At Thanksgiving time, a cornucopia of delicious predictions…
* Louisville Catholic powers Trinity and St. Xavier meet again, this time in the semifinals of the KHSAA 6-A Playoffs on Friday night in Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium.
The Shamrocks handily won the regular-season meeting 35-13 to continue their dominance in what once was known as “The Rivalry,” but now is “The Shamrock Showcase.” Coach Bob Beatty’s team has won – yawn – 11 of the last 12 games with its erstwhile arch-rival.
St. X has a versatile running back in Sam Taylor, who has gained 1,506 yards on the ground and another 214 on receptions. But in the first game against Trinity, he was holed to only 42 yards rushing.
He’ll need to step it up if the Tigers are to pull an upset, as will quarterback Desmond Ritter, who has committed to play his college football at Cincinnati. Spencer Blackburn quarterbacks Trinity’s balanced attack.
There’s no reason to pick against Trinity until St. X proves it can beat the Rocks. So far Beatty has St. X coach Will Wolford’s number, just as much as Louisville coach Bobby Petrino owns the Kentucky Wildcats.
* The Governor’s Cup might as well be named the Petrino Cup, considering that the U of L coach is a career 7-1 against the Cats. His only loss to the Not-So-Big Blue came when he was coach at Arkansas.
The only way for 6-5 UK to have a chance Saturday is for U of L to turn in a performance as poor as the one it exhibited in its last start, a 36-10 drubbing at the hands of a Houston team it was favored to beat by 17.
That loss ended U of L’s chances to make the four-team College Football Championship Playoff, but it apparently didn’t do much to loosen quarterback Lamar Jackson’s grip on the Heisman Trophy.
Considering how poorly UK has played against quick option quarterbacks such as Tennessee’s Joshua Dobbs, who shredded the Cats for 370 yards and five TDs in a 49-36 Vols’ victory that wasn’t that close, Jackson should be able to have his way with the Cats’ matador defense.
In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising to see UK defensive coordinator D.J. Eliot get the same thing that turkeys get at Thanksgiving time.
* And speaking of axes, one is about to drop on Charlie Strong at Texas. That’s what happens when a coach loses to Kansas in his third season. That is not a good sign that rebuilding is going the right way.
Although I expect the Longhorns to win one for Charlie in their final regular-season game against TCU to become bowl-eligible, it won’t be enough to save Charlie’s job. Which makes me wonder if his next stop might be defensive co-coordinator at – you guessed it – Kentucky!
Before the Texas debacle, Strong was the architect of several good defenses at Florida. Which impressed Louisville athletics director Tom Jurich enough to offer him the Cardinals’ head job in 2009. Strong took over a program that had gone backward under Steve Kranghorpe and took it to successive appearances in the Sugar and Orange Bowls.
If UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart could hire Strong to replace Eliot – and money shouldn’t be much of an issue since Charlie will receive a $10 million buyout from Texas – it would give both a potential successor to Mark Stoops, who hasn’t fielded a winning team at UK and a sort of reverse Pitino against his archrival Jurich.
Surely everyone remembers the indignant eruption in Big Blue World when Jurich hired former UK coach Rick Pitino to replace Denny Crum in 2001. Some UK fans will never get over that, and even the hiring of Strong wouldn’t do much to assuage their hard feelings.
But Strong could either help Stoops save his job or be first in line to be his replacement. Interesting, no?
* Notre Dame doesn’t like to break contracts with its coaches, but it might have to make an exception in the Brian Kelly case. It won’t be so much Notre Dame’s horrendous 4-7 record, even though that is unacceptable to Irish historians, but the NCAA’s findings of academic fraud that will cost the Irish to forfeit victories from the 2012 and ’13 seasons.
To it’s eternal credit, Notre Dame still demands excellence in both academics and athletics. Much like a politician, Kelly is denying any responsibility for the academic scandal. It will be interesting to see if the priests who run the university are in a pardoning mood or are sharpening their axe in the grand Thanksgiving tradition.
May we all be grateful for God’s abundant blessings.
Happy Turkey Day!
Billy Reed is a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame and the Transylvania University Hall of Fame. He has been named Kentucky Sports Writer of the Year eight times and has won the Eclipse Award twice. Reed has written about a multitude of sports events for over four decades, but he is perhaps one of media’s most knowledgeable writers on the Kentucky Derby