It’s looking more and more like Kevin Love will go to Cleveland to join LeBron James and Kyrie Irving to form another version of the "Big Three" like Pat Riley formed in Miami.
Tweet of the Morning
Calipari is multi-tasking, using spot between two courts to see Malik Monk in one game, Cheick Diallo in another at Saturday Peach Jam.
— Jeff Drummond (@JDrumUK) July 19, 2014
Just stand back in awe, college basketball coaches, while the master goes to work.
Your Quickies:
Kentucky football
-
Mark Stoops largely ignored by the media at SEC Media Days. Basically, when you’re Kentucky coming off a 2-10 season and projected to finish last in the SEC East, it’s about what you’d expect.
-
Wildcats at SEC Media Days:
-
Behind the new Kentucky football posters:
-
Mark Stoops wants to see the quarterback competition end quickly this summer. I do as well. I think it’s better to name a starter quickly and live with it. I complained about that when Phillips took forever to decide, and I felt the same way last season when we didn’t know until the first game began.
-
It was a double-Yahtzee! yesterday, as Kentucky not only re-upped Marcus Walker, but also landed 3-star cornerback Kei Beckham.
-
An overview of Kentucky’s 2015 recruiting class so far. Looks really good to me.
-
Football’s Max Godby is a member of the AFCA Good Works Team. Congratulations, Max!
-
Mark Stoops dropped a few news items at Hoover, not the least of which is that UK will likely go to synthetic turf after this season. I think that’s probably a good idea.
Kentucky basketball
-
LeBron James in da house! He was at Kentucky Basketball Academy yesterday beside John Calipari watching LeBron Jr. play. It’s never a bad thing to rub shoulders with the four-time NBA MVP when you’re trying to convince kids to come play basketball for you.
-
Stephen Zimmerman, perhaps Kentucky’s top 2015 target, is looking forward to Big Blue Madness. Young man, I guarantee an experience to remember.
"It was honestly mostly my parents’ choice," he said. "They watch it all the time — the Big Blue Madness on TV. And they’ve always said how cool it would be, so they’re really excited about going.
"I expect it to be crazy. … It looks really exciting."
It’s a really good thing that their parents watch Big Blue Madness.
-
Julius Randle had a good game yesterday in his final summer league contest. DeAndre Liggins and Archie Goowin were also in action.
-
2015 shooting guard Malik Monk went nuts in front of John Calipari for 40 points. He already has a scholarship offer from Coach Cal.
-
Coach Cal got plenty of air time the other night at the ESPYs.
-
The UK games in the Bahamas will be broadcast on radio on WHAS in Louisville and WLAP in Lexington.
Other Kentucky sports
- Cliff Hagan Stadium winds up ranked #104 in baseball stadium ratings. That’s last in the SEC, and I think that’s a shame. One thing we really do need is a first-class baseball stadium, and we need it more than a new basketball arena.
Links posts
College football
-
SEC Media Days recap. This is actually a fascinating look at the word clouds generated by each speaker, and all of them overall. I’m not sure if anything meaningful can be gleaned from this exercise — it looks a bit like trying to read the entrails of small, dead animals for a peek into the future — but it has a kind of weird fascination about it.
-
SEC coaches as video game characters. This misses the mark with me since cartoon and video games such as Super Smash are lost on me, but some of you of a younger generation might find this funny.
-
The SEC Network and Comcast reach agreement. Clock’s ticking, Time Warner. Having said that, I have heard some hopeful noises coming out of TWC lately.
-
Erin Andrews leaving college football to focus on the NFL. Bummer. I like Erin.
College basketball
- Will Montaque Gill-Caesar reclassify to 2014? If so, he has to make a decision very soon, but he claims he still hasn’t made up his mind. Most observers expect him to end up at Missouri.
Other sports news
-
Darius Miller re-ups with the New Orleans Pelicans for 1 year only at the league minimum of just under $1 million. SB Nation’s Pelicans community, The Bird Writes, has more.
-
Eric Bledsoe seen as "greedy." I tend to agree that 5 years at $80 million is more than Bledsoe is worth, and I think he’s worth a lot.
The Bright Side of the Sun, though, really, really wants the Suns to work out a deal with Bledsoe, and doesn’t blame him for trying to get the most money he can.
Other news
-
Lenovo pulling the Thinkpad 8 out of US markets. I think that’s a good idea. I love Thinkpads (although not the tablets that this article is about) — I am using a 10-year old Thinkpad to write this post, they have by far the best keyboards of any computer, regardless of size. I recently paid $70 bucks for a similar keyboard for my desktop.
To revive this old machine and make it comfortable to use, I installed Bodhi Linux, a lightweight Ubuntu-based system that utilizes the Enlightenment desktop (E17 17.4). I like it very much, and my more modern and "faster" HP that’s only 2 years old gathers dust. I could change the Windows 7 to something lighter and make it a little faster, but honestly, the keyboard on that thing is so bad I hate to use it for anything other than games or occasional web browsing.
-
Microsoft to lay of 18,000 employees. Pressure from Apple has really changed Microsoft, and their new CEO has pronounced Microsoft a "productivity" company, with Microsoft Office being their standard-bearer. Consider that this is a company that made its billions on building operating systems. Quite a paradigm shift, and it just points up the competitive pressure that is really coming from mobile computing, not desktops or even laptops.