think what is expensive. Since it's free, I want to go ahead and do an expensive trip because then I could, when I pay, I'll go to one of the cheaper places. So that's what I would do. Now, Ryan's going to say something like, you know, Jamaica. Nashville, Kentucky. No, Nashville, Kentucky, which is not a place. Gatlinburg. Nashville, Kentucky. Isn't there a Nashville, Kentucky? No. Okay. So what are you picking? I said this one on the time on this show. My dream has always been that I was a kid to go to Hawaii. I know you've been, I've never been. I would probably want to go to Hawaii for my two weeks there. Yeah, but that's what I think I said to you when you said this last time is like, that is doable. Yeah. That's still on my bucket list. I've not done it. So you would use your trip anywhere around the world for free and go to Hawaii? Probably. I would go to Hawaii because it's been a dream. Why is it a dream? I don't know. You know, you dream about Hawaii. It's kind of a bucket list. What is it you think? Yeah. What is it you think will be there? What is it that makes it a dream? Beautiful beaches, beautiful scenery, all the tourism things. Go see the, uh, go see what? Knocked on a blank. What's the, the worship that's saying? Yeah. You talking about Pearl like Pearl Harbor? Yeah. Pearl Harbor. Yeah. You want to go see Pearl Harbor? Oh yeah. I think it'd be awesome. Okay. Well, I, you know, we can probably make this happen, which gets me to the announcement today from the NCAA that basketball teams will be able to take foreign trips now every year, not just every, the rule before was every four years. Now they can take a trip around the world every year. I expect Ryan Kentucky will do this. Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you go? I mean, it's cost money, but relatively speaking, they can get somebody to sponsor it and, and you get to take your team and go play against real teams. Don't you think UK does this every year? I think the most major teams will do it every single year. Why wouldn't you? Like you said, you get a free practice time, free time of your guys to go on, get on the court and play somebody. You can go a million different plays. Sure. Right. So I, I think Kentucky's going to go somewhere this year. Why wouldn't you? I think we will have basketball this summer at some point. Yeah. I'm going to say, why wouldn't you do that? Get a chance for your guys to get on the court a lot earlier without this trip. I think the theory behind this continues to be a revenue-based theory. Basically, they're doing this saying this is ways for schools to make money. I mean, so I don't think these are necessarily going to be free, fun trips to Windsor, Canada. I think these will be trips to resorts that UK packages with tourism companies to sell to people and it'll book, they'll try to make revenue out of it. You think they'll have like little round robin tournaments like we saw down in the Bahamas? I mean, think about if you could have Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas and Yukon, that's huge around Robin in the Bahamas, people are going to go. That's huge. Of course, basketball fans would flood that place. So, so I think what I think this is, this is a start of, you know, in volleyball, I saw Kentucky is playing Louisville in an exhibition game in volleyball like Saturday. Did you know that? Yeah. What they've basically done in volleyball and baseball is they've made their fall baseball exhibition games, their spring volleyball. I think basketball is going to create a summer exhibition. Yeah. Where basically these basketball teams get to play games that do not count during the summer and I think that's going to start. I guess they could play even like professional teams in Europe if they wanted to go to Europe. We've done that before. Yeah. I mean, when we played, we played the team in Croatia where Z, Big Z and Yelovic came from. Yeah. So, who's up next? Lee. Lee, go ahead, Lee. Hey guys, first time, long time. Who are? Just wanted to call about the, well, the caller earlier and mentioned about the 2015 team with Dysit and on rotation. Do you think it hurts where Pope doesn't have like the pro thing that Cal did where guys are still going to sit and listen thinking they're going to go pro? You know, Pope doesn't really have that in his history. And then the second thing I was going to call about, do you think Pope will ever change his ways on the media and how he wants to go about like feeding things out just to make things better for him? Because right now it's just not really going his way. I think there's a lot of people at UK. There's a, I appreciate the call. There's a lot of people at UK that are giving him Pope advice to change on this, but as of now, I don't think it's going to happen. I think Mark Pope probably takes the view that next year is such an important year. He's going to do it his way and then hope it works out. And I understand that if that's, if that's, I get that view. Like if this is going to be my year that makes everybody judge what I'm going to do, I want to do it my way and then it'll either work or it won't. He kind of did it his way. His first year, you know, he came in so late, he kind of did put pieces together to fit his system. But, but, but it reminds me of, you remember the conversation I had, Ryan, when, when Mark Stoops got here with Vince Merrill, this was like one of the wisest things Vince Merrill said to me. Vince Merrill was talking about recruiting because you remember when Mark got here that first year, he got a bunch of players and he got some high end guys to come here. And I remember Vince saying to me, here's the thing, Matt, right now we're recruiting based on what Mark did at Florida State, Miami, right? And what Neil Brown, his offensive theory and like what I did at Nebraska, he was like, we're recruiting based on other places. He said, but after a year or two, we can't talk about Miami and Florida State. We have to have done it here. Yeah. Right. And he said it's almost easier to recruit now than it will be when there's results. I think we're seeing it with Will Stein. I thought I was gonna say it. Yeah. Will Stein's doing this awesome job. You know what Will Stein's recruiting on? Oregon. Oregon. He's recruiting on Oregon and he's recruiting on the, being the quarterback coach with Lamar. But after these games start, he's going to have to recruit on what he did here. Yes. Mark Pope that first year was able to recruit on, here's my system. It's Kentucky. Here we go. Two years later, he has to recruit on Mark Pope at Kentucky. Correct. And I think that's why you see sometimes the splash when you first get here, but then it becomes, okay, don't tell me about what Cal did. Don't tell me about what you did at BYU. What are you doing here? So you have confidence he'll get guys to fit his system like he did in the first year that kind of worked. He got one. See what happens by next week. Let's see how many, let's see what our roster looks like at the end. You know, I said Louisville's going to spend the most money. I bet Kentucky ends up spending the fourth, fifth most money. If you are at Kentucky and you cannot put together a roster that is really good with the fourth most money in the country, that's on you. Don't you agree? Can almost be a failure if you can't do it. If you can, your first year, you did it. Your second year, you didn't really. Let's see. Gotta go and gotta do this. You would make a break. Here's no, here's the great thing about Kentucky basketball. There's no excuses here at Kentucky football. There might be some excuses. You don't have as much money. You don't have history. You don't have, tell me about, there's no excuses. You've got the money. You've got the fans. You've got the resources. You've got the history. But you gotta do it. You know what I mean? You know, this time last year, we thought he was putting together a great roster. We thought they were too deep in every position. And on paper, he did, but it didn't work. Didn't work. Now it's got to, you know, actually, actually work. Let's do DraftKings. 8-5. Why'd I do this? DraftKings.com. You could make your bet. Put $5 on any game and you can win up to $300 in bonus bets. The playoffs start. Did you watch the games last night? I missed it last night. Good traditional Steph Curry, like throwback, great game by him. Max, he had a good game too for the Sixers, right? That's right. So you go to DraftKings, use promo code KSR, bet five, you get up to $300 in bonus bets. 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No. I think genuinely people are all good. You say good people all about a lot of people. If there ever a product I could bring up and you would go bad people. I don't think so. Not if they're advertising on this show, they're good people. Okay. They're spending money, good people. So you're just like, if you spend money on KSR, you must be good people. I don't think you should take that view. No. Yeah, because you never know. I mean, we don't know all these people. They're bad people and they might. So I think you, I don't think you want to put your personal credibility on the line for every, like you need to be careful when you do that. You, you, you can't just sell Ryan limited to the highest bidder, but Shady rays, we know these people. Shady rays are good people, but don't, don't diminish others by saying everyone is good. If you're buying advertising on this show, I think you're good people. So seeing he's not, he's doubling down. He's not gonna, he's not gonna change anything. Did, did we talk about Louisville about yesterday about them getting the U S gymnastics trials? You didn't mention it. Yeah. So Louisville is going to host the U S Olympic gymnastic trials in 2028. That's, that's huge. That's something that is a massive event. Yes, it is. City of Louisville, like to have the, the trials, that's huge for them. I don't think Kentucky, we've ever hosted anything gymnastics related to the United States. Do we, I, Olympic team, do we have a gymnastics thing in Kentucky? Like how did we get picked for that? I don't know. I guess just the, the downtown Louisville with the, the YUM center kind of perfect setting for hosting events. That's awesome for the city. It's just kind of, feels very random. Cause do you know anyone that does gymnastics? No, and our UK gymnastics team ever UK. That's true. They, they have, we have a, we have a big, and I'm sure you have L has a gymnastics team. Shannon, do you, is gymnastics big in Louisville? Like I know volleyball is big in Louisville. You know, they have volleyball tournaments in Louisville like every week. I'll see like a lot of gym net, like just randomly driving around gymnastics, like buildings, but I don't know that it's huge or, you know, bigger here than it is in any other city. Where are the gymnastics buildings in Louisville? I don't know. I don't have the address. You say you see a lot of them. I just can't think of ever having seen one. There's one in Mount Washington, I think. Okay. So, you know, well, that's true. The bullet county to the Olympics pipeline is pretty big. I never knew the city of Louisville though was a pipeline for United States women's gymnastics. Well, it's very cool. Be a great event for the city. I get a great opportunity for the city to kind of shine. Yeah. So, uh, I thought that was good news. Who's up next? Go to Kevin. Kevin, go ahead, Kevin. Yeah, thanks for taking my call. Uh, just had a, first of all, Matt, a couple of comments to go from you. You took, you took my, uh, a reason for my call with the Wilstein and let's see what he does before, you know, the media honeymoon is over. But, um, so I'll just switch to a second topic. Let's say we get, uh, Freeman and the Wilkins and then obviously Diallo paired with the six guys we have coming back or already in house and maybe two to three role players from the portal. Do you think this team is, is good question or better than the team? Yeah, that's a great question. So let's say that's the team. Appreciate the call. Diallo Wilkins, Freeman, Malachi, Cam Williams, Trent Noah, Mason Williams, and let's say we go get one or two shooters and another big in the portal at your team. How good's that team? Just me on the outside looking in. I would think it's not a final 14, but that's a good team I could get behind that could really win a lot of games. I don't think that's a final 14. I think that's a team that's probably in the ballpark of the team the first year. So like sweet 16 ish. Yeah. But you're one player away from being a lot better and that player might be Tyron Stokes or that player might be a kid from overseas, but you're one play. I think last the first year I thought we were like, I thought Jackson Robinson would be a star and he was really good, but he just wasn't quite a star. And I think that's what kept us from hitting that other level. Last year, I think the combination of some guys not improving and then Jaylen Rowe getting hurt kind of kept us from being what I'd hoped. And then I don't know that Pope did the best job with that team. I think that's a really good team, but I think in order to take another leap, it needs something. You know, and maybe that's something Stokes, like we said, Zoom made a huge jump from his freshman year to his sophomore year. He does the same thing moving to the SEC. That's something you can get excited about. But is there is there a star on that team? I don't know. Like are Diallo and Wilkins, will they be better than Aberdeen and Oway? Maybe not, but I think Freeman will be better than any big we had if we get them. And I think Malachi will make a jump. You got to see Malachi gets better. You get a full year of Cam. Yeah. But if you're asking me, I still think we're one player away. I think we're just Cam Williams, you know, was just trying to kind of find in himself. You know, he just became a starter and was playing well. He had eight three pointers in that one game against Bellarmine. But it's also worth remembering this college basketball as a whole is not going to be nearly as good next year. Not nearly as many freshmen, a lot of the fifth year guys and the COVID got like all that's kind of ending. So I think the quality of college basketball, the best teams in college basketball won't be quite as good as they were say last year. So that might help us too. Who's next? Justin. Justin, go ahead, Justin. Hey, Matt, I feel like everybody's forgotten that we don't have a full staff. We still need one more assistant coach. What's going on with that? If you heard anything about that, don't know. We're working with incomplete staff. It's a great question. We are missing an assistant coach. Do you wonder why? And I almost like they're feeling it by committee. The guys that are already on staff are kind of feeling that missing. Do you think they have a person and they just haven't announced it? I kind of felt like they're going to promote one of these guys from within that's kind of acting as an assistant coach now. Yeah, I don't know if I love that. I think we got to continue to shake it up, but we'll see. But right now, Freeman, I think his visit is either ending or may have ended. Wilkins, well, this is today is his visit. And I'm sure I'm sure we will hear about another person or two over the course of the day. Take him to Keeneland. Don't take him to Carson's and we'll get him. Yo, by the way, yes. Diallo went to Malone's. There we go. Just keeping the restaurant. I got to pick. Diallo was at was at, or no, no, Freeman was at Malone's. Diallo was at Carson's. So Carson's got one. Okay. All right. Thank you, folks. Very much. Tribute and I. Good luck, Ryan. Thank you. We'll see you later. Spink Kentucky Sports Radio.