By JOSH NEWMAN
If there is a sneaker company controversy as Louisville head coach Rick Pitino suggested recently, Kentucky head coach John Calipari isn’t buying into it.
“I’ve been doing this a long time,” Calipari said at Kentucky Media Day on Thursday according to Courier-Journal beat writer Kyle Tucker. “When I first got started, my team was in Reebok. Then my team went to L.A. Gear. All I asked was, ‘Please don’t have us in the light-up shoes.’ They were very heavy, but we wore them. Then my team went to Adidas. And I’ve been with Nike.”
“All I can tell you is, it’s not had an effect on how I did this job. But people have their opinions on it.”
Pitino’s ire towards sneaker company affiliation stems from the fact one-time Cardinals commit Antonio Blakeney pulled his verbal commitment on Sept. 15, just 11 days after he pledged. Jerry Meyer of 247Sports linked the de-commitment to sneaker company affiliation and Bleacher Report followed with a lengthy story on the topic.
Blakeney, a 5-star shooting guard out of Orlando’s Oak Ridge High School, played his AAU ball with Nike-sponsored Each 1 Teach 1 (E1T1) and is now considering Kentucky, LSU and Missouri, all of which are Nike schools.
Blakeney had originally planned to be in Lexington for Big Blue Madness on Friday evening, but that is looking unlikely at this point according to Steve Jones of the Courier-Journal.
Despite Blakeney’s absence, Kentucky is slated to host a slew of high-profile recruits for Big Blue Madness. They include 2015s Stephen Zimmerman, Malik Newman, Carlton Bragg, Jaylen Brown, Brandon Ingram and Kentucky’s lone 2015 commit, Charles Matthews. Tyus Battle a 2016 star out of New Jersey’s Gill St. Bernard’s, is also expected to attend.
Lori Zimmerman, Stephen’s mother, is expecting the scene in Lexington to outdo anything she and her son have seen on the recruiting trail to this point.
“The only phrase that I can think of is ‘Over the Top,,'” she told SNY.tv. “Coach Cal promised us it’s just over the top and the fans are over the top. So, I guess I kind of expect the super experience.”
