Coach Cal, New Wildcat Top Off-Season UK News

Sure it's May 31st, but there's bound to be a University of Kentucky basketball story somewhere. Sure enough, we have one...no, make that two. The UK basketball team--already flush with extraordinary talent for 2011-12--has added another to its roster. And this time, it wasn't Coach John Calipari who found him; he found UK.

Point guard Ryan Harrow has transferred from North Carolina State University to the University of Kentucky. He'll likely have to sit out a year, which is just as well since incoming phenom Michael Gilchrist will probably step in immediately as the 'Cats' point guard. But that's okay. It's called security for the future. It's a nice hedge against the current one-and-done atmosphere of college basketball.

The other story involves the big heart of the much-maligned Coach Calipari. Many non-UK fans go out of their way to dredge up nasty issues at Cal's former universities in which he was never found to be complicit.  And in so doing, his incredible charity work is often overlooked. There was his ample 2010 donation to the Memphis Street Ministries, the "Hoops for Haiti" Telethon, and, most recently, his participation in the Sixth Annual Dick Vitale Gala benefitting the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research. The guy's got a big heart and big resources and it's a good thing for many that he combines the two as often as he can.