Electric Big Blue Madness introduces Commonwealth to its team

Big Blue Madness is an event I’ve always wanted to attend, but it’s never quite worked out…I think I picked a good one for my first time.

For the 18,000 or so in attendance, what a spectacle. Coach John Calipari and UK Athletics recognized a couple opportunities in the way they put together the show: 1) the opportunity to set the tone for his tenure as UK coach and 2) the opportunity to make quite an impression on a good group of recruits.

I’ll get to talking about those two things in a bit, but let me get something out of the way first. Anybody who tries to draw sweeping conclusions about this team and how they will play based on a 20 minute scrimmage with a running clock is wasting their time. I’m going to keep my analysis of tonight from a basketball perspective short and sweet.

First, and most noticeably, this is a team FULL of athletes.

John Wall is flat-out ridiculous, and based on 200 YouTube videos, seeing him in person throwing down pretty much any dunk you can draw up, and in the scrimmage, I’m going to go ahead and declare John Wall to be bar none the best athlete to put on the UK jersey in my lifetime.

Explosiveness, speed, quickness, and body control, he’s got it all. He also has a confidence, demeanor, and sense of fun that has truly been missing from UK basketball for a long time. I think it goes without saying that I was really, really excited about John Wall before Madness, but seeing him live and in person really just is a little bit different. He shouldn’t be able to do what he can.

The crazy thing about this UK team is that there is not much of a drop-off in athleticism after Wall. There’s going to a drop-off in athleticism from Wall to number 2 on any team he ever plays on (unless he ends up playing with LeBron), but there are plenty of guys who are athletes in their own right. I was particularly impressed by Eric Bledsoe. Not only can the kid jump like crazy, but he’s also strong. He’s going to challenge Wall all season long. Guys like DeAndre Liggins (who seems reenergized), Jon Hood, Darius Miller, Darnell Dodson, and even Ramon Harris can run and jump too.

The scrimmage, though, was unorganized chaos, to no surprise, so much so that John Calipari stopped things with 5 minutes left, grabbed a microphone and said something to the effect of “Now you guys see that we have a long way to go”. There is work to do, obviously, but like Coach Cal said, I’ll take talent over experience every time.

Outside of seeing John Wall for the first time and hearing the ovation given to Patrick Patterson when he was introduced, without a doubt the thing I will remember most about Big Blue Madness is the speech that John Calipari delivered to begin the festivities.

I noticed as soon as they had the stage set up after the UK women’s team finished up a podium. I turned to my dad when I saw it and said “Is Coach Cal giving a State of the Union address?” It turns out that that’s almost exactly what he did.

Calipari has instilled a sense of excitement around the UK program over the last 6 months, but that speech was all about shaping that excitement into a vision. Calipari’s vision is possibly even more audacious than that of most UK fans (take a look at this link to read the transcript of the speech). He wants to not only become the gold standard of college basketball, but also the gold standard in all of college sports.

UK fans want desperately to share in the direction of the program and John Calipari embraces that. In recent years, the expectations of UK fans have been painted as a negative aspect of the UK job. I find it so impressive that John Calipari not only accepts the expectations, but looks at them as a positive, saying that it is a privilege to play with those expectations, that they are a call to greatness. I can’t say how good that is to hear.

As much as John Calipari said the night was all about the fans, that’s really not entirely true. This night was as much about the recruits in attendance as it was about you or me. I imagine that the event made quite an impression, bordering on overwhelming for the kids. Having Drake in attendance sporting a UK jacket can’t have hurt either.

The group of recruits that attended Big Blue Madness had a decidedly New York/New Jersey feel, and accordingly, NYC native Orlando Antigua was with the group every step of the way. I did cross paths with the group on the way out and they were clearly enjoying the attention and the whole scene. I’m sure we’ll hear more in the coming days about the visits.

I’m realizing right now that this post has devolved into me just throwing my thoughts out, and clearly, my mind is racing thinking about everything I took in tonight. It was a lot of fun, and it truly felt like the start of something special, something fun.