Odd situation at Kentucky with Liggins

Pretty odd situation at Kentucky last night. DeAndre Liggins ( five star recruit ) -

Freshman guard DeAndre Liggins declined to enter the game in the second half of Kentucky's 74-72 win over Kansas State, UK coach Billy Gillispie said after the game.

He just said he didn't want to go in," Gillispie said.

Asked what message that sent to the coach, Gillispie said, "That said he didn't want to go in, and we made due without him."

"I don't know (what it means going forward)," Gillispie said. "I was really surprised by that, but it's a freshman that's really competitive that wants to play all the time, and when you don't get to play all the time, sometimes you make mistakes like that. Hopefully it won't be repeated.

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I have to tune in tonight on ESPN and see if he's suited up for the game or not.

Boy, they're sure lucky they got rid of that goofy Smith guy as their coach, eh? He wouldn't know how to deal with something like this, I'll bet.

You know, another highly recruited guard (Alex Legion) experienced issues with Gillispie early on last season and ended up leaving Kentucky for Illinois. I'm not saying that Liggins is gone and I'm not saying that it's Gillispie's fault (perhaps they're two prima donnas, and we know they exist across the basketball landscape), but it is unusual to see two years in a row, two elite recruits having such difficulty with the same coach so early on in their careers.

When Gillispie was the head guy at UTEP and Texas A&M, he never really had the elite, McDonald's All American talent on his rosters. I recall reading a piece on Acie Law who stated that he almost transferred the year Gillispie arrived, but his parents made him stick it out (and Law stated he was glad he did). It'll be interesting to see if this continues to be an issue at Kentucky. . .obviously the elite recruits are expected, Gillispie can recruit them, but can he get them to play for him?

At UTEP and TAMU, those players didn't have the options like UK players. If you transfer from UTEP or TAMU, you'll just go to another mid-major or bottom feeder team in a big conference. At UK, an elite player will be able to leave and still go to a big time school. Gillispie obviously hasn't adjusted his people skills to this fact. Elite players need some attention and yes, even some coddling at times. They have egos and if he can't deal with that, then he shouldn't be recruiting those types of players.

Roy Williams has NBA players sitting on his bench and they're not complaining!! Gillispie needs to find out what Roy's doing and bottle that up and ship it to Lexington.

Liggins

Played 27 minutes vs WVU last night and helped key the W for UK.