Let’s have some football fun with the UK basketball team

Rightfully so, today has been all about the Rick Pitino-Karen Sypher story. However, I’ve seen some people taking pleasure in a really, really bad situation, which is very difficult for me to understand. I decided I wanted to have some silly, pointless fun with UK basketball. We’ve got plenty to be excited about right now as ‘Cats fans. I see no need to be negative about the troubles in the ‘Ville.

One of my strongest beliefs in the world of sports is that the best athletes in the world play basketball. Football has some phenomenal athletes at the skill positions, soccer could make an argument, and baseball has a stray Carl Crawford or Grady Sizemore running around, but when it comes down to it, I’ll take the average basketball player over the average player in any other sport.

As an example, one of the things in sports that I would like to see most is a season of LeBron James playing wide receiver in the NFL. If there were some sort of fund that would go toward paying a year’s salary for LeBron, I would be all over that. His combination of size, speed, strength, and explosiveness would be absolutely unstoppable.

With that in mind, and in honor of the upcoming football season and the current series of positional previews the Pinkie is unveiling, I started applying LeBron principle to UK’s current basketball roster. With John Calipari at the helm, UK is going to have rosters with near NBA level athleticism. His first roster is already showing that even though only half of it is made up by players recruited by him.

Really the only spots on the field that basketball players are unable to fill are the line positions, so what I’m going to do is fill 6 offensive positions (QB, RB, FB, 2 WR’s, TE) and 6 defensive positions (FS, SS, 2 CB’s, 2 LB’s) with the same group of players.  There are some fits that aren’t ideal, but the point is that this is fun to think about.

Offense

Just as in our positional previews, it all starts at quarterback. This is probably the most difficult position to project, because to correctly do so, I would need an idea of arm strength and accuracy. I thought about going with Daniel Orton, because of how I’ve seen him launch full court outlet passes, but instead I’m going to pick John Wall to play QB.

Wall is the kind of athlete who could probably play any of the skill positions, but when I think about his court awareness, speed, and agility, I think he would make a pretty good QB. I’ve seen countless highlights where he finds an open man that didn’t even realize he was open. He would pick holes in defenses, and when he couldn’t, he would probably just scramble for a first down.

At running back, I’m going to have to go with Eric Bledsoe, who at 6 feet tall and just over 200 pounds, is closest to the prototypical size for a back. He’s got the kind of strength, speed, quickness, and shiftiness that would make him very difficult to bring down. Besides, his point guard skills would allow him to see the field well and find spaces underneath to give John Wall a great checkdown target.

The biggest no brainer for me in putting this imaginary team together is Patrick Patterson at tight end. All last football season, as I watched UK struggle at tight end after Jacob Tamme’s departure, the idea of having Patterson kept going through my head.

How many times have you seen Patterson get pounded by double and triple teams and still manage to dig out space? How many times have you seen a UK player lob in a half hearted entry pass and see Patterson somehow come up with the ball? Patterson has the strength, size, and hands to make a tremendous Antonio Gates type tight end.

At wide receiver, I’m going to have to go with DeAndre Liggins and Darius Miller. With their size, they would create mismatches all over the place for smaller corners. They make take a few nasty hits with their length, but I think they would have the agility to run precise routes and the leaping ability to make the difficult catch.

At fullback, I say the best fit is Daniel Orton. He may be about a foot taller than the typical fullback, but he has the power to blow some people up.

Defense

The captain on the defensive side of the ball is Patrick Patterson at linebacker. His intensity and power would give the basketball version of the Whomp Squad ideal leadership. The other linebacker would be big Daniel Orton. The two players would give the ‘Cats the tallest linebacking corps in the history of football, and the summer they spent together with Hell’s Trainer Frank Matriscano gave them the strength and stamina to man the trenches for 60 minutes.

At the two corner positions, I’m going with John Wall and DeAndre Liggins. Wall would bring the kind of athleticism and ball skills that every NFL scout looks for in a DB, plus his height would allow him match up with any big wide receiver. DeAndre Liggins isn’t exactly what I would draw up when I think of a corner, but I don’t think his competitive streak would allow him to back down from anyone.

At free safety, I’m going with the wily Darius Miller. I think Darius would be an absolute ball hawk and he might fool some players into thinking he was soft with his wiry build. He would play a great center field and make the big pick.

At strong safety, the choice is clearly Eric Bledsoe. I’ve seen Bledsoe compared multiple times to a safety because of his strength and tenacity, and I think he would deliver a pretty nasty lick or two to a receiver venturing in the middle of the field.

OK, I enjoyed that. Why don’t you guys join in? Post in the comments if you think I put anybody at the wrong spot, if I left anybody out. Also, which football players do you think would make the best basketball players?