Throughout Billy Gillispie's six years as a head coach at the Division One level, his second year at each new program has become the season for drastic improvement. In his first head coaching stint at the University of Texas-El Paso, Coach Billy Clyde's team finished its second season 24-8, an 18-win improvement over the first. (This does not include a victory over the Harlem Globetrotters that year in an exhibition game, breaking the Globetrotters streak of 289 consecutive wins.)
At Coach Gillispie's next stop, Texas A&M, his second season with the Aggies produced, despite low expectations after losing the best player from the previous year to the NBA Draft, the first NCAA Tournament bid for the school in nearly 20 years.
Now at his third head coaching job and one of the most high profile positions in all of college basketball, Gillispie faces high expectations (are there any other kind when talking about UK Basketball?) with a roster that lost two of its leading scorers, lost three other players to transfer, but returns the likes of All-American candidate Patrick Patterson and All-SEC candidate Jodie Meeks.
Here is a breakdown of the projected starters and other key players in Versioin 2.0 of Gillispie's Kentucky Wildcats:
PG: Michael Porter, the junior out of Modesto, CA, seems most likely to run the "one" at least in the early part of the year. A tremendous athlete, Porter must display better ball protection and become a steady threat to hit the three-pointer to keep this spot in the rotation. If not....
PG: DeAndre Liggins, a top recruit in the 2008 class, will be waiting to pick up the ball and run with it. And, boy, will he run. Known more for his passing and defense, DeAndre could be Billy's UK version of Acie Law at Texas A&M.
SG: Jodie Meeks. Called the "next Dwayne Wade" by a leading authority. Yeah, ok, so it was my father-in-law, but I like the way he's thinking. After a miserable sophomore season in which Meeks missed about half of the games due to injury, the Georgia native looks primed and ready to explode averaging 25pts in UK's two exhibition games this year.
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