Kentucky Wildcats: Morning Quickies - Kentucky Derby Edition

It's Derby day today, and I'm sure most of you are involved in some way, or will at least watch the race. My tip: Watch out for Java's War if the track is off. He's a closer, and his sire was a major mudder.

Tweet of the Morning:

After visiting Kosair Childrens Hospital, Nerlens Noel has a special guest for the Kentucky Derby today bit.ly/12Bfbho

— John Clay (@johnclayiv) May 4, 2013

Totally awesome. Totally Nerlens.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• In recruiting, you have to try to establish a brand. We all know that Coach Cal has done this with UK Basketball and Stoops and Company are working on some fundamentals of brand building with football. Calipari had it easy compared to Stoops because of the UK Basketball tradition, even though it was tarnished somewhat, when he came on board. Stoops, on the other hand, has had to build from scratch and he’s done a remarkable job so far. Here’s where his ultimate goal will lead if he’s successful and it will take years to get there. Alabama Football and UK Basketball stand on similar ground (Hank). CoachingSearch.com

• Another quarterback at E11 of interest to Kentucky (via Hank). SB Nation

Kentucky basketball

• Nerlens Noel parties with the stars last night. KSR

• Kentucky buys out last game of their series with Samford. Martin Newton is very classy in his comments. AL.com (via KSR)

• 2014 Rahshad Vaughn being pursued by UK. No surprise there:

  The Wildcats are pursuing Vaughn as one of their top shooting guard targets, and did offer him last September. Calipari visited with Vaughn during the season, and assistant coach Orlando Antigua has kept in steady contact.

  Via Aaron’s blog.

• Nerlens Noel NBA scouting video (via Sam Henson):
  
  
  

Other UK sports

• Bat Cats lose to Arkansas in series opener. Kentucky Kernel

• Softball series opener versus Alabama postponed. Doubleheader today. UKAthletics.com

Links posts

• Five links on the SEC TV network. I doubt you’ll get many answers to your most pressing questions, like what it will cost and who sill get it. John Clay

• Saturday Wildcat Links. Tom Leach

College football

• Penn St. makes changes to university governance. ESPN

• Five players with the most to lose or gain before 2014 NFL Draft. Dr. Saturday – Yahoo!
  
  Teddy Bridgewater is #1.

College basketball

• The NCAA has announced that early practice will be approved for next year just two weeks after proposing it. ESPN.
  
  How will this affect Big Blue Madness? Well, we don’t know yet, but here are some possibilities.

• Trevor Lacey considering North Carolina? That would be a big pickup for UNC. Tar Heel Times

• Nebraska basketball sells out public allotmentt of tickets for 2013 season:

  ‘’It’s quite amazing,’’ said Marc Boehm, the associate athletic director for basketball. ‘’There are a lot of happy faces over here.’’

  That’s absolutely impressive. Cornhusker basketball is roughly equivalent to that of the Auburn Tigers in terms of popularity. Chalk this one up to, "If you build it, they will come." Impressive.

Other sports news

• Pretty cool page in the Herald-Leader today (via @NextCats) LLexington Herald-Leader

• Zach, what the heck? Big Lead

• The Knicks advance over the Celtics. That’s New York’s first playoff series victory since 2000. Been a while Big Lead

• LeBron James is in tall cotton now with his 4th MVP. ESPN

• Orb may be the favorite, but I don’t think he’ll win the Derby today. SB Nation

• Was Garcia taking a shot at Tiger Woods here? ESPN
  
  I do wish we would stop this viewer call-in thing. If a rules infraction isn’t detected timely, it shouldn’t be considered. If you think that would hurt the sport of golf, don’t. They would still be made public, and if a guy gets a rep as a cheater in the sport of golf, he will be ostracized by the community.
  
  But this persistent risk of disqualification for an undetected violation happening after the round is not good for the sport.

• NBA playoff scores: Knicks, Pacers, Thunder and Grizzlies all clinch. SB Nation
  
  I saw the end of the Grizzlies and Thunder games. Playoff basketball can really be amazing, and the huge shots that were made in both games really were quite exciting, despite the wrestling and pill shots.

Other news

• Company gives 15% raise to employees who get the corporate logo tattooed on their persons. Now we know the real story behind Pitino’s tattoo. USA Today

• News you can use: AAmerica’s best hot dogs. Yum. I love me some hot dogs.