Safest bet of Kentucky Derby week? UK basketball will somehow steal the limelight.

It was exactly 48 minutes after post time for the 2017 Kentucky Derby when Tampa, Fla., men's basketball prospect Kevin Knox tweeted his unexpected commitment to Kentucky.

Had you then been in the Churchill Downs media room, where harried local sportswriters were composing stories about Always Dreaming's Derby victory up against excruciating deadlines, you would have heard some colorful, adult language.

Knox's choice of John Calipari's Wildcats had come out of the blue. All the pre-announcement buzz surrounded North Carolina, Duke and Florida State.

Yet, in a broader sense, the fact that a major UK basketball story broke on Kentucky Derby day was one of the least surprising occurrences imaginable.

In every one but four of the past 22 years, significant Kentucky Wildcats hoops news — usually men's basketball, but sometimes from the UK women's program — has broken on Kentucky Derby day or within 48 hours in advance of the race.

To give you the flavor, two years ago, Kentucky women's hoops standout Alexis Jennings left Matthew Mitchell's program on the Thursday before the Derby.

Terrence Jones, the former Kentucky men's basketball forward, actually dominated the news for two straight Derby days.

Late on the night before the 2010 Kentucky Derby, Jones announced the he was committing to the University of Washington over UK (he subsequently changed his mind).

On the next year's Derby day, Jones tweeted out his intention to remain at Kentucky for his sophomore season rather than enter the NBA Draft at 4 p.m.

The Friday before the 2002 Derby, then-UK Coach Tubby Smith announced that three Wildcats players — Rashaad Carruth, Adam Chiles and Cory Sears — were being exiled from the Kentucky program.

While UK sports publicists may have executed a "news dump" on negative stories during Derby week at various times, the calendar is the primary reason Wildcats basketball news so often intrudes on the Derby.

The first week of May lands late in the hoops recruiting season. It is also within the window when college players are considering whether or not to turn pro or transfer.

Since 1996, the only years in which there was not a major UK basketball story that broke within 48 hours in advance of the Kentucky Derby were 2000, 2003, 2006 and 2009.

That UK basketball news so often breaks while Derby coverage is front and center raises the blood pressure of our state's sportswriters.

Ben Roberts covers UK sports recruiting for the Herald-Leader. He is also one of the newspaper's primary Kentucky Derby writers.

At last year's Derby, Roberts had just finished a story on the erratic on-the-track behavior of the horse Thunder Snow. He had started watching replays of the race for a second story that would detail how all 19 horses in the race other than the winner fared.

That is when he saw Knox's tweet about choosing UK, which meant Roberts now had to also write a recruiting story.

Ben has forbidden me from reporting what he said when he saw Knox's tweet. "There's a good chance my mom will read this story," he said.

My introduction to the UK basketball/Kentucky Derby crucible came in 1996.

On the Friday night before the race, a TV story broke citing anonymous sources that Kentucky star sophomore Antoine Walker had decided to enter the NBA Draft.

The Herald-Leader powers that be soon decided the newspaper's only chance to advance the story was to send someone to the UK campus to see if Walker would confirm the news.

Alas, there was only one sportswriter green enough to be in the newsroom the night before the Derby.

That's how I came to be sitting in my car in a parking lot outside the Joe B. Hall Wildcat Lodge.

I was screwing up my courage to risk the wrath of UK Sports Information by knocking on the door of the Lodge and asking to speak to Walker when, from a distance, I noticed two people walking from the direction of the UK campus toward my car.

One was a short kid I did not know.

The other was ... ANTOINE WALKER!!!

Now, I may have had happier moments in my journalism career, but I can't think of one right off.

That night, Walker would neither confirm nor deny he was going pro (he was), but at least the next day's Herald-Leader had quotes from him on the decision he faced.

With the 144th running of the Kentucky Derby coming Saturday, I cannot tell you how to wager among a formidable field that includes the well-regarded Justify, Bolt d'Oro, Good Magic and several other horses of similar talent.

Based on history, I can say that the safest Derby bet is that a major Kentucky Wildcats basketball story will break very close to the start of the Run for the Roses.

Mark Story: 859-231-3230; Twitter: @markcstory

This story was originally published April 30, 2018 at 7:13 PM with the headline "Safest bet of Kentucky Derby week? UK basketball will somehow steal the limelight.."