Before Kentucky played Louisville, John Calipari stressed that the important thing for his team to gain from the game was improvement. Noting that Louisville had edges in location and experience, Calipari said he could live with a loss if he saw the competitive fight and sense of urgency that he had been pushing for since the start of the season.
Well, if you think Coach Cal is satisfied with any loss, you don’t know him very well. But it’s also true that his words as well as his body language told a story of a coach who liked a lot of what he saw that day. And Tim Brando, who called the game for CBS, says the most significant development for Kentucky may be the maturation of sophomore point guard Ryan Harrow.
“Ryan Harrow just grew up by leaps and bounds in the Louisville game, playing at a higher level than I had seen and I had seen (him) at N.C. State,” said Brando, who was working on the ACC network for several of those Wolfpack games two years ago. “He had not been a very confident point (guard) and I think understanding what John needs at the point is going to be essential for that growth.”
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.