Go Big Blue!

71 East Tennessee State

100 Kentucky


Am I proud? You betcha!

My beloved Kentucky Wildcats beat East Tennessee State in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament. The Cats just claimed the school's 26th Southeastern Conference Tournament title and have an NCAA record 12th 30-win season.

UK is also the youngest team in the tournament by average years of collegiate experience. This team gets a lot of criticism, and I think UK player DeMarcus Cousins covered it well when he said, "A lot of teams want to come at us because of who we are and what individuals we have on our team... At the same time, if we lose, we were basically supposed to lose because of our inexperience. If we win, we were supposed to win because of our talent."

Have I mentioned we like college hoops at our house? We drag out this "write-on wipe-off" board every year during March Madness and fill in the brackets.









Of course we're especially drawn to the East Region, since that's where Kentucky is playing. It won't be an easy road to the Final Four, but I really think this team has the potential go all the way.












Eric Bledsoe led the Wildcats with 29 points, connecting on 9 of 11 field goals, 8 of those shots from 3-point land. His eight 3-pointers set a new record for a Kentucky player in an NCAA tournament game. He surpassed former UK player Tony Delk's previous school record of seven 3s in the 1996 championship game victory over Syracuse.

Kentucky made over 50% of its shots during this first-round game, and the team managed to sink 15 3-pointers, something they haven't exactly been doing consistently throughout the season. I love this quote by East Tennessee State's coach, Murry Bartow... "Our scouting report said they couldn't make 3s and they made 15." Surprise! Surprise!

I so wish I'd been able to stay up to watch the game. I was rather confident they would win, and the game didn't start until 12:15am here in Spain. I was so sleepy! Now I wish I'd taken a nap earlier in the day so that I could have stayed up to watch what I understand was quite a spectacular game for the Cats. The next game is scheduled for Saturday night at sometime around 8pm or thereafter. That means I'll have to be up at 1am to watch my team. Can I do it? I'm sure gonna try!

Go Big Blue... Beat Wake Forest!