Scouting Kentucky's Midnight Madness

In today's scouting segment we look at Kentucky's Midnight Madness which aired nationally on Fox College Sports.

The intra-squad scrimmage was about 20 game-time minutes, essentially the equivalent of half a half of a regular game. The teams played fast - granted this was just the first scrimmage in a exhibition midnight madness setting, so the brother-in-law defense was almost mandatory in order to entertain the crowd of 23,313.

A number of players looked good, Joe Crawford was skinnier and "jumpier", while the 7-footer Mike Williams had some nice moves, and so did walk-on Mark Coury . As you may recall from his Texas A&M days, Billy Gillispie is a big fan of walk-ons and stockpiling players on the bench. Included was walk-on tryout winner Dusty Mills. Meanwhile Perry Stevenson is still under 200lbs, but if he plays to his strengths he can be a big factor.

The dunk contest had its share of misses and some examples of team work - dunks off lob passes which perhaps bodes well for the regular season. It was interesting to watch, because you can still figure things out, despite the midnight madness setting. For example Patrick Patterson's dunks were very efficient (with the exception of one between the legs), and his insticts where showcased as he even rebounded his own dunk miss.

After watching the scrimmage I have to say that Kentucky looks better than I had expected. There's lots of talent on the roster, and Billy G says he wants to play fast(er), but not fast for the sake of playing fast. He certainly has a lot of fast players on this roster. Plus the second wave of second-tier talent-wise players can push the first wave to be more effective with their PT, otherwise they will lose it. Some of the players that will be coming off the bench would be good enough to start in many other places.

Players like playing in a faster tempo and that helps in recruiting as well. Other than Kevin Love and a few others, who wants to slugfest or play sit-around for 30 seconds?

Meanwhile a game of horse between two All-Americans, Joe Crawford and Patrick Patterson lasted for more than three hours, with shots made from outside the building even ;-) At the end they decided to end it in a draw. This was one among a number of fun skits as a way of introducing the new players to the fans.

So what have we learned? They have a choice of three different style point guards, a trio of offensive minded wings, talented and athletic forwards, and the potential of a productive 7-footer in the middle. This sounds like a recipe for success. Of course there are plenty of question marks as well, but overall, they exceeded my expectactions.