Trashing Rick is today's popular choice among negative criticism so essential to message board (seemingly intelligent) participation. Trashing Blackshear is another of those tremendously popular pastimes of UofL fans who use Wayne as an icon of Pitino failure - in spite of his amazing academic record and his position as a starter on the Final Four team and a starter on a National Title team. In searching as hard as I possibly can, I have been thus far unable to find the failure of Wayne Blackshear. You were disappointed in Wayne? Aw, man, I bet that really hurts. You are one tough room, all on your legendary own..
As I recall, as well, when Pitino showed up, our academics and basketball records were in the toilet. The wave of improvement under him began right away and has resulted in 19 consecutive semesters of 3.0 or better team GPA's. We have a near perfect APR - something the football team - unimaginable before Jurich - was actually able to produce twice!! We are thus considered along with Stanford as the best academics in college football over the past 5 years. UofL is 4th in the ACC in academic awards as of last season.
Under Ramsey, we were so pathetic that we now produce more Fulbright Scholars than all of the rest of Kentucky Universities put together. The list of improvements under each of these men our brainchildren call "bad" have accomplished more than any predecessors not named Denny. And Rick disappears Denny's ass on academics.
Watch who and what you criticize. There is Nuance here, and if you don't know what that means, please look it up. Honoring the past is solemn and vital or - like so many - you trash a gorgeous and insanely rich past and then you forget who you are now. Criticism without love is just jerking off.
