The level of competition in international basketball has steadily improved over the past 20 years, to the point where various national teams can do pretty well without a big-name NBA star on board. That said, it’s sure a big help for a team to have some of the best players in the world on the roster. That’s even more the case if you’re a relatively small, baseball-obsessed country like the Dominican Republic. So it must have come as something of a shock to Detroit Pistons forward Charlie Villanueva when he was cut by national team head coach (and, more famously, Kentucky head coach) John Calipari.
Walter Cornett, of Glendale, Kentucky, is the owner and operator of Walter’s Wildcat World. He founded WildcatWorld.com in 1998 making it one of the oldest Kentucky basketball fan sites in operation today.