—It’s game day for the red hot Louisville women’s basketball team. The 10th-ranked Cards face Miami in Coral Gables at … 3 p.m.? Holidays are over. I know there’s football tonight, but we don’t need a top
10 basketball team playing in the middle of the afternoon on a Thursday. Anyway, here’s a preview.
—Louisville football has officially announced the addition of two recruiting staff additions: Chase Heuke will serve as Director of Recruiting, while Nate Dennison has been named Director of Scouting.
—Mikel Brown Jr. goes 9th overall to the Mavericks in the latest NBA mock draft from SB Nation’s Ricky O’Donnell.
—Best fan base in the world.
—Brendan Marks of The Athletic looks at how Caleb Foster and Duke picked apart the Louisville defense in the second half of Tuesday night’s game.
—A fourth Kentucky football transfer has committed to Louisville.
—Sam Vecenie has Mikel Brown Jr. at No. 10 on his updated list of the 100 best prospects for the 2026 NBA Draft.
• Mikel Brown Jr. comes next for me, even though his performance has been more up and down. He’s averaging 16.6 points and 5.1 assists, but he’s been inefficient largely because his jumper has bizarrely abandoned him. He’s only made 26.8 percent of his 3s. I haven’t talked to a scout yet who is concerned about Brown’s shooting once he gets to the NBA, and Brown is dealing with a lower back injury that has held him out of multiple games over the last month. He needs to improve on defense, but Brown’s intersection of explosiveness athletically, shooting and passing looks pretty special.
Ryan Conwell is No. 39 on the same list.
—The Duke Basketball Report podcast folks recap the win over Louisville.
—No two teams in college basketball have a bigger disparity between how they play against weak competition and how they play against good competition than Kentucky and Louisville.
—Laura Ziegler is Louisville’s best post player since Emily Engstler. Their stats are almost identical, and Ziegler and the Cardinals are on a similar trek as Engstler and U of L’s 2022 squad.
—Brooks Holton’s latest Louisville basketball mailbag for the CJ is here.
—Tyler Shough is the NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Month.
—This is the only good use of AI.
—Male and Assumption are No. 1 in the first Kentucky High School Boys and Girls Basketball Elite 16 media rankings.
—Mikel Brown has been named to the Wooden Award Midseason Top 25 Watch List.
—Former U of L women’s soccer standout Karsyn Cherry has signed with Angel City FC.
—Louisville is full of parking lots, and it’s a problem.
—Briggs seems to be having himself a week in San Antonio.
—It’s Jan. 8 and there are still six undefeated teams in men’s college basketball. That is extremely unusual.
—Is it possible to have too much money in college basketball? Kentucky and St. John’s are both certainly trying to prove that to be the case.
—The Ebuka Okorie show continued last night in Blacksburg as the Stanford freshman dropped 32 and hit a game-winner just before the buzzer to knock off Virginia Tech.
—21-year-old Mike would have guaranteed Bellarmine never ran this promo more than once.
—The Louisville baseball team is No. 16 in Perfect Game USA’s preseason poll. The publication also named both Zion Rose and Lucas Moore as preseason All-Americans.
—With classes starting back up this week, 15 U of L football freshman are set to arrive on campus.
—Last night in the ACC:
No. 23 Virginia 84, Cal 60
Clemson 74, No. 24 SMU 70
Stanford 69, Virginia Tech 68
Miami 81, Wake Forest 77
The league is resting until Saturday,
—Former Louisville kicker Cooper Ranvier could be headed to Tennessee.
—Louisville is among the 10 most-watched teams in both men’s and women’s basketball.
——And finally, the Mike Rutherford Show returns this afternoon from 2:30-5:30. Listen live on 1450AM or 96.1 FM, stream on YouTube (and everywhere else), or watch live on WBNA-Channel 21.
