Black Friday’s Top 10: Basketball tonight, football tomorrow, leftovers in between

Hello, friends, I trust Thanksgiving treated you well. Some of you have probably been up for hours shopping, but me? I slept in all the way until 8 a.m. then had some tea and watched the Black Friday madness on the news before typing up these notes for you. You people are crazy for some deals, aren’t you?

As you can see in the picture above, the basketball team spent yesterday volunteering at the Salvation Army before having a meal at Cal’s house with their families. Then they went through a brief walkthrough, which reminds me…

1. Hey, we’ve got a basketball game tonight

Your University of Kentucky Wildcats take on the UT-Martin Skyhawks tonight at 7 p.m. at Rupp Arena in the final game of the much-ballyhooed Bluegrass Showcase. Oh, wait…you didn’t know we were in the midst of the Bluegrass Showdown, an incredibly daunting basketball tournament? Well, we are, and the Skyhawks have beaten each of the other three teams in the showcase 3-0:

2. Kentucky is a 28.5-point favorite

Over/under, what do we think? Or, more importantly, at what point will Brad Calipari come in and mess with Vegas’ numbers?

3. Will Isaiah Briscoe and Dominique Hawkins play?

Briscoe (back) sat out of Wednesday’s game vs. Cleveland State while Hawkins sat out the second half with a sore knee. After the game, Calipari said he expects both to be fine, but I wouldn’t be shocked if both sat out today’s game for precautionary measures. It’s not like we’re wanting for depth at the guard position.

4. Darin Hinshaw had Stephen Johnson and others over to his house

God bless Pam Hinshaw for preparing what must have been a massive meal.

5. Meanwhile, the running backs went bowling

THAT’S NOT THE ONLY BOWLING THEY’RE GONNA DO! Lots of turkey jokes to be made here, and I’ll let Nick Roush make them.

6. Final preparations for the Louisville game

Mark Stoops was NOT HAPPY with his defense after Wednesday’s practice, blasting them for their lack of focus only a few days out from Saturday’s huge showdown in Louisville.

“Not real pleased, don’t really want to get into it, not pleased with our focus. Fortunately we have a few more days to get it right we’ll continue to grind on it and hopefully have better focus tomorrow.”

Hopefully that message resonated. Check out all of Stoops’ remarks below:

7. Meanwhile, Louisville’s still all about the mind tricks

Not letting your team speak to opposing media is weird enough (even if it’s to protect Lamar), but not letting your players say the word “Kentucky”? Massive eye roll. Look, Louisville and Jackson are so good my heart is staying right in its little bone cage with this game, but I have to chuckle at the rivalry week antics coming out of Bobby Petrino’s facility this week. If you eliminated Jackson from the equation, I think Kentucky would have a decent shot at an upset, but unfortunately, that’s not going to happen; however, weird things happen in this series, so I hope I’m proved wrong.

8. Did you see our awesome Thanksgiving video from yesterday?

If not, you’re about to see it again:

For some reason, this video took approximately four hours to upload to YouTube, so please enjoy it.

9. Anyone else binging “Gilmore Girls: A Year In the Life” today?

No? That’s cool, more Netflix bandwith for me. I’m not the least bit ashamed to say how excited I am for Netflix’s reboot of the 2000’s classic. I tried to stay up until midnight last night to binge it all when it hit the interwebs, but fell asleep in a turkey coma with my cheek on my laptop.

10. No morning show today

…but, the KSR Pregame Show starts at 4:30 p.m. If you’re desperate for a KSR fix, don’t forget the KSR Football Podcast and the Depth Chart Podcast on our iTunes feed, or the Best of KSR show at 10 a.m. on 630 AM and all of your streaming devices.