…before heading to FedExForum. Wow, these 9 p.m. starts are weird.

Anyway, it’s been a nice day watching hoops on TV. Some observations:

– I know Kentucky fans are going nuts about the loss to San Diego, and many of them want Billy Gillispie gone. That’s idiotic. Here’s the deal with Kentucky, and I’ve watched them a bunch of times now. Most of their players are really, really bad. A couple of their decent players are hurt, or just coming back from injury. And the ones who are supposed to be good? They’re absolute dogs. I’m sorry, but Joe Crawford is flat-out dogging it. In talking with a bunch of people up there, their view is that Kentucky had become a country club over the last couple years. Gillispie is trying to change the culture, and obviously he’s encountering some resistence from the likes of Crawford, Ramel Bradley, etc. What you get is what they’re putting on the court, which is a putrid product. I feel sorry for Gillispie. The reality is, any really good coach would be having problems right now. Would they have lost to San Diego, Gardner-Webb, etc? I don’t know, but it wouldn’t really matter in the big picture. In fact, it would only be masking how many holes the program has right now.

– I really was hyped to watch Tennessee-Gonzaga, and the game was kind of a letdown. Tennessee played hard, as always, and it’s a very nice win for them. As I watched the game, however, I couldn’t help but feel that Gonzaga has lost its identity. They don’t play like the scrappy mid-major anymore who does all the little things right to beat more talented teams. As their players have gotten better, they’re trying to play like everybody else plays, and at the end of the day, they just don’t have as many good players or good athletes as teams like Tennessee, Memphis, etc. Matt Bouldin and David Pendergraf play hard, but the rest of them just aren’t like the Gonzaga players of old. Austin Daye is going to be a beast, but he hasn’t figured it out yet. Jeremy Pargo is talented enough to have a big impact on a game like this, but he just didn’t play well at all. Another disappointing effort by Gonzaga, which frankly doesn’t have enough good wins to be an NCAA at-large team at this point. Meanwhile, give UT full credit for the way it played. It’s a long trip up there, as Memphis knows, and it’s not easy to beat Gonzaga in a road environment. Chris Lofton tried his best to let Gonzaga back into the game, but even he couldn’t lay enough bricks to make it happen. Lofton is still playing just yucky basketball. This has been a JaJuan Smith-Tyler Smith team to this point, and it’s been good enough. But how long can that last?