Welcome, everyone, to another edition of the KSR pre-show.

Today is Thursday, October 30th.

I am Billy Rutledge, and one more show without Shannon the dude.

He returns from his many vacation days tomorrow at Whiskey Thief.

Give us a call today on the Clark's Pump and Shop phone line.

That's 859-2-80-2287.

Text us at 502-265-66. And as always, the KSR Pre-show is brought to you by Italics here in Lexington, Fine, Italian Dining at the City Center on Main Street. That's where I'm at today, high atop the city center on the seventh floor, where we continue our week of guest.

Big thank you to Darren Hendrick, who joined us on the show yesterday, Nick Coffee,

everybody that's jumped in with us throughout the week, including Jeff Piccoro on Monday.

And now it's game day.

Kentucky basketball takes on Georgetown tonight at 7 p.m. at Rupp Arena in the final

exhibition game before the regular season gets started. And there's no better man to discuss it with than Jack Pilgrim, the UK men's basketball beatrider for Kentucky SportsRadio.com. Not Jack's first rodeo here on the radio. You can hear him every Sunday morning on the Sunday morning sports talk show, but also a frequent guest here on the pre-show. What's up, dude? Great to see you, buddy. Life is good, isn't it? Kentucky basketball, we got the appetizer, but it almost felt like a fever dream with the Purdue game. And now it's like, oh, no, that wasn't just a one-off. That wasn't just a unique thing. We get it again and then again and then again.

It's just, I'm so excited. So, yes, I couldn't be happier to be here with you. It's a wonderful time of year. We were talking about it before the show started. I mean, crossover season, football and basketball coming. And we can't complain. We can't complain about our jobs, Jack. When we talk about covering the cats for a living, we can't say that, you know, we're too busy or anything like that. Because we've got the greatest job in the world, don't you think? Oh, yeah. It's, you know, anytime you want to bring out your tiny violin and talk about how many hours you work and all that, it's like, you know, I get to watch Kentucky basketball for a living. There's no better life, no other life. There isn't even another path for me necessarily. Like this was the one thing that I said that I was going to do in my life. I didn't have a backup plan. I just kind of said this is what I'm pushing all of my chips in for. I hope it works out. So hopefully we don't have to find out

what the alternative is. Well, hopefully you're staying on top of your game. You're mentally sharp for the season ahead. But I also hope you're working on your basketball game because recently we had the topic of KSR versus the Kentucky coaches. And Jack, I think you might be our best player or at least one of them, my man. I mean, we're going to need your performance on the court. I don't know if we're

going to be able to sub your performance on the court. I don't know if we're going

to be able to sub you out for a while if we do have this game. You know, we'll see. I'm for it. I'm very, it was very humbling to see the, you know, as a Boston Celtics fan, I was like, in the weeds of all of that coverage with the media game and seeing again, you know,

they have some former NBA players on the staff. fan. I was like in the weeds of all of that coverage with the media game and seeing again,

you know, they have some former NBA players on the staff. They have, you know, high, high,

high level D1 players on that staff. So I understand the, the dynamic there that they were,

they were signing up for a beat down. But that's exactly what Kentucky has on its roster too. So it's

not like, you know, if it were any other coaching staff in America, I'd, you know, feel like I'd feel pretty good about it. But we're also talking about former NBA players and high major D1 players on the Kentucky staff. So I don't know how that one unfold, but I'd give it my best shot. Don't sell yourself short. We've seen the mix tape. We've seen

you at the camps in the past. We've also seen Ryan Lemon at some of the camps. So, you know, our guy's going to be a hustle guy. He's going to maybe draw some fouls. But Jack, you're going to need to make some buckets. You and Mario are going to probably have to carry the team. You don't want to see my jump shot.

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