Hope everyone on here is well...I read this thread every evening during my vacation and it kept me entertained. Couple of things through the grapevine:
--- UL board stuff is out of control. Bevin made everyone in the Louisville "elite" community mad by getting rid of the board and now they are all ready that he is just going to appoint his Southeast Christian folks (worth noting that Ramsey is a SE Christian person and all three of the "temporary" board members are as well). There is also some worry in athletics that he may come after Jurich because of some slight a year or so ago. IT is amazing how much everyone is panicking on all sides as people don't know what will happen next. Most importantly to me, Ramsey is still in charge of the Foundation and there is no plan as of yet for him to leave...that is where the corruption took place and the Board was the one group pointing that out. If they don't get him out of the Foundation, where most of his salary is based, then old bologna head clearly won this round.
--- They have had the first few pickup games and workouts and I am hearing good things. I will expand on this more later but people are in love with Fox and most believe he is the best at the PG position since Wall. People are pleasantly surprised with SKJ and there apparently has been a big jump in production in I-Zack as well. Monk gets buckets by the ton and people think Briscoe is focused. I am told Gabriel is a bit behind where people thought he would be and that has been the only slight concern. In general though, all cylinders are firing.
--- Never seen Cal this focused on a recruiting class ever. He knows how big this one will be and I think he is slightly concerned bc there are only 1-2 guys they feel are almost certain to commit. He will of course kill it but I think that explains why he has made so many trips and has been so pro-active on the recruiting trail. They want some early success this summer, knowing that the class is big and that there was slight disappointment with the results for players last year (teams are hitting him hard on Skal).
I am a panelist on First Take on Friday....no clue how I ended up on the ESPN radar for that but I am beyond excited (and nervous). Spent most of last Tuesday in Bristol and it was a really cool experience. Watching it all function behind the scenes was really awesome for a person like me who grew up obsessed with watching that channel. If I throw up on the table on Friday, know I did it with all the right motives.