GREEN MAG

No. 18 Kentucky was already one of the most disappointing teams in the country. Then it lost by 35 points in front of a mostly UK partisan crowd.

The dam broke on Friday for the Wildcats, who entered a game against No. 11 Gonzaga with a 5-3 record and exited with a 5-4 record. The final score: 94-59.

The game started badly and ended badly for Kentucky. Gonzaga began the game with a 19-2 run and was up 43-20 at halftime. As the Wildcats players began the trek to the locker room, the fans at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville showered them with boos.

With UK's campus much closer than Gonzaga's, the crowd was almost entirely Wildcats fans. And they made their voices heard.

Yeeshpic.twitter.com/QKkAOH8mLb

— Mike Rutherford (@CardChronicle)December 6, 2025

Kentucky getting booed off the court trailing 43-20 at halftimepic.twitter.com/KJYDzYTAiz

— Tyler Russell (@TylerJRuss)December 6, 2025

The second half was no better. Overall, Kentucky was 16-of-60 from the field (27%) and got outrebounded 43-31. Gonzaga, meanwhile, shot 36-of-63 (57%) and was 9-of-18 from 3-point range. Graham Ike led all players with 28 points and 10 rebounds in 30 minutes.

After the game, Kentucky head coach Mark Pope said his team deserved the boos, with himself the most deserving:

"We've diminished into a bad spot right now and we have to dig ourselves out of it. It's going to be an internal group thing and we feel the responsibility we have to this university and this fan base. All the boos we heard tonight were incredibly well-deserved, mostly from me. We have to fix it."

Kentucky began the season ranked No. 9 in the country after going 24-12 in Pope's first season in charge. To bolster last year's group, the Wildcats spent big on a transfer class that included Arizona State's Jayden Quaintance, Pitt's Jaland Lowe, Florida's Denzel Aberdeen and Alabama's Mouhamed Dioubate.The reported price tag for the roster: $22 million.

It seemed like a formidable group if Pope could get all the new talent on the same page, but the team has now lost all four of its games against ranked opponents. The Louisville loss was embarrassing. The Michigan State game was out of reach the entire second half. The UNC loss was a gut punch.

And now, a 35-point loss. Don't expect them to ranked come Monday.

To be fair, health has not been on Kentucky's side so far. Quaintance, a lottery pick-level talent, is still recovering from a torn ACL and Dioubate missed his fourth straight game due to a sprained ankle. Lowe returned from a shoulder injury Friday and posted zero points on 0-of-5 shooting from the bench.

Still, Kentucky teams, even short-handed ones, aren't supposed to lose by 30-plus. The program is a blue blood, with immense resources and expectations to match. Pope seems well aware of that, and his program will get two more shots against ranked opponents this month — home against No. 22 Indiana and a matchup against No. 23 St. John's in Atlanta — before conference play starts in the new year.

Lane Kiffin's trip to Atlanta for ESPN's "College GameDay" is off. According to Kiffin, anyway.

The new LSU coach posted to social media Friday evening that his jaunt to Georgia would not happen after LSU got the signature of No. 1 overall recruit Lamar Brown. The Louisiana native and five-star player officially signed with LSU on Friday, the last day of the early signing period for high school players.

Kiffin's appearance on "GameDay" Saturday morning could still happen via remote interview.

Welp had to stay in BR and still finishing some things out with players and a coach!! 🐯🐯Won't make it to Atlanta for@CollegeGameDay#WhatAGreatFridayhttps://t.co/I5H449u1gw

— Lane Kiffin (@Lane_Kiffin)December 6, 2025

Brown has been a longtime LSU commit and Kiffin took a picture with him shortly after arriving in Baton Rouge from Ole Miss on Sunday. The 6-foot-4, 285-pound Louisiana native is officially listed as an athlete as he plays both offensive and defensive line, though he sees himself playing on the offensive line in college, according to his Rivals profile.

LSU has also been reportedly pursuing Syracuse assistant Elijah Robinson to be its defensive line coach. Robinson was Syracuse's defensive coordinator in 2025 but recently was demoted after a rough season for the Orange.

As the early signing period concludes, LSU has the No. 11 class in the country. The Tigers signed five-star defensive lineman Richard Anderson along with Brown and added eight four-star recruits so far.

Kiffin's scheduled appearance on "GameDay" would be his second public appearance since taking the LSU job along with his introductory news conference. "GameDay" had been sympathetic to Kiffin's situation in recent weeks as former Alabama coach Nick Saban — who Kiffin worked for with the Crimson Tide — shares an agent with Kiffin.

Two weeks ago,Saban said on the pregame showthat Kiffin's decision was not fair to Ole Miss' players and that college football needed people to step up and change the rules to prevent Kiffin's departure from happening when it did.

Kiffin, meanwhile, said he had been leaning on advice from Saban and former USC and current Las Vegas Raiders coach Pete Carroll as he made his decision to leave Ole Miss. Kiffin has also made claims in the aftermath of taking the LSU job that have beenrefuted by Ole Miss playersandRebels athletic director Keith Carter.

The2026 FIFA World Cup draw— the biggest (and longest?) in tournament history — was held Friday at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and let's just say thata lothappened, from the heads of state picking the already decided balls to Rio Ferdinand attempting his best acting skills to Lauryn Hill singing "Doo Wop (That Thing)" in front of a lot of confused, suited members of FIFA.

But in terms of the actual draw, there are plenty of narratives to discuss, as it gave us some very tasty matches and scintillating group action. Due to the fact that we have 48 national teams divided into 12 groups of four, the possibilities for chaos are endless, so without further ado, here are the winners and losers from Friday's FIFA World Cup draw.

WINNERS

USMNT

Mauricio Pochettino likely left the Kennedy Center feeling extremely happy, asthe U.S. men's national team will face Paraguay, Australia and the winner of Türkiye, Romania, Slovakia and Kosovo— all winnable matches. It was only last month that the U.S. came out victorious against Paraguay with a 2-1 result, and a month before that, it was the same result against Australia. Obviously, the competitive nature of the World Cup will give us a different environment, but I think it will be the same outcome.

As for the other fixture? I see Türkiye and Real Madrid's Arda Güler eventually punching their ticket to become the remaining opponent, but again, the Americans have enough to see it through.

Feliz Navidad, Poche. This is a great group for your side.

Spain

Honestly, if the European champions play the way they're supposed to, this group should be a piece of cake for Lamine Yamal and Co., who played scintillating football throughout the majority of the World Cup qualifiers.

La Roja'sfirst match is against Saudi Arabia, the same team that shocked Argentina and Lionel Messi back in Qatar 2022, but I don't see Luis de la Fuente's side committing the same mistakes. After that, it's a fixture against the Cinderella story of Cape Verde, then ending with Uruguay, who have not been as strong in recent months under Marcelo Bielsa. (In fact, Bielsa wasn't even at the draw, and there is a lot of talk about major changes in the next few months.)

But as far as Spain is concerned, it should win this group with relative ease.

England

It's an incredibly English mentality to suggest that theirs is a challenging group (Croatia, Ghana and Panamá) and Thomas Tuchel's side should be nervous and careful. But this is the way all conversations start when British media talk about the Three Lions. However, it's time for some optimism and to expect success from this tremendously talented team's potential.

Croatia is always a tough cookie to crack, but it's also an aging one, as the likes of 40-year-old Luka Modrić and 36-year-old Ivan Perišić cannot control the game like they used to. It will be the hardest match of the group, but because it's the first one, I see England coming out strong to prove a point in this tournament. The venue is likely a bigger problem because if it's in the Dallas area, they're going to need to be wary of the temperatures, as Tuchel knows.

Meanwhile, Ghana has players of Premier League experience, but defensively, it's not enough to dominate against this deeply talented roster, while Panamá (second appearance at the World Cup after 2018), which is also dealing with an over-reliance on veterans, won't be a problem.

There's a difference between arrogance and confidence, and Tuchel's England needs a dose of both to realize that this group is absolutely there to be taken.

LOSERS

France

Group I is not an easy one forLes Bleus.

First, it's an opening game against Erling Haaland's Norway, which won every qualifier on their way to the World Cup. After that, it's the winner of Bolivia, Iraq or Suriname, ending with a game against Senegal, a country so deeply connected to the French, who also did well in qualifiers.

From a footballing perspective, it was in 2002 that Senegal beat France 1-0 in the opener, and that meant the defending World Cup champions at the time did not get out of the group. I am not saying that's happening next summer, but this very talented French team — the last under Didier Deschamps — is also not experienced in the competition as much as it used to be, as many veterans have retired from the international game.

We'll have to see if the French can win the group and find an easier path in the knockout stages. Because if it doesn't, things get complicated.

This is the Group of Death, alongside …

Group E (though the fans win)

This is a very difficult group to predict.

There is obvious historical bias with Germany, the four-time World Cup champion, and so many think that Julian Nagelsmann's side will succeed with ease here, but his project is still to be determined. The qualifying campaign did not start well, so there are still questions about the consistency, which was once a trademark characteristic forDie Mannschaft.

Then you have a very resilient, strong and determined Ecuador, which ended second in CONMEBOL qualifiers, its best-ever finish since the region's campaign moved to a single table.

The Ivory Coast is tough, too, returning for the first time since 2014, ended undefeated in qualifiers without conceding a goal. There's so much talent there who are also familiar with the German game.

Finally, Curaçao. Yes, the Caribbean island andsmallest nation in World Cup historyis undoubtedly a Cinderella story, but it's also a very good project with a great roster that could cause problems for anyone, thanks to its expanded diaspora. Defensively resilient, it's managed by the legendary Dick Advocaat, who has managed seven nations including his Netherlands, whom he took to the quarterfinal stage in 1994 in the USA. At 78, he will become the oldest manager to lead a team in the World Cup, and I am sure both him and his team will look to ruffle a few feathers.

Watch out for this group. It's going to be interesting to see who comes out of it.

KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — Many of the voices were frantic and desperate. A few were steady and calm amid mounting, frightening danger, and in some cases, inescapable doom.

They came from families huddled on rooftops to escape rising, swirling waters, mothers panicked for the wellbeing of their children and onlookers who heard people yell for help through the dark as they clung to treetops.

One man, stuck high in a tree as it began to break under the pressure of the floodwaters, asked emergency dispatchers for a helicopter rescue that never came.

Their pleas were among more than 400 calls for help across Kerr County last summer whendevastating floodshit during the overnight hours on the July Fourth holiday. The recordings of the 911 calls were released Friday.

The sheer volume of calls would overwhelm two county emergency dispatchers on duty in the Texas Hill Country ascatastrophic floodinginundated cabins andyouth campsalong the Guadalupe River.

"There's water filling up super fast, we can't get out of our cabin," a camp counselor told a dispatcher above the screams of campers in the background. "We can't get out of our cabin, so how do we get to the boats?"

Amazingly, everyone in the cabin and the rest of campers at Camp La Junta were rescued.

The flooding killed at least 136 people statewide during the holiday weekend, including at least 117 in Kerr County alone. Most were from Texas, but others came from Alabama, California and Florida, according to a list released by county officials.

One woman called for help as the water closed in on her house near Camp Mystic, a century-old summercamp for girls, where 25 campers and two teenage counselors died.

"We're OK, but we live a mile down the road from Camp Mystic and we had two little girls come down the river. And we've gotten to them, but I'm not sure how many others are out there," she said in a shaky voice.

A spokesperson for the parents of the children and counselors who died at Camp Mystic declined to comment on the release of the recordings.

Calls came from people on rooftops and in trees

Many residents in the hard-hit Texas Hill Country have said they were caught off guard anddidn't receive any warningwhen the floods overtopped the Guadalupe River. Kerr County leadershave faced scrutinyabout whether they did enough right away. Two officials told Texas legislators this summer that they were asleep during the initial hours of the flooding, and a third was out of town.

Using recordings of first responder communications, weather service warnings, survivor videos and official testimony, The Associated Press assembled achronology of the chaotic rescueeffort. The AP was one of the media outlets that filed public information requests for recordings of the 911 calls to be released.

Many people were rescued by boats and emergency vehicles. A few desperate pleas came from people floating away in RVs. Some survivors were found in trees and on rooftops.

But some of the calls released Friday came from people who did not survive, said Kerrville Police Chief Chris McCall, who warned that the audio is unsettling.

"The tree I'm in is starting to lean and it's going to fall. Is there a helicopter close?" Bradley Perry, a firefighter, calmy told a dispatcher, adding that he saw his wife, Tina, and their RV wash away.

"I've probably got maybe five minutes left," he said.

Bradley Perry did not survive. His wife was later found clinging to a tree, still alive.

Moving higher and higher to survive

In another heartbreaking call, a woman staying in a community of riverside cabins told a dispatcher the water was inundating their building

"We are flooding, and we have people in cabins we can't get to," she said. "We are flooding almost all the way to the top."

The caller speaks slowly and deliberately. The faint voices of what sounds like children can be heard in the background.

Some people called back multiple times, climbing higher and higher in houses to let rescuers know where they were and that their situations were getting more dire. Families called from second floors, then attics, then roofs sometimes in the course of 30 or 40 minutes, revealing how fast and how high the waters rose.

As daylight began to break, the call volume increased, with people reporting survivors in trees or stuck on roofs, or cars floating down the river.

Britt Eastland, the co-director of Camp Mystic, asked for search and rescue and the National Guard to be called, saying as many as 40 people there were missing. "We're out of power. We hardly have any cell service," he said.

The 911 recordings show that relatives and friends outside of the unfolding disaster and those who had made it to safety had called to get help for loved ones trapped in the flooding.

One woman said a friend, an elderly man, was trapped in his home with water up to his head. She had realized his phone cut out as she was trying to relay instructions from a 911 operator.

Dispatchers gave advice and comfort

Overwhelmed by the endless calls, dispatchers tried to comfort the panic-stricken callers yet were forced to move on to the next one. They advised many of those who were trapped to get to their rooftops or run to higher ground. In some calls, children could be heard screaming in the background.

"There is water everywhere, we cannot move. We are upstairs in a room and the water is rising," said a woman who called from Camp Mystic.

The same woman called back later.

"How do we get to the roof if the water is so high?" she asked. "Can you already send someone here? With the boats?"

She asked the dispatcher when help would arrive.

"I don't know," the dispatcher said. "I don't know."

Associated Press reporters Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; Ed White in Detroit; Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama; John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio; and Mike Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey, contributed.

EDITOR'S NOTE:This story contains audio clips and descriptions of 911 calls that may be distressing. Listener discretion is advised.

Heartbreaking pleas for help poured into the Kerrville, Texas, police department's Telecommunications Center as the deadly catastrophic floods swept across Texas Hill Country in the early hours of July 4.

The recordings, released by the Kerrville Police Department on Friday, are uploaded in the order the calls came in, tracing the flood emergency minute by minute and the rising terror of people trapped as water climbed first by the inch, then by the foot through homes and cabins.

The earliest calls feel almost like premonitions, fragile voices that foreshadow the terror that would soon sweep across the Hill Country. They begin with an eerie calm — soft-spoken warnings from residents who sensed the rising water but could not yet see the catastrophe gathering in the dark.

Scott Towery, general manager of the River Inn Resort, called at 2:52 a.m. CT to warn that more than 100 guests were at the property as the water surged at an alarming pace.

His follow-up call came moments later, his voice taut with urgency, comparing the rising flood to one of the region'sworst on record.

"We've got about 130 people out on site and a big flood coming. We're waking them up now," he tells the dispatcher. "Our dam went underwater two and a half hours ago … It's really high, like the 1998-flood-type high."

Then the shift became unmistakable.

The next call was barely a call at all — a faint, almost indecipherable voice tangled in the sound of rushing water. The dispatcher, listening to nothing but that open line and the relentless sloshing beneath it.

What began as a cautious warning quickly escalated into panic, as callers pleaded for rescue while dispatchers, repeating the same urgent directive to get to higher ground, struggled to keep their voices steady.

"We cannot," one frightened caller replies. "There's water everywhere. We cannot move."

The devastating flash flooding in the early hours of the Fourth of July killed at least 117 people across Kerr County, including young children at summer camp, as parts of the Guadalupe River rose from about3 feet to almost 30 feet in just 45 minutes. Another 28 deaths were reported across five other counties.

Together, the recordings form a harrowing portrait of a night when the water rose faster than help could reach.

Desperate calls, screams, and lives hanging by a thread

Across the Hill Country, people clung to life however they could, according to the 911 calls – which police have warned are unredacted and "highly distressing."

Cars became unsteady rafts, lifting and drifting with survivors perched on their roofs. A floating bed carried people in the dark. Others scrambled onto a pergola and an AC unit, gripping whatever rose above the water. Entire cabins broke loose and drifted like boats, while some survivors clung to trees and bushes, holding on with numb fingers as the current tried to tear them away.

Just two people were on staff at the Kerrville Police Department Telecommunications Center to take their 911 calls when the y started coming in at 2:52 a.m. on July 4, Kerrville Police Chief Chris McCall said in avideo statementThursday.

"Some callers did not survive," the chief said.

Dispatchers lurched from one call to the next, the raw panic in each voice carving itself into permanent memory. The recordings grow darker as the night deepens, each voice trembling more than the last.

One call came from a man who woke to the rush of water in his apartment. He is in full panic, crying, screaming and begging for help. "I need help. I can't get out. I'm scared, please."

A desperate meow rises behind him, the tiny voice of the cat whose cries punctuate his terror. "All I have is my cat with me. Please I'm really scared. Please, help me, please. I can't get out of… I need help, I can't swim."

When the dispatcher tells him she has to disconnect to answer other emergencies, he begs her not to leave him alone. "Please don't let go of me," he pleads, sobbing. She stays on for eight minutes before the line eventually breaks off.

Elsewhere in the storm, another voice trembles onto the line, shock settling into every syllable.

"I'm stuck in the tree. The river is flooded," he says. "I think my wife got stuck, and I'm pretty sure she's dead. I am freaking out. The river is so high."

And then there was the sound of someone fighting for breath inside a room filling like a sealed tank.

"There's water up to my head now…I'm stuck in this room," a man says, his voice shaking. When the dispatcher asks if he can climb to the roof, he lets out a helpless, exasperated "No."

A window had burst somewhere in the room, and he describes the water forcing its way in, flooding faster, rising higher.

"What the f**k am I going to do?" he cries. The dispatcher offers the only instruction he can: "Try to keep your head above the water." Moments later, the caller begins to swear and appears to hyperventilate before the line clicks.

Everyone fought to survive, and dispatchers bore the weight of every scream and every breaking voice as they tried to help. But the flood left them with agonizingly few options.

When one caller, a woman who watched as the floodwaters rose closer and closer to her home, asked if she should leave in her car, the dispatcher could only offer the truth.

"Unfortunately, the weather is being so unpredictable," she tells the caller. "Nobody was expecting it to flood like this."

"The best thing you can do right now is stay where you are," the dispatcher says. That sounds terrible, but there is so much flooding happening on Highway 39 that cars are being washed away, and I would hate for you to become one of those people."

Callers plead for children's lives as camp cabins flood

In the midst of the raging floodwaters and the haunting calls from screaming victims struggling to survive, two children's camps became epicenters of terror.

By the end of the tragedy, the flooding deaths included 25 girls and two counselors who wereswept away from Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian camp situated along the banks of the Guadalupe River.

The first call from Camp Mystic came at 3:57 a.m., an astonishingly calm voice reporting that some campers were stranded on a hill while cabins across the bridge were already filling with water.

Another caller, this one confused and frantic, explained that their cabins were flooding while terrified voices and screams echoed in the background. The dispatcher, unable to do anything else, simply urged her to go as high as they could.

A resident a mile downriver from the camp called and reported finding two young campers who had been swept from the camp.

"We've already got two little girls who have come down the river, and we've gotten to them," a woman told a dispatcher. "But I'm not sure how many else are out there."

And then a Camp Mystic director's voice broke through the line, telling the dispatcher that as many as 20 to 40 people were missing – faces, names, lives suddenly reduced to numbers in a river.

At Camp La Junta,a boys' camp along the South Fork of the Guadalupe River, the desperation was just as immediate. One caller's voice rushed through the line: "We need desperate help. We've got kids trapped in cabins that we cannot get to…Now, now, now … we've got tons of small children … Please, please, please."

The cabins were beginning to cave in, the caller said. With the floodwaters pressing in, there was no time to wait.

Another caller, clinging to the rafters of a cabin rooftop, pleaded for the children beneath him. "We are 100% trapped," he said. "I'm not worried about myself. I'm worried about these kids right here, because we cannot have one of these kids falling under the water."

In every call, the helplessness was palpable and the heartbreak immediate. It was a flood that spared no one, not even children, taken in the dark before anyone could reach them.

The families of more than a dozen Camp Mystic victimsfiled lawsuitsagainst the camp and its owners last month.

Attorney Mark Lanier, who represents some of the families, said the release of the 911 calls may shed light on the tragic events of July 4, though it will likely deepen the parents' grief.

"Our clients continue to suffer unimaginable heartbreak and grief from the loss of their babies," Lanier told CNN on Friday, emphasizing that the families remain determined to uncover every factor that led to the deaths of their daughters and to hold those responsible accountable.

Overwhelmed dispatchers "did their best"

The uncertain reassurance from the two dispatchers at the Kerrville Police Department Telecommunications Center hangs in the recordings like a held breath, a testament to both the limits of the system and the unbearable human cost of that night.

The dispatchers answered a total of 435 calls over the next six hours, the police chief said, including more than 100 between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. The 911 calls are being released to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests, McCall said.

Some of the calls were transferred to a nearby dispatch center to help relieve the call load, as is protocol in high call volume situations, McCall added.

After dispatchers got "the basic critical information" and could no longer help over the phone, they faced "a difficult decision to disconnect and move on to the next call," McCall said.

"I'm immensely proud of our telecommunications operators," McCall, the police chief, said. "These public safety team members showed incredible perseverance as they faced high call volumes and did their best to provide assistance and comfort to every caller."

The City of Kerrville issueda statementacknowledging that the 911 calls' release "will bring up strong emotions," but that it "presents another moment to affirm who we are: a united, resilient community determined to recover and rebuild."

The chief also encouraged those who have struggled with the tragedy to get support, saying all members of the police department have participated in peer support meetings.

The local emergency response to the July Fourth floodingwas heavily scrutinized by the community, who alleged local officials were unprepared for the weather event that ripped the rolling countryside to shreds.

In September, Texas lawmakers enactednew camp safety lawsaimed at addressing gaps in disaster preparedness by strengthening requirements and streamlining the emergency response. The owners of Camp Mystic said this week they plan to exceed those requirements when a portion of the camp reopens next summer, according to TheAssociated Press.

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN's Taylor Galgano, Sophia Peyser, Caroll Alvarado, Maria Sole Campinoti, Taylor Romine, Stephanie Matarazzo, Graham Hurley, Sarah Moon, Julia Vargas Jones, Sarah Dewberry, Andy Rose, Toni Odejimi, Rebekah Riess, Isa Mudannayake, Ellen Rittiner and Christina Zdanowicz contributed to this report.

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