No one was giving the Reds a chance at the beginning of the year.  Heck, even Reds fans, while optimistic that this could be the year, didn’t give them much of a chance.  The people in charge have been taking advantage of the people of Cincinnati for so long, Reds fans were getting used to it.  Which is no surprise to me why there were less than 15,000 fans in attendance for a Joey Votto Sports Illustrated cover giveaway.  I’m not surprised less than 20,000 were there to see the Cuban Missile, Aroldis Chapman, make his major league debut.  The fault lies squarely on the shoulders of the owners and management.

But as a wise voice once said, “build it and they will come.”  The “it” in this instance is a team that can compete.  We fans have been taken advantage of for so long, it’s going to take time to win our trust back.  We’ve heard promises of building for the future.  We’ve heard the management thinks the pieces are in place to compete.  Since they never came through, we finally decided we weren’t going to spend any money at the ballpark.  I’ve been perfectly content with watching the games at home.  And I think most people are still afraid to get their hopes up.  So just give us some time to come back around.

Thom Brennaman brought up, just 3 weeks ago, the Reds were swept by the Cardinals to take a 1 game lead in the central.  Since then, the Reds have started winning, and keep winning, and are currently up 7 games.  That is an amazing stat.  And with the Cardinals losing today, the Reds could be up by 8 games going into the St. Louis series.

I’ve been content with watching at home but I think it’s about time to make the drive up to Cincinnati.

Update: The reds sweep the Brewers and now have an 8 game lead over the Cardinals.  Rookie phenom Aroldis Chapman picked up his first major league win.

And keeping with the baseball theme, check out Patrick Patterson and Chuck Hayes at the Astrodome Enron Astros Field The Field Formerly Known As Enron Minute Maid Park.

Wow-e-wow wow

Well this was a bit of unexpected news. Kentucky picked up another highly ranked recruit last night when Kyle Wiltjer announced his intentions of playing basketball at Kentucky next season. Wiltjer, a 6’9″ PF out of Oregon, will join Michael Gilchrist, Marquis Teague and Anthony Davis in an already loaded class for 2011.

“I wanted to surround myself with the best players possible and Kentucky offers me that opportunity,” said Wiltjer. “I want to be part of the best recruiting class in the country and I believe coach Calipari’s current group is the best.”

I previously made a post proclaiming the 2010 Kentucky class as the best ever by the numbers.  The average rank for that class is 15.2, surpassing the Fab 5′s average rank of 16.  But the 2011 Kentucky class is shaping up to destroy this years average rank.  With Teague (2), Gilchrist (3), Davis (6), and now Wiltjer (25), the 2011 class has an average rank of 9.  9!  How crazy is that?

And there are still a lot of good players out there with an interest in UK.  The sky is the limit for the 2011 class.

Enjoy this shaky, hard to hear video of Wiltjer committing to the Cats…

And as a bonus, a few reactions to the news…

John Calipari: While at the event to honor Rich Brooks, I went into the VP’s office. Guess what? He had the TV on ESPNU. I think I jumped about 31 inches.

Evan Daniels: Just got this from a high major coach referring to Kentucky: “Nuclear bombs compared to rifles for everyone else!”

Gregg Doyel: I’m so tired of being right, Goodman. RT @goodmanonfox: Kentucky will be scary good in 2011.How scary? See for yourself http://bit.ly/aE2TZb

Nice move by Rivers and a pick at the other end.  Unfortunately he will probably end up at Duke.  But he would be a nice addition to what is already the #1 class of 2011.

From the article:

One of the two Kentucky big men absent from the team’s recent basketball trip to Canada is officially in the fold.

Eloy Vargas, a 6-foot-11, 225-pound junior forward from Plantation, Fla., has been cleared to play at UK, the team announced Friday.

Vargas successfully completed required work on his degree at Miami-Dade Community College, enabling him to gain academic eligibility at UK.

The University of Kentucky released their basketball schedule today.  It features 16 games on ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU as well as 6 games on CBS or ABC.   There are still several game times and networks TBA.

For the time being, the schedule can be found on Kentucky.com.

It might also contain a quote block such as the following:

Maybe it’s a quote from a player or coach from the media release.  Or possibly it’s a tweet or two.

The quote might or might not be from the real person.  There will also be some sort of analysis of the quote or actions.  And likely somewhere in the analysis, or maybe prior to the quote, will be some bold text for some reason. A lot of time, the wrong part or parts of the sentence will be bold.

Finally, a reference to a source or rumor that might or might not exist will likely be placed somewhere.  The source/rumor is likely real but it might come from a message board.

Let’s compare rankings for a few classes. To compare the classes, I’m calculating the average rank for each player on a given team. To do so, I’m simply taking the sum of the payer rankings and dividing by the number of players on the team. Fortunately, every team only added 5 ranked freshman so it was an easy calculation.

First up is what’s believed to be the best class ever assembled, the Fab 5. Their rankings were as follows:

1  Weber
5  Howard
8  Rose
18 King
48 Jackson

Ranking sum: 80
Average rank: 16

Next up, the Thad 5 class for Ohio state:

1  Oden
8  Cook
21 Lighty
24 Conley
33 Morgan

Ranking sum: 87
Average rank: 17.4

Now let’s check out Kentucky’s class from this past season:

1  Wall
2  Cousins
22 Orton
23 Bledsoe
40 Hood

Ranking sum: 88
Average rank: 17.6

Now to UK’s current class for the 2010-2011 season.

3  Kanter
6  Knight
13 Jones
21 Lamb
33 Poole

Ranking sum: 76
Average rank: 15.2

This years class sum comes to 76. The average rank for UK’s 2010 class is 15.2. By the numbers, UK’s 2010 class edges out the 1991 Fab 5.

But wait, there’s more. DeAndre Daniels is attempting to reclassify for the 2010 season. If this happens, UK is up there with everyone else and could potentially add him to the roster for this coming season. Averaging in the current ranking for Daniels (10), this years average player rank drops to 14.3.

Very, very impressive work by John Calipari. Of course, what this class can do remains to be seen. But it’s a very good start.

Regardless if Daniels joins UK or not, say hello to the new best ranked recruiting class ever,  The Cat 5.

UK's Canadian correspondent for the games in Windsor, Dominique Papa. Yesterday he was wearing neutral colors. Today he was wearing a UK logo shirt. I fully expect him to be wearing the wildcat mascot suit tomorrow.

To the game… Kentucky beat Western Ontario 96-68.  Freshman point guard Brandon Knight did not disappoint once again, his time scoring 17 points.  But Doron Lamb led the way with 24.  Darius Miller, Josh Harrellson, and DeAndre Liggins pitched in 20, 12 and 11 respectively.

Josh Harrellson channeled Demarcus Cousins a little by throwing down a dunk then later on nearly reacting when getting hit in the face on a rebound attempt.  The partial reacting was the most emotion we’ve seen out of Harrellson in his entire time at Kentucky.  Save it for Louisville, tiger.

The game was a little sloppy as expected.  But it was an exhibition.  So no need to fly off the handle since UK only won by 28.

Kentucky is 2-0 in the exhibition season that only comes around every 4 years (or in UK’s case, every 15 years).  They advance to face Windsor once again tomorrow morning at 11 am.  I know, it was already scheduled and they would have faced them win or lose.  But it’s more fun to think of this as a tournament and that UK has the chance to be champions of Canada should they hold off Windsor.