This past weekend I had the chance to go see the UK-Vandy football game here in Nashville. It was my first time getting to see the UK Football team in person, as well as the first time I'd been to a Division I College Football game. I thought it was also going to be the first time that I was rooting for the visiting team. But as you'll be able to see in this video, it turned out that UK fans outnumbered the Vandy fans.

Since I recorded the footage with my wife's new camcorder, I was able to add sound effects and music that my other clips haven't had. Hope you enjoy.

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I woke up this morning in a state of disbelief. Hoping beyond hope that the game that I watched last night was just a bad dream. Hoping that the upset loss by Kentucky to Gardner-Webb was just a nightmare. Unfortunately, it wasn't.

I can only imagine what the atmosphere is like in Lexington today. I'm sure that the talk radio stations, message boards, and chat rooms are filled with people hitting the panic button. I'm not ready to panic. Am I disappointed that we lost, or as Coach Gillispie put it, got "whipped" last night? Yes. Should we have lost this game? No. Are there any positive things we can take away from it? Yes, I think so.

One encouraging thing that I saw during the game last night was the play of the two freshmen Alex Legion and Patrick Patterson. These two guys seemed to be playing harder than everyone else wearing a white uniform. That is very encouraging because those are the two players that the new coach got to commit to the program. There is definitely a noticeable difference in talent between those two and the majority of the team.

Another reason I'm not going to panic is because this is just the 2nd game of the season. The team has only had a couple of weeks of practice to get ready for this season which started earlier than any other season in UK history. Granted, Gardner-Webb had the same amount of time to practice as UK did. But GW isn't breaking in a new coach and a new system.

While I don't think it's fair to compare this team to one of Pitino's early UK teams, "The Unforgettables," the situation does seem somewhat similar. In my heart, that team that Pitino had that lost to Duke in the game that had "The Shot" will always be one of my favorite teams, EVER. So any comparison done to that team is not done so lightly.

Back then, Pitino had a good group of guys (Feldhaus, Woods, Pelphrey, Farmer) that were not elite players but they worked really hard and they had one superstar, Jamal Mashburn, in the middle. I would make the argument that this year's team seems to have a similar makeup. There are some really good players (Meeks, Bradley, Crawford, Jasper) and there is one elite player (Patterson) in the middle. While I don't think Patterson is at the level that Mashburn was at, I think he'll get there.

That year was a turning point year for the program. They were back in the national spotlight once again. They would go on to be in four of the next six Final Fours, including three in a row from '96-'98 where they won two titles and were an overtime-loss away in '97 of pulling off the 3-peat.

When you look at the difference in talent that was on the '92 team compared to the '96 team, it's unbelievable. The '92 team had one player that made it to the NBA. The '96 team had three players drafted in the 1st round and four drafted overall.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's important to remain patient with the new coach. It will take time for him to bring in his players and have his system fully in place. With the exception of the four freshman, he has a team that has to "un-learn" everything they were doing under the old regime. That takes time. There were moments in the game last night that it looked like they resorted back to their old ways.

And let me give a tip of the hat to Gardner-Webb and their coach. He drew up a great game plan and his players executed it to a tee. They are not as talented as UK but they played a much more fundamentally sound game and they deserved to win last night. Best of luck to them and I'll be pulling for them to win the whole tournament.

Kentucky has the next couple of weeks off before they play again. They didn't schedule any games during this time in anticipation of going to New York. I think the practice time will come in handy because as last night proved, they need it.

It was once said that Tubby made the mistake of winning too much too soon. I guess Coach G is wanting to take the opposite approach. Oh well, if I can't laugh about it, I'd just be crying :-) lol

It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks up in the Bluegrass state, that's for sure.

Until next time...

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I hope everyone enjoyed the video clips. I had a blast making them. I didn't shoot any more clips for my last day of being back home in KY but I thought I'd do at least a quick blog to wrap up the weekend.

After Joel and I left Lexington, we stopped at a Denny's near Mt. Vernon, KY. I had stopped there last year after the "Madness" and thought I would make that part of my little tradition that I began last year. It wasn't long after we sat down that the giddiness began to set in. We began coming up with lyrics for songs for a "fictional" rock band that we're in. One of the titles we came up with is "Carrot Cake Can Go Wrong Sometimes." Don't ask...

After finishing up our wonderful meal, topped off with a piece of Coconut Cream Pie, it was about time to head back to the homestead. But before that, we first had to have a conversation with the serving staff about what the Big Blue Madness was like, followed by our expectations for the upcoming UK/LSU football game. After about 20 minutes of great conversation we finally left to go back to my parent's house.

I ended up sticking around for the majority of the day while Joel headed back to TN early Saturday morning. Later that afternoon I had plans of watching the UK football game and what a game it turned out to be.

The short version of the game is UK was down by 13 points with about 3:00 minutes left in the 3rd quarter. They were able to mount a comeback and tie the game up in regulation. After LSU missed a last second field goal, it went into overtime. They traded touchdowns in the first overtime, then field goals in the 2nd overtime. Then came the 3rd overtime.

Kentucky's Heisman-hopeful candidate, Andre' Woodson, lofted a pass to the wide-open, and big-time clutch receiver, Steve Johnson in the end zone. TOUCHDOWN! They then had to attempt a 2-pt conversion but failed.

Now it was LSU's turn. They tried running the ball right up the gut with Jacob Hester, the workhorse from LSU's big victory in the previous week over Florida. His first run went for 6 yards, his second attempt went for 0, and then his third attempt went for 2. On that play, he came up slightly injured, as did the UK linebacker, Micah Johnson, who made the tackle on the play.

It's now 4th and 2. LSU had been perfect all season on 4th down attempts, including the 5 for 5 from the Florida game last week, as well as 1 for 1 so far in this game. They gave the ball to Charles Scott who had ripped off a 50 yard run in the first half. The running lane was clear, wide open. Then Braxton Kelly, the junior linebacker from LaGrange, GA came up and made the biggest tackle of his life. He stopped the LSU back after a gain of 1 yard, leaving them 1 yard short of the 1st down and giving UK it's first victory over a #1 ranked team since 1964, and the first time they had ever done it in Lexington.

The stands emptied as the fans made their way on to the field. It was quite a scene. I couldn't sit down while I was watching the 3rd overtime. After we scored, I stood up in front of the TV and remained standing until it was over. This victory definitely helped ease the pain of so many losses that UK football has endured in the past.

Well, after the game was over, I had to leave for Nashville. As I was listening to the post-game interviews on the UK Radio Network on the way home, they interviewed one of the players from the game. He said that after they realized that they had won, he was just overcome with emotion. He really didn't know what to do so he just sit there on the field and cried.

As I listened to the joy in his voice, I thought about what it must have felt like to have been a part of that team. To have gone through all the heartaches that they have gone through in years past and to finally put some of those ghosts to rest. I couldn't help but get emotional myself and a couple of tears rolled down my cheeks. For those who know me, I'm a pretty emotional guy anyways.

I listened to the post-game interviews the rest of the way home. And then after that went off the air, I found a call-in show featuring one of UK's greatest Basketball players of all-time, Kenny "Sky" Walker. I couldn't resist calling in. I call in to the local shows down here in Tennessee all the time, so I thought I had to take this chance. It was pretty neat getting to talk to the "Sky-walker" after watching him play when I was a kid.

All in all, it was an AWESOME weekend!

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It was just after 11PM when things finished and we made our way to the exits amongst the sea of blue...



And one more entry before we started the trip back home...



An FYI... for those of you who don't know who Grant Hill is, the player that Mr. Shoemake referenced, he is the guy that threw the inbounds pass to Christian Laettner for Duke back in the 1992 East Regional Final game against UK, probably the best college basketball game ever played, despite the outcome. That pass led to "The Shot" which I'm sure you've seen if you've watched any TV on CBS during the month of March.

Well, this is the final installment of my video blog series for my Big Blue Madness trip. I hope you all enjoyed these little clips.

Until next time...

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This next clip shows you some of the more exciting moments of the night with the introduction of the Men's basketball team as well as the first time our new coach, Billy Gillispie, is introduced in Rupp Arena as our head coach. The place went nuts for him. Oh, and you may hear some dork that sounds a lot like me yelling throughout the introductions :-) Around the 1:26 mark is where things get good.



After a dunk contest, the men's team held a scrimmage. Here's the first of a couple of clips of that game.



And the second one...

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After making our way to our seats, it was only a few minutes until the festivities began. Here's a quick view of the arena around the time things started.



Then a few minutes later, the UK mascots decided to "drop in" and join us...

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Before we went into the arena, I wanted Joel, aka Mr. Shoemake, to take a quick tour of the UK Basketball Museum. I took a quick shot of the 7 National Championship Trophies (1948, 1949, 1951, 1958, 1978, 1996, 1998) that are on display there.



After wrapping up the tour we then made our way into the arena...

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Day 3 of my trip was "Game Day," or in this case "Practice Day." For those of you who aren't familiar with the Big Blue Madness, here's a quick summary. It's the first time of the year that college basketball teams are allowed to officially practice. It started back in the early 1980's, but back then it was called Midnight Madness, because the practices couldn't begin until midnight on October 15th. Three years ago the NCAA changed the rule to allow teams to begin practice at 7pm on the first Friday in October before October 15th.

So some of you are probably saying, "You mean, you're driving up to KY just to watch the teams (insert Allen Iverson voice here) practice?" Yep. We REALLY love our basketball.

We arrived at the arena with plenty of time to spare. Traffic in Lexington isn't really all that bad compared to what I'm used to here in Nashville. This clip shows is from the back of the arena parking lot and features our first appearance by my good buddy, Mr. Shoemake.



We were both pretty hungry at this point so we decided to brave the long lines of the Subway that was inside the Civic Center, attached to the arena. You can also get a glimpse at the "sea of blue" that is already there.

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Ok, so Day 3 starts off with me taking a trip down to the official clothing supplier of UK. Every year that I make this trip back to KY I have to replinish my supply of UK clothing :-) This year is no different.



Here are the results, as well as a prediction for the future and a brief discussion of the upcoming events.

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Picking up where we left off in the last video, I ventured over to the building that my grandfather spent many hours in and discussed one of the dreams that I used to have when I was younger.



And the final installment of Day 2 finds me in line at the drive-thru of a popular eating establishment, as well as displaying some of the latest attire that I found at the local sporting goods store.

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My second day back in KY started with a quick visit up to my grandfather's property where I spent many an afternoon while growing up. He passed away in March of 2005.



I then took a short walk down to the area in between my parents house and his property. At the end of this clip I had a surprise guest show up.

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I decided to do something a bit different for my trip up to KY for the Big Blue Madness this time. I took along my digital camera so I could make some short little video updates to go along with my blog entries. So without any further adieu, here is the first entry from Day 1…



Then a little bit later that night...

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What a crazy day of college football. Half of the Top 10 teams lost today, two of them (Florida and Texas) at home. It's crazy to think that as of right now, UK is currently all alone in 1st place in the SEC East Division and tied withLSU for 1st place overall in the conference! All they need to do is win one more game and they're bowl eligible for the 2nd consecutive year. I'm just not used to this kind of success in football with them.

With so many teams losing in the Top 10, as well as one other team (Clemson) that's ahead of UK in the standings, it's not out of the question that we're going to be ranked in the Top 10 when the standings come out tomorrow. That's just crazy!

Regardless of how this season turns out, so far it's been a very exciting ride! I can't ever remember being this pumped about college football in my lifetime.

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I got up this morning at around 5:40am. This being a Saturday, you may be asking yourself "...so Big Blue, why did you get up so early today?" Well, I'll tell you why. Today at 6am Central tickets for the Big Blue Madness went on sale. Supposedly. Well, if you went to the ticket booth then, yes, the tickets were available then. But if you tried to order them online at TicketMaster's web site, then you weren't so lucky.

I was on their web site right at 6, waiting for them to make the tickets available. At around 6:05am the page finally let me in to look for tickets. But once I entered in the security code verifying that I was a real person I then was taken by surprise. The site said that there were no tickets available!

I knew that people were really excited to go to this year's BBM to get our first glimpse of our new coach, Billy Gillispie, but I thought this was ridiculous! I kept trying but had no luck so I just gave up hope. I was pretty bummed out. I've had the time off approved for about 5 months now to be able to make the trip up there. So this morning I was feeling pretty sad.

I decided to go work with my new recording software. I did that for around an hour or so. I then thought I'd check to see if the official UK site had posted an article about how fast the tickets sold out. I'm so glad I did. They had posted an announcement that there was a problem with the online tickets and they were working to resolve it. A ray of hope suddenly appeared!

So I went back to the TicketMaster site and tried again. Still no luck. I tried again. No luck. Then on the 3rd attempt... I got a ticket!!!! Woo hoo!!!! It's in the lower level, Section 39 Row N, on the opposite side of the arena from where I sat last year. I'm closer to the UK bench this time. So I should be able to get some pretty decent photos (Click here to view pictures from last year's event).

Last year was the first time that I had ever went. I'm even more excited about going this year. I'm hoping to do some videos this time in addition to the pictures.

Ahhh.... I can hear the dribbles now...

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I just wanted to post a quick update for everyone on what's been going on for me the last couple of weeks. As I mentioned in my last post, for my birthday my wife got me a Pro Tools rig to do my music on. She rocks! I finally got everything set up last night with the new desk. I'll take a picture at some point and upload it. I haven't had much of a chance to do anything with it yet but plan on really diving head first into it over the next couple of days.

One of the reasons I haven't had much time to work on it is because I've been out of town. Last week I headed out to Missouri to do some collaborating with some new friends of mine, Rick and his daughter Mandy and son Kristian.

I can't begin to tell you how great of a time I had while I was out there. I felt like a part of the family from the moment I arrived. I had a blast being out there with them and was sad to leave. We had so many ideas to work with but nowhere near the amount of time we needed.

We were able to track a couple of songs but we definitely could have used a better engineer. I'm going to try and clean up the recordings as much as I can and then post a sample of the tracks. By the way, I was the engineer :-) What can I say, I'm a drummer! I'm sure that as I spend more time on this, my engineering abilities will improve.

We're hoping to get together again as soon as possible and do some more writing. I can say that after spending 4 days of living the "musician's life" - staying up late, going to bed no earlier than 3am and then getting up late, it definitely made it rough when I had to get back into my daily 7:30-4 routine yesterday.

Quick side note, major props to my beloved UK football team for going 4-0 this year! They pulled out a great victory over Arkansas on the road this weekend. I recorded the game and had to avoid contact with all sports and news agencies until I got home so I could watch the game without knowing who had won.

Over the next couple of weeks I'll be heading up to KY for the annual start of the basketball season to take in the Big Blue Madness. Last year was my first time getting to do that. I'm even more excited about it this year since we have the new coach. Then the weekend after that I'll be playing some shows with Judah First over in East Tennessee.

Of course, I'll also be working on music and more importantly, spending time with my wife.

Until next time...
Big Blue Barry

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Just thought I'd write a few quick lines about a couple of different things...

The other day I was in Wal-mart getting some cat food for our attention-craving, plump, furry feline friend (yes, that's him pictured to the left). I walked past someone who was talking on their cell phone. I heard him say "Well, I really don't want to step onany one's toes." I thought that's very noble of him and I kept walking towards the cat food aisle. Upon my way back across the store I passed this fellow again. This time I happened to look down and notice that he was wearing a protective boot on one of his feet. Turns out he wasn't as noble as I thought...

If you like animated movies and haven't seen "Happy Feet" yet, then by all means go out and rent it. It was wonderful. The music was great and there really just aren't that many things in life that are cuter to watch than a dancing baby penguin. I'm not a dancer, not even remotely close to being one, and after watching this movie I couldn't help but want to dance. Thankfully for all those around me, however, I didn't...

I'm usually a patient person but I'm starting to get really antsy waiting for college basketball season to start up again. I know, the NBA Finals aren't even over yet (though for all intents and purposes they really are) and the NFL hasn't started yet, but I'm just really, really, really, really, really anxious to see what the new coach brings to the table...

One other thing... For any programmer out there, specifically those who use Microsoft products, check out Silverlight. Very cool stuff...

Until next time...

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I realized that I hadn't posted any blogs about the Billy Donovan situation. Now that the drama is over and the whole story has been played out, I'll just give my quick thoughts on it.

First off, while I don't think he handled the situation well in the beginning, I give Billy D props for taking responsibility for his actions and at least offering an apology to all those involved at his press conference where he was re-introduced as the coach of the Florida Gators.

I wasn't surprised at all that Billy left to go coach in the NBA. He has said numerous times, and as recently as a few weeks ago, that he was intrigued by the idea of coaching in the NBA. So when the Orlando Magic job came open I wasn't surprised at all that he left. After all, his main reason for not leaving Florida to go to UK was not wanting to uproot his family (I'm so glad that we got a different Billy). But with the Orlando job, he was going to be able to keep his family in Gainesville.

Also, by going to the Magic, he was inheriting a team that made it to the playoffs this year that has Dwight Howard on their roster, one of the rising stars in the NBA who is going to be a HUGE star soon, as well as 4 draft picks in this years draft, and not to mention plenty of room under the salary cap.

In other words, this was the PERFECT scenario for Donovan to leave Florida. And he did. And then he didn't.

When I first heard he had second thoughts and wanted to return to Florida, I thought he was going to be really hurting his recruiting ability at the school. I mean after all, he had said that he wanted to coach in the NBA, so you knew all the other SEC coaches were going to be using that against him.

Then when the details of his contract release from the Magic came out, I changed my mind on the recruiting. I still think he didn't do himself any favors with the waffling back and forth but the Magic helped him out big time by essentially "banning" him from coaching in the NBA for the next 5 years. Now Billy D can turn around and tell the recruits that he's not going anywhere for the next 5 years. Well, that will work for the class of 2008 recruits, but the classes after that will have no guarantees.

My biggest problem with Donovan was the way he consistently tried to deny rumors by issuing a "non-denial." I know leverage means everything in contract renewals but did he really think that Florida wasn't going to pay him whatever he wanted???

Oh well, this should be the last post about Donovan until hoops season kicks off and we have our battle of the B's for supremacy in the SEC: Billy Clyde Gillispie (UK), Billy Donovan (Florida) and Bruce Pearl (Tennessee).

Until next time...

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May 16th was a big day for UK basketball fans. Patrick Patterson, the highly coveted Power Forward from Huntington, WV, officially committed to play for UK this fall. He chose UK over Duke and Florida as well as a couple of other schools.

The deciding factor between the schools was ultimately distance. Since his family currently only lives about 2 hours away from the UK campus they would be able to see him play often without having to relocate.

This is a HUGE coup for new UK coach Billy Gillispie. After Coach Smith left, many felt that UK was no longer in the picture. And when Patteron's friend, Jai Lucas, committed to Florida on Monday last week, many felt that was a sure sign that Patterson would follow.

Gillispie only had 2 months to "seal the deal" on this recruit so he must be commended for his efforts. But it should also be noted that Coach Smith really did a great job of laying the groundwork on recruiting Patterson.

Oh yeah, Gillispie was also able to land another Top 50 prospect in Alex Legion a few weeks earlier. Legion had committed to Michigan but after they fired Coach Amaker he was released from his LOI. After his visit here, he committed almost immediately, even cancelling some of his other scheduled trips.

If Gillispie's off-the-court success is any indicator of what his teams are going to do on-the-court, then UK will be back to the position it's accustomed to being in before long.

Until next time...

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