UK football rumors are latest message board monster

Since sometime Sunday night or Monday morning, there’s been a monster lurking under the bed for every UK fan that keeps up with the message boards. If you’re not a message board type, maybe you haven’t heard. Reportedly, some UK football players were involved in an altercation late Saturday night at the Royal Lex Apartments in Lexington.

Things escalated and the authorities were involved. We do know, or at least we think we do, that there is an ongoing investigation into the matter, which supposedly also involves some Tennessee athletes who were in town for the weekend.

I’ve hesitated to post about this up to now because of the simple fact that there is absolutely no hard news. I haven’t wanted to take part in rumor mongering, but not acknowledging the rumors that are floating around would almost be misleading.

However, I don’t think it’s appropriate to spell out all the individual rumors that are around. These rumors have truly taken on a lives of their own. No mainstream media has said a thing about what’s going on because everybody is trying to figure it out. Therefore, it has become the biggest story that isn’t officially a story since I’ve been keeping tabs on UK sports.

At this point, there’s really nothing to do but wait. There’s really nothing to be gained other than personal pride from spreading rumors about this situation. So, until there is hard news to report, you will not read anything else on the Pinkie about it…unless rumors about Layla Kiffin somehow being involved start popping up.

Until then, we’ve got plenty of other stuff to talk about:

-Darius Miller is finally back in the Bluegrass with a gold medal around his neck. I’m sure he has plenty to say about his experiences in New Zealand and tomorrow we will have two chances to hear about them.

First, as Larry Vaught reports on his excellent Twitter account, Darius Miller will hold court at a press conference tomorrow to field questions about his time with the national team. Second, Miller and Ramon Harris will be available for questions from fans via live chat at 1 pm on UK’s official blog, Cat Scratches.

The Pinkie will have coverage of both tomorrow afternoon and evening, so be sure to check that out as well.

-We’ve been reporting on Jodie Meeks successes in Vegas summer league play, but ignoring the other two ‘Cats getting a chance to play:

Joe Crawford – Joe is on the Knicks roster and the Knicks have played only one game thus far. Crawford played 17 minutes in the team’s 90-86 loss to Memphis, scoring 10 points on 4-9 shooting to go along with 3 board.

Erik Daniels – The perennial D-League star is on the Memphis Grizzlies roster, but has yet to play in a game.

-Another story of interest to UK fans today was the news that former national champion Antoine Walker has run up $822,500 in gambling debt in Las Vegas.  Walker is still looking to continue his career in the NBA, but the three outstanding felony charges against him will not help his case. I hope that this is able to be resolved cleanly and without much trouble for either side, but this is not good.

One of the casinos where ‘toiney did his damage was Planet Hollywood, which happens to be where I will be staying when I head to Vegas in August. I’m definitely going to be playing some craps there and I think I will debut the Antoine Walker dice roll. I’m going to stand unnecessarily far away from the table and land both dice on the table about 32.5% of the time (that’s Antoine’s lifetime 3 point %).

-One more story that has been recent fodder for message boards is a potential new transfer to UK. I do not think there is any validity to this whatsoever, but John Calipari remove any reasonable doubt that he keeps track of what is being said online. Here is a series of tweets from the man himself:

If you believe things you are reading, you would think we have dozens of commitments already but we’re still evaluating talent.

It’s gratifying 2 know so many young men want 2 b part of what we’re building. We only pursue studnt-athletes who’ll contribute 2 our goals.

For anyone 2 say were taking transfers or have tons of commitments is disingenuous. Our style of play requires a deep and diverse roster.

The young men who wear the UK uniform are people who dream big dreams and understand that to go far, we must go together.

Calipari went out of his way to mention “transfers” and while he likely was referring to Elliot Williams, it’s still going to fuel speculation.