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This is Rivals.com's ranking of 2014 recruiting classes as of this morning [Via Hank], and immortalized by screenshot for posterity:
Don't get used to it, but do enjoy it. Even if we don't last out the day, you have to be impressed. Raise your hand if you thought you'd ever live to see UK ranked #1 in football recruiting this far along in a season.
My Internet Vision (newly improved by yesterday's eye surgery) counts only one hand. A2D2, you're a genius.
Tweet of the Morning:
Kentucky football signed a combined 54 players in 2009 & 2010. Of those, 23 have since left the program. That's an attrition rate of 42.5%.
— Ben Jones (@BW_Jones) June 19, 2013
Wow. Just wow.
Your Quickies:
Kentucky football
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Kentucky recruit (5.9) 4 star D.J. Smith is impressive. Check this out. So much talent, yet so few openings. [Hank]
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Calipari and Saban are so much alike...Overkill.
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Are UK fans glad to be of help with Louisville's squishy schedule? For some odd and perverse reason, I am. Check out #7. If we manage to beat them, we can all join hands over the campfire and sing, "This is why you suck." [Hank]
[Glenn] for the first time in a while, UK gets to claim a stronger OOC schedule than several of its SEC brethren. Not sure that's a good thing.
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Can the new Kentucky coaching staff make football cool?
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Save on season football tickets. Buy today!
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Garnet and Black Attack, the SB Nation South Carolina Gamecocks blog, previews Wildcats football for 2013.
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ESPN Official Visit talks about Kentucky's success in recruiting. This is a video you will want to see.
Kentucky basketball
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Coach Cal to be inducted into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame. Well-deserved congratulations to John Calipari, and I'm sure this is just one of many HOF inductions to follow.
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I agree with Coach Cal; Nerlens Noel is the #1 prospect in the 2013 NBA Draft class. He may not wind up the best player out of it, but he's the best prospect.
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Really, Gorgui? Keep in mind that our "pieces" beat your team twice in 2011-12, including the Final Four.
And you can say "best players" if you want. It would be accurate. In fact, you can say, "best players out of high school in a single class in history" and be even more accurate.
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David Jones of Florida Today talks about Kentucky basketball. I really love this quote by Coach Cal:
"Kids have got to buy in," Calipari said. "It's kind of how we recruit. You can't be promising things. You can't say you'll start and get 20 minutes. It's very difficult (to mold teams like this). But it's doable because we did it the year before. And we did it the year before that and we did it the year before that. Last year not so much."
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A scouting report on Nerlens Noel. Pretty thorough, but fails to note that Noel has the unique skill of being able to block shots with either hand equally well.
Other UK sports
- Softball finishes the season ranked 12/14. Highest ever. Big hopes for next year.
Links posts
College football
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SEC championship odds. The favorites are not surprising from either division. Florida's performance in the Sugar Bowl is carrying over.
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Early bowl projections for 2013. In this group, Western is predicted to go to the GoDaddy Bowl.
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Scoring on the Alabama Crimson Tide is expected to be hard next year, as it was last year. Nickel Rover writing for Football Study Hall tries to demonstrate the holes in Nick Saban's defense.
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The Palm Beach Post says that the NCAA investigation is not affecting Miami recruiting. I'm a little skeptical.
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Brent Bielema shoulda stayed in the B1G...They like to whine up there. Urban Meyer excepted of course. I don't think Bielema is going to do well in the SEC. [Hank]
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College football in the spring? Could it work? Land Grant Holy Land looks at the question.
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College football inches closer to a playoff selection committee. Just stay away from reporters, mmkay?
College basketball
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Louisville's Montrezl Harrell makes the final cut for Team USA under 19, as does Florida's Michael Frazier and Tennessee's Jarnell Stokes.
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Ben McLemore's draft stock is reportedly falling after some less than stellar workouts.
Other sports news
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The NCAA proposes changes to reporting procedures for athletics departments accounting. I think this is long overdue, and I believe a great many more schools run a profitable athletics department than the current reporting indicates. [Via Hank]
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The sports media fawns over Andrew Wiggins. I'm sure he's going to be great at Kansas, but if he was hoping to avoid scrutiny by avoiding Kentucky, well, that was just a delusion. Consider this:
Which brings me, as usual, to Andrew Wiggins. Perhaps no prospect in the past decade -- at least since Greg Oden and Kevin Durant in 2006-07 -- is considered as much of a sure thing as Wiggins; anything less than a dominant freshman season at Kansas will, on some level, be considered a disappointment. And yet, for all of the YouTube clips and and hours of scouting, it remains entirely possible that Wiggins will be merely very good, or even (gasp) just OK. There are no foregone conclusions in recruiting.
How'd you like to live up to those expectations? Well, we have to do it at Kentucky every year, but the talk is less about one player and more about the team.
To be fair, though, John Wall had similar hype when he came to Kentucky. He didn't get LeBron comparisons, though.
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Wow, pretty interesting stadium design. Spectacular, in fact. [Via Hank]
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If you didn't see Game 6 of the NBA Finals last night, I pity you. It had everything you could ever ask for in an NBA game, or any other basketball game, for that matter. It was one of the best Finals games I can ever remember.
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This was hard to read, for more than one reason. First of all, the fan behavior was unacceptable. As a man who grew up in the 1970's, I can't say that a guy who threw a beer in my face wouldn't provoke me to put a fist in his face. But it's the wrong thing to do, and the consequences are just not worth the satisfaction. Well, to most people -- apparently not to Stephen Jackson.