WKYT: UK Basketball cuts 3 walkons

No one can chest bump like Dwight Perry

WKYT – Sources have told 27 Sportsfirst that 3 Kentucky Basketball Walk-ons will not be back next season.

Matt Scherbenski (sic), Dwight Perry and Adam Delph have been dismissed.

Coach Calipari told the media in one of his earlier press conferences that he would only keep a few walk-ons.

With these players leaving it ups the total to 12 players that have left the program.

Mark Krebs is the only walk-on left on the team.

I’m not going to lie, this is disappointing to me, especially with Dwight Perry being let go.

Perry has worked his butt off for three years and I think earned the right to play his senior year. Besides, who now is going to replace Perry as the head cheerleader on the bench? Dwight Perry filled this role as well as anyone I can imagine.

The man is all the way out on the floor the second a TV timeout happens, before the players even know it’s happening. Also, he holds back a celebrating bench so effectively. I guess the mantle will have to be passed to Mark Krebs and Josh Harrellson, but it just won’t be the same.

At least Dwight Perry does get to remember the time he made a start in the NCAA Tournament against Kansas in Tubby Smith’s last game when one of the assistants mistakenly wrote down his name instead of Bobby Perry’s. I still can’t believe that actually happened.

**3:30 Update**

I’m being told that Cousins and Perry got into a little altercation before the three walkons were released.  The UK coaching staff is saying that the altercation between the two had nothing to do with their dismissal.

John Calipari issued this explanation of his decision on the blog portion of CoachCal.com:

Before the weekend gets underway, I wanted to talk to everyone about our decision not to have the large number of walk-on players some of you may have become accustomed to in recent years.

In my 17 years of college coaching, I have very rarely had walk-ons and when I have it’s usually been another student-athlete, who could help us in practice or game situations because of his size, speed or skill level. I find my practices run at optimum performance when there are 12-13 players. Any more than that and we’re not able to accomplish what I want in each practice.

Believe me, I appreciate the work and effort that goes into being a walk-on.

In meeting with the most recent group of walk-ons, we let all of them know how much the UK family appreciated their hard work and dedication to Wildcat basketball. Any of the former walk-ons who want to transfer and try and play elsewhere will have my staff’s full cooperation in helping them.

I can tell you that we are considering a scholarship position on the team for walk-on Mark Krebs, but we still have some things to decide on that front. I will keep you posted. If we do, at any time, decide to have walk-on tryouts, I will be sure to let everyone know.

I wish we would could make every young boy’s dream come true to suit up in the blue and white, but that’s just not possible. We want to be as fair and as forthright with everyone as we can be.

Thanks for listening to my explanation and have a great weekend.

Go Big Blue!

-Coach Cal

A quick point that we have yet to address in this ever lengthening post is the praise that Calipari is giving to Mark Krebs in, first, allowing him to stay on the team and second, considering using the 13th scholarship on him.

He clearly believes that Krebs may have a significant role on this team, at least on the practice floor. It’s very possible that he sees Krebs as a shooting specialist/zone buster that this team lacks desperately. I wouldn’t mark it down that he sees the floor outside of mop-up duty, but he’s certainly someone to watch.