You know what the best part of a three day weekend is? It’s not the extra morning to sleep in, the extra night to go out, or the extra afternoon to watch sports. For me, it’s not even really close. It’s the four day week that follows.

Seriously, how great is it going to bed the night before the first day of work of the week knowing you already have a head start on the work week. I love it. However, is it just me, or by the time Friday rolls around, are you wondering how you ever make it through a full 5 day week?

Anyway, you don’t come here to read my ramblings about holidays, so let’s get to the meat.

What a tease this weekend was. We get to enjoy the UK opener, making us all excited about watching the Whomp! squad every Saturday…oh wait, never mind, there’s a bye week for UK and UofL right off the bat. Luckily we will have the NFL to tide us over next weekend, but I’m already getting excited about UK-UofL and the prospect of beating the Cards for a third consecutive season. I might be even more excited about UofL QB Justin Burke trying to throw an out route against reigning SEC Defensive Player of the Week Trevard Lindley.  Let’s just say I like the way UK’s secondary matches up with UofL’s passing game.

Over the next couple weeks, UK and UofL bye weeks coincide with a crucial period in basketball recruiting. For that reason, I think you will see a bit of a shift of focused attention to the MANY in-home recruiting visits by John Calipari, Rick Pitino, and their respective staffs.

UofL fans probably won’t say it out loud, but the Mock Turtlenecked ones are regaining a bit of their swagger post-Rick Pitino non-sense. This past weekend was a very big one for the Cards, as they hosted top 2011 prospects Marquis Teague, Wayne Blackshear, and Mike Shaw. The latter have declared themselves as a dreaded “package deal”, but in this case I think it may actually be true. UofL has no commitments from this group of three, but UofL is in very solid shape with all three.

UK has shown interest in all three, but has focused most on point guard Marquis Teague. We all know about UofL’s hiring of Teague’s former AAU coach as a special assistant and he is a major priority for Pitino. Teague did say that he would like to visit Lexington again to get a better feel for the campus and the longer this thing goes on, the better I feel about UK’s chances.

Another interesting Teague related note is that he told Scout.com that he will take another visit to UofL the weekend of October 2nd, and Tobias Harris will supposedly be there as well. UofL has emerged as a major player for Tobias, but John Calipari is still on the case. Tobias’ father Torrel told ZagsBlog about the fact that Tobias is looking for a place that develops “point forwards”. I have a feeling that Ricky P may have brought up Terrence Williams and Earl Clark in his discussions with Tobias. However, Coach Cal can easily point to a guy like Robert Dozier as a model for Tobias in the Dribble Drive. Torrel also mentioned the possibility that a decision could come after in-home visits.

Speaking of in-home visits, let’s take a look at the visits that John Calipari has scheduled with 2010 targets (from Kentucky Sports Radio):

September 9th: Tobias Harris (NY)
September 10th: Doron Lamb (NY, visits will occur in Mouth of Wilson, VA on Oak Hill’s campus)
September 12th: Adreian Payne (OH)
September 13th: Stacey Poole (FL)
September 14th: Brandon Knight (FL)
September 15th: Kyrie Irving (NJ) & Josh Selby (MD)
September 22nd: Terrence Jones (OR)

RJ Corman, warm up the private plane and clear the air strip, Coach Cal is going to be racking up the miles. For those of you who are keeping score, he’ll be in the homes of the top 3 point guards in the class in a 2 day span and 2 of the top 6 power forwards in the next 2 weeks.

After these visits, we should have a much clearer picture of who will be taking official visits and when, and the staff showld have a much better idea of who they will be prioritizing. Calipari has already whittled down his list to under 15 players (Jelan Kendrick, CJ Leslie, and Enes Kanter are not on this list, among some other peripheral prospects).

I think most people would tell you they are surprised that UK has not yet secured a 2010 commitment, including the staff, but I don’t think they are worried.

I am particularly intrigued by the fact that all three point guard targets will get visits back to back to back. You know that these guys are aware of that, which creates a bit of sense of urgency for the players if they don’t want their spot to get taken.

I think we’re going to have plenty to talk about during the football bye week.