Amid rumors of his dismissal from the Kentucky team (or did he quit?), sophomore forward A.J. Stewart is the focus of intense speculation.
Kentucky had not said anything. But I just received word from UK that there are no roster changes. So we can assume Stewart remains on the team.
Presumably, UK Coach Billy Gillispie will be asked about Stewart’s status when the coach holds his regular day-before-the-game news conference later Friday.
Meanwhile, we’re checking and re-checking sources. No one knows for sure.
This much we know: Gillispie kicks a player off the team, then thinks better of it and re-instates the player on a regular basis. It sounds like the mind game routine routinely practiced by Gillispie’s coaching hero, Bob Knight.
Stewart was the focus of such speculation in the pre-season. Then he was on the team.
Stewart seems to be a whipping boy for Gillispie. During a pre-season interview, Stewart acknowledged that he felt like the coach was trying to run him off the team last season. But Stewart chose to stay because he likes being part of Kentucky basketball.
Time will tell (and hopefully Gillispie will tell later today) if Stewart is on the team.
But one thing for sure: this kind of speculation does not help Kentucky. After the transfers of Alex Legion, Morakinyo Williams, Derrick Jasper, Kerry Benson and Dusty Mills in the last 15 months, Kentucky does not need any more departures.
If nothing else, this only fuels a potential pitch by rival recruiters that Kentucky basketball breeds unhappiness.
7 comments ↓
Let’s wait to see what the full story is here. If the reason for dismissal was disciplinary, then should BG really have kept him on the team?? If he quit, then good riddance-if he doesn’t want to earn his way, he doesn’t belong here. We need to hear the full story here before making a decision. In any case, yes, Billy G needs to get his “head games” style under control - he is beginning to make Bobby Knight look sane. And, a big difference there was that Knight was winning games!
No less than 14 players transferred under our previous regime. That’s an average of at least one per year.
Pitino had only five players transfer.
I don’t remember anyone blaming Tubby or Rick for transferring players–no one ever said it would hurt our recruiting. That’s silly.
Stewart is a good kid from what I can tell, but I’ve also heard stories that he didn’t get along with Coach Gillispie. Not all that surprising given Coach’s reputation, but Tubby signed Stewart, so the young man had initially expected to play under Tubby.
I’d be more concerned if A.J. had been a Billy recruit–you can make the argument about Legion all day (since Billy signed him), but his mother seemed to be calling the shots. Not to mention he isn’t doing jack squat at Illinois.
Transfers happen. Big deal. We have Jon Hood, G.J. Vilarino, and Daniel Orton coming in next season. By my count we have one scholarship opening up due to graduation. If Meeks and Patterson choose to return (they will), we’ll need a couple more scholarships made available in some way.
Go Cats!
Yeah, well considering that Alex Legion has been worse at Illinois than he was at Kentucky and Morakinyo Williams, Kerry Benson and Dusty Mills were all never that good to begin with, I’m sorry but I don’t buy this one Tipton. Jasper is the only recruit of note that has transferred and he started and played a ton for Gillispie while he was here and Gillispie tried as hard as he could to keep Jasper from transferring. He said that he thought Jasper would be an “all-conference type player” and flourish here. Not every kid is going to be happy and a couple walk-ons transferring in particular shouldn’t even be of relevance when you have about 10 of them like we have, lol. Who cares? Mark Courey transferred too, did you REALLY leave Courey (a starter last year) off the magical list? Is a hot shot young recruit really gonna say “Man, I better not consider Kentucky if they ran off Mark Courey”? One would think they would look at Jodie Meeks (a player of the year candidate), Joe Crawford (a 2nd round NBA draft pick), Acie Law (a former lottery pick and All-American) and Patrick Patterson (a future 1st round NBA draft pick) and think to themselves “hmm, maybe these guys can develop talent and get me into the league”.
[...] what Jerry Tipton had to say on the [...]
Kentucky has always had players transfer, for whatever reason. This situation, though, looks different. I do believe that Coach G. has a lot in common with Bob Knight-and that’s not a good thing. Too many head games will eventually run off too many players, and that doesn’t bode well for the future.
Uhhhh…did you REALLY say Dusty Mills and Kerry Benson? Were you really upset that Williams left? Alex Legion is sitting on the bench at Illinois because he won’t practice hard and play D…sound familiar?
The only legit player in the group is Jasper and it took an act of God to get him to come back last year. He will be happier at UNLV. Sometimes it doesn’t work out.
A coaching change often results in a lot of transfers. Catch up Jerry.
[...] by 25 at times. They have now failed to cover the pointspread in 6 of their last 8 outings. Reports are swirling that talented sophomore AJ Stewart has quit the team. Stewart’s not a critical cog, as his [...]
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