Kentucky does not win the national championship in 2012 without Doron Lamb, the former Wildcat sharpshooter going for a game-high 22 points in the 67-59 victory over Kansas to hang banner No. 8. It was the perfect way to finish a near-perfect postseason run, the Queens native scoring in double figures all six games with 16-plus in four of six and two 20-point outings.

Lamb was consistent, just as he was his entire career in Lexington. He averaged 12.3 points per contest in year one, 13.7 points in year two with shooting splits of 49/48/81 in 78 total games. Until Reed Sheppard came along in 2023-24, he held the all-time shooting record at Kentucky, knocking down 47.5 percent of his three-pointers on 303 attempts with 144 makes.

Thing is, he only averaged 3.9 attempts per game — 3.7 as a freshman, 4.1 as a sophomore. He was a coin-flip shooter, but didn’t get many opportunities with 1.8 conversions each time out. Keep that in mind, he says, when talking about the all-time greats in the blue and white.

“Let me tell y’all real quick. Look, y’all. Listen,” Lamb told KSR, clearly needing to get something off his chest. “Back in my era, back in my time playing basketball, I only averaged four attempts at the three-point line — but I averaged two makes. These kids now are shooting 10 threes, eight threes a game. If I would’ve done that back then, I would have averaged 20-plus. So that’s all I need to say.”

He’s got a good point. Take college basketball’s leading three-point shooter from a year ago, Belmont’s Tyler Lundblade. He knocked down 48.1 percent of his attempts — worse than Lamb’s year-one average as a Wildcat of 48.6 percent — but took 6.5 threes per game. Koby Brea may be the better example for BBN, finishing No. 9 nationally shooting 43.5 percent from deep on 5.9 attempts per contest in Lexington. Houston’s L.J. Cryer got up 7.3 three-pointers each night on 42.4 percent shooting to finish at No. 16 on his way to the national title game. Remember Lamar Wilkerson, who turned down Kentucky for Indiana in the transfer portal? 44.5 percent on 7.7 attempts at Sam Houston State, No. 7 nationally.

Could the efficiency match the volume? Lamb is almost offended by the question. Of course it would, because that’s what he does.

“For sure. If I get more shots, I’m making more shots. I’m a shot-maker,” he told KSR. “You gotta make shots to play in Coach Cal’s system because there are too many guys on the team. You only get eight, nine shots a game. That’s what I was, a shot-maker. If I’m gonna get 10 threes per night, I’m gonna make six easily.”

Lamb playing in today’s game with more shots opens the door to the dream of NIL potentially keeping him in Lexington longer than the two years he stayed, leaving as a second-round pick after the title in 2012. He was taken with the No. 42 pick as a sophomore, but would’ve happily stuck around if the price was right.

What would that price be, exactly? Considering his status as a top-30 recruit making the McDonald’s All-American Game and Jordan Brand Classic, along with the obvious shooting efficiency that put him in the Kentucky record books, it’s safe to call him a seven-figure player.

His price tag would’ve certainly gone up after scoring 22 points in the championship game, too, making the opportunity too good to pass up. The two years we saw of Lamb in Lexington would have been four.

“Me coming in as a McDonald’s All-American? I would have needed a million dollars, minimum,” he said. “These kids are getting a million dollars to average three points; it’s crazy. I would’ve been a millionaire easily. I would have stayed, I ain’t gonna lie. After one championship, I would have stayed because I would have gotten a big bag. I would have stayed in college.”

Knowing what it would have meant to his legacy as a hooper, he wishes that’s how things unfolded.

“I would’ve still had records today — three-point records, points. I would have had a lot of records,” Lamb told KSR. “I wish I had done four years.”

D-Lamb could’ve been eating a whole lot more and sleeping a whole lot less in blue and white.

Purdue is officially less than two months away from the 2025 season and the start of Barry Odom’s head coaching tenure in West Lafayette. Odom turned around a struggling UNLV program and, while the task at Purdue may be steeper, he’s shown he can bring success to places that need a rebuild. His time at Missouri was average, but college football looks very different now—especially with the impact of NIL.

At media days across the country, coaches like Deion Sanders made it clear that winning is tied directly to money. Odom won’t have the same resources as programs like Ohio State or Michigan, but he wants to build a hard-nosed team that can compete regardless of recruiting stars or spending.

Purdue hasn’t recruited well in the NIL era, and the 1-11 record reflects that. While underdog stories are easy to root for, the truth is money matters. With the recent House vs. NCAA settlement, schools can now pay players directly via a $20.5 million revenue-sharing cap. Following the ruling, Purdue Athletic Director Mike Bobinski went on the record and clarified that the football program would receive less than the industry-standard 75% of allocated resources, this disadvantage being just another hurdle for Barry Odom to jump in his new job.

Odom acknowledged how much the game has changed in a June press conference. “We’ve changed more rule wise in the last two years than we have in the last twenty-five, and I believe that. But I also know that if you don’t adjust or adapt, you get left behind.” Coaches have always had to evolve, but Odom’s challenge is rebuilding while navigating a landscape most coaches have never seen.

Despite ranking just 47th in the 2025 transfer team ratings via 247Sports, Odom quietly retooled the roster. He focused heavily on the trenches, landing linemen like Bradyn Joiner from Auburn and Marc Nave Jr. from Kentucky. Building a strong front is part of the identity he’s trying to establish.

Odom also brings back a familiar face at quarterback in an interesting situation. Ryan Browne transferred to North Carolina to play under new head coach Bill Belichick, one of the best talent evaluators of all time, who clearly saw potential in Browne. He wasn’t the only quarterback Belichick brought in however, and a crowded room pushed him back to Purdue in pursuit of a starting spot.

Despite a dramatic offseason, Browne has the tools to be a solid Big Ten quarterback and should take over as the starter this season. He’s in a similar position to Odom as both are trying to prove they belong as consistent contenders in the conference. The original transfer seems to be water under the bridge now, with everyone in the program recognizing the redshirt sophomore as a key piece of Purdue’s rebuild.

Purdue doesn’t need a bowl game this year, but it needs to be a consistent bowl team in the near future. The program has history, and fans want to feel like it’s heading somewhere again. Whether Odom is the right guy to lead that charge is still uncertain, and he’s been honest about his own discomfort with where college football is headed. “I can’t say that I agree with everything that we’re doing now in college football, but that’s what the rules are. I’ve had to change my traditionalist thinking. It doesn’t really matter what I believe in, they didn’t ask me to write the rules.”

He’s right. If Purdue wants to compete, it can’t just be on the coaching staff. The administration has to be just as invested. What happened on the field last year wasn’t just on Ryan Walters. Odom appears to be fully bought in, but the athletic department needs to be as well. Purdue won’t ever spend like the top programs, but that doesn’t mean it can’t compete with a smart, balanced roster.

Odom has a task on his hands, but this is the same coach who turned a 10-loss UNLV team into back-to-back bowl appearances, finishing 11-2 in 2024 with a top-20 AP ranking. UNLV isn’t the same stage as the Big Ten, but Odom did exactly what he’ll be asked to do at Purdue: rebuild a struggling program and make it competitive. The Purdue job was attractive to him, and he genuinely seems locked in on turning things around.

While Odom doesn’t have the on-paper resources that Curt Cignetti had when he took over at Indiana last year, the now in-state rival laid out a blueprint for how to revive a program from the bottom. Indiana and Notre Dame are slowly cementing themselves as the standard for football in the state, but Odom has a chance to change that. He may not replicate the exact success Cignetti had at Indiana last season, but he does need to follow a style that clearly works in today’s college football landscape.

It wasn’t that long ago Purdue was in the Big Ten Championship. That game should have been a launching point, but the program hasn’t matched it since. I expect this year’s team to be better than expected. Odom’s group is under the radar, but fun, and that’s more than enough for most fans in year one. He isn’t expected to outspend college football’s giants. He’s expected to bring structure and identity.

Can Purdue compete in the NIL era under Barry Odom? We’re about to find out.

Less than two weeks after terms of a multibillion-dollar college sports settlement went into effect, friction erupted over the definition of a “valid business purpose” that collectives making name, image likeness payments to players are supposed to have.

The new College Sports Commission sent a letter to athletic directors last week saying it was rejecting deals in which players were receiving money from collectives that were created solely to pay them and don’t provide goods or services to the general public for profit.

A lead attorney for the players responded by saying those instructions went against settlement terms and asking the CSC to rescind the guidance.

“This process is undermined when the CSC goes off the reservation and issues directions to the schools that are not consistent with the Settlement Agreement terms,” attorney Jeffrey Kessler wrote to NCAA outside counsel Rakesh Kilaru in a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

Yahoo Sports first reported details of the letter, in which Kessler threatens to take the issue to a judge assigned with resolving disputes involved in the settlement.

Kessler told AP his firm was not commenting on the contents of the letter, and Kilaru did not immediately respond to AP’s request for a comment.

Yahoo quoted a CSC spokesman as saying the parties are working to resolve differences and that “the guidance issued by the College Sports Commission … is entirely consistent with the House settlement and the rules that have been agreed upon with class counsel.”

When NIL payments became allowed in 2021, boosters formed so-called “collectives” that were closely tied to universities to work out contracts with the players, who still weren’t allowed to be paid directly by the schools.

Terms of the House settlement allow schools to make the payments now, but keep the idea of outside payments from collectives, which have to be approved by the CSC if they are worth $600 or more.

The CSC, in its letter last week, explained that if a collective reaches a deal, for instance, for an athlete to appear on behalf of the collective, which charges an admission fee, that collective does not have a “valid business purpose” because the purpose of the event is to raise money to pay athletes, not to provide goods or services available to the general public for profit.

Another example of a disallowed deal was one an athlete makes to sell merchandise to raise money to pay that player because, the CSC guidance said, the purpose of “selling merchandise is to raise money to pay that student-athlete and potentially other student-athletes at a particular school or schools, which is not a valid business purpose.”

Kessler’s letter notes that the “valid business purpose” rule was designed to ensure athletes were not simply being paid to play, and did not prohibit NIL collectives from paying athletes for the type of deals described above.

To prevent those payments “would be to create a new prohibition on payments by a NIL collective that is not provided for or contemplated by the Settlement Agreement, causing injury to the class members who should be free to receive those payments,” Kessler wrote.

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AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports