It has been a foregone conclusion for weeks that Gatorade national player of the year Brandon Knight would don a Kentucky cap when he announced his college choice on the first day of the spring signing period. The timing of highly touted junior Michael Gilchrist's commitment, however, is a far bigger surprise. By persuading both Rivals.com's top-ranked recruits in the class of 2010 and 2011 to pledge to Kentucky in nationally televised announcements on the very same day, Wildcats coach John Calipari has pulled off a basketball and PR masterstroke. Yahoo! Sports Too bad these two will never be on the court together. Knight will get drafted when the other kid is a frosh. Is Kentucky the new D-League for the NBA?
Seriously what is Calipari thinking? Don't get me wrong signing two studs like this is a great thing but for how long? Is he looking for a one year wonder and try to steal a nat'l title? He certainly has no desire to build a dynasty at UK.
I suppose the new way of trying to get a title is to promise the cream of the crop the NBA after one year. Not illegal, but a crappy way of doin' it.
Yes and no. Impressive that they landed these two, but all of their previous success was from team's that retained their players for 2, 3 or 4 years. Now under Calipari it's a one-and-done deal. Play one year and off to the NBA. Kentucky will probably continue to put up wins like this, but winning the championship is another story.
I think right now, it's a good thing.. As I heard on PTI, we'd much rather have Coach Cal doin' what he's doing, then what Billy Gillispie did when he was there. And I agree with that. However, it's going to come a day.. when UK has the top recruits who are " One and Done " and the NBA Rule switches to at least " Two and Done ". And then, Coach Cal will have something to work. I don't agree with what he's doing, but it's his formula and there's nothing wrong with it. In all seriousness... he's going after the best players, and if UK doesn't get them, then that just means we'll at one point.. be playing against them. So Cal', keep doing what you're doing.
Not everyone is going to be one and done like what happened this past season. A lot of kids are jumping early because of the uncertainty of next year's NBA season and potential lockout. Bledsoe and Orton were not expected by anyone to be good enough to leave school early until close to the start of the tourney. Kind of a worst case scenario really. Knight is as good of a student as he is a player so I can totally see him staying more than one year, unless he's going to be #1 like Wall was. Most recruiting experts do not believe he is as good as Wall.
