When I took my 3 year old daughter to see Santa at the mall this past winter, I told Santa that all I wanted was a coaching change (and the first 2 seasons of "LOST" on DVD) at UK. At 1:00 PM CDT tomorrow, I will get my present. Tubby Smith is leaving for Minnesota.

I wasn't surprised to see Tubby leave in the fashion that he did. Basically, he was told to fire his staff or be fired. He chose to leave on his own accord and left a lot of money on the table in doing so. After last season it was "suggested" that he make some coaching changes. I believe the only one he made was hiring a new strength and conditioning coach. Not much of a change there. He has caught a lot of flack from the fans and media in the past few seasons and I guess he had enough. I have nothing personal against Tubby and many fans will agree with me on this. He was not the quality of coach we need at Kentucky. He was not a good recruiter and was not very media savvy.  The last player Rick Pitino recruited was Tayshaun Prince. He has been a better than average NBA player. From Tubby's recruits the only one that comes to mind that has gone on to the NBA is Rajon Rondo. Not a good track record for recruiting.

One other thing that has been getting me a little pissed off is media people who say compare UK basketball to Alabama football. They have been using that analogy to say that UK & Alabama both think that they "deserve" to win the national championship in their respective sports every year. I think that is nothing less than absolute B.S.. I cannot speak for every UK fan, but I will say that I do expect to be competitive every year. I don't expect to be in the Final Four every year, but we haven't been there since 1998. Ten seasons is too long in Big Blue Nation. The past two seasons has seen double digit losses for the season, early exits from the SEC tournament, early exits from the NCAA's with 8 & 9 seeds, and losing a lot of games to conference opponents that should have been won. It was time for a change.

At this time, I hear there is a short list of coaches with Tom Crean (sp?) from Marquette being on the top of the list. I don't know much about him so I won't give an opinion on him. Pat Riley has been mentioned by some fans on local sports talk radio, but personally I'd prefer he stay in Miami. Of course Rick Pitino has been mentioned and I would love to see him come back to Lexington, but some fans still haven't forgiven him for leaving for Boston after 97 & then going to Louisville. Not sure how well he'd be received if he came back. As my lovely wife told me this evening "It's always hard to come back home after moving out. Things are never the same as they were before." I'd take my chances with him though. Other names mentioned have been Rick Barnes at Texas, Billy Gillespie at Texas A&M, and Travis Ford at UMass. I'm going to keep an open mind as coaches are interviewed and hope that UK gets a quality person, a good coach and a good recruiter that will bring some respect and consistency back to Big Blue Nation.