It might sound funny coming from Duke fans because while we certainly wanted Duke to beat Kentucky Tuesday night, we’re also happy for Kentucky fans. No one can doubt the passion for Wildcat basketball. It’s been frustrated for a few years as John Calipari’s stewardship of the program faltered.
It’s really early, but clearly, Mark Pope knows what he’s doing and as a former Kentucky player himself, he knows what the expectations are. He’s done a great job of winning the fans over and resetting the expectations of Kentucky basketball back to championships, rather than merely producing NBA players.
And obviously Kentucky, players and fans, were spoiling for a crack at Duke. They won this one.
However, there were two things this week that showed Duke is still the hunted rather than the hunter.
The first is a video Jason Williams put out explaining that TV was going to make Cooper Flagg a priority and the face of the game whenever possible. He points out, correctly, that that won't change no matter what happens this season. Apparently some UK fans got irritated with him. Not surprising.
The second thing is this video by Matt Jones of Kentucky Sports Radio where he outlines the Ten Most Annoying Duke players.
He starts out by conceding that Zion Williamson changed the narrative around Duke to an extent but that he still hated Duke, so he listed the Top Ten Duke players he hates.
You can watch for yourself, but a few of the players listed are Jon Scheyer, Cherokee Parks and the Plumlees. Impressively, he also lists Matt Christensen. You can probably guess who #1 is.
It was funny and, we had to admit we enjoyed it.
And then we asked the most obvious question of all: who are the Top Ten most annoying Kentucky players from our perspective?
After Goose Givens, the natural answer to Christian Laettner (#1), we couldn’t think of a single person.
And the second question was: why didn’t he do a Top Ten list of Kentucky players he loved rather than ten from Duke he hated?
You could look at it one of two ways. First, Duke inherently has more annoying players than Kentucky or two, Duke Basketball is inherently more interesting than what Kentucky offers.
