Welcome to a quiet Sunday edition of the Quickies. There is no really big news to report, although there are a few things percolating.
Tweet of the Morning
Barry Rohrssen moving from Pitt to Kentucky? Good god…as if Kentucky wasn’t enough of a holy terror in recruiting already.
— Boneyardigans (@UConnFanDotCom) April 13, 2014
There are rumblings that Barry Rohrssen may be taking over the position recently vacated by Orlando Antigua. You'll be hearing more about this later. In the meantime, consider this:
Considering Calipari's connections to the Pittsburgh area, this would not be surprising at all to me.
Your Quickies:
Kentucky football
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Patrick Towles shows off his new throwing form, and the coaching staff is impressed. Plus, Towles says he loves it at Kentucky, and he has no plans to leave if he doesn't win the quarterback job.
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Drew Barker is impressing in practice. Consider:
"You could've watched some of those other guys and thought, 'OK, they're young; they're making some mistakes.' Well, Drew, you would've thought he was here for a year, he'd been here for a while."
There is also word that Jalen Whitlow played extremely well, and word on the street is that he is currently still the leader for the starting job.
No matter what, there will be all kinds of second-guessing when whoever is the starter makes mistakes. But that comes with the territory. Via Hank
Kentucky basketball
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Mark Story explores some nicknames for the recent version of the Wildcats. Anything but another "Un=" or "-ables" nickname would work for me.
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I really wasn't infuriated with Pete Thamel's article the other day, as the Duke Basketball Report suggests I would be. Thamel's piece was an exposition of his ignorance about the college game, which should surprise nobody who has read him before. DBR is just doing what rivals do, engaging in a little schadenfreude.
We do that all the time around here, and that reminds me... How did Duke do in the NCAA Tournament with a top five draft pick, again? Oh, that's right — they made yet another mid-major's season by providing them a nice scalp to hang in their rafters.
Those who live in glass houses should probably... you now, avoid throwing hard objects at others, especially "others" who have made it to the Final Four three times, the national finals twice, and won it once in the last four seasons.
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Top ten moments in college basketball this season feature a lot of Aaron Harrison.
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Tom Eblen asks how long UK is going to put up with the violence and destruction after a successful basketball season.
The problem is that State Street is a very different kind of neighborhood. Some students and outside trouble-makers see it as a place where they can become violent and destructive without consequences.
Both UK and the city helped create this problem. Demand for student housing in recent decades led investors to buy former single-family houses in older neighborhoods around campus. Those houses were demolished and replaced by cheaply built apartment complexes, or they were fitted with barn-like additions and crammed with students. Yards were graveled for parking lots.
This is right. Something must be done about this, and I think the author's suggestions are reasonable. Via Hank
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Karl-Anthony Towns Jr. talks about his second Nike Hoop Summit and why he came to Kentucky. Hat tip: Sam Henson
Other Kentucky sports
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Bat Cats blast Mizzou, 12-0. They need to win the rubber match today in the worst way.
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Softball claims series with Ole Miss, goes for the sweep today at 2:00.
Links posts
College football
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Rocky Top Talk tries not to get too excited about the Volunteers after their scrimmage.
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Land Grant Holy Land explains why UConn should not have been invited into the Big Whatever rather than Rutgers.
College basketball
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Talk about starting a column with a false dichotomy:
The Wildcats were beaten 60-54 by Connecticut in the NCAA national championship game Monday. Although it was a nice little run, Kentucky fans view a season without a national championship as a failure.
You know, Kentucky has been playing basketball, if you count the years where the managers and players led the team, for 111 years. We have claimed eight NCAA Tournament titles. By that measure, Kentucky has "failed" 92% of the time. Surely a national championship isn't the measure of success.
I see it as always being the ultimate objective of every season, but since when does not achieving the very highest of your targets in a season filled with them equal failure? This is an irrational, hyper-simplistic binary attitude, and if any UK fans actually subscribe to it, they should surely re-evaluate that notion.
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College basketball players should be making hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to this article.
I recommend that if we have to start paying players to play basketball, colleges simply drop sports altogether. Let the professional leagues play professional sports, and perhaps colleges could field intramural teams with the team and managers as the coach, as it used to be back in the early part of the last century.
That way, colleges could get out of the sports business altogether, focus on educating people, and all the poor souls that depended on athletics scholarships for education can just go find a nice trade school or community college. That would no doubt satisfy everybody.