Kentucky Wildcats: Saturday Afternoon Quickies - Nike Peach Jam Edition

The Nike Peach Jam winds up tomorrow in Augusta, Georgia, and a lot of Kentucky recruits are taking the floor this weekend.

Tweet of the Morning:

Calipari and Antigua settled in for Trey Lyles vs. Angel Delgado. This should be fun.

— Ben Roberts (@NextCats) July 13, 2013

As I tweeted late last night, I expect the recruitment of Angel Delgado to come down to Louisville versus Kentucky.

— Jerry Meyer (@jerrymeyer247) July 13, 2013

I'd be ecstatic if we could take Delgado and Lyles from Louisville.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• New feature at Varsity Preps includes a partial list of the July 19 "Friday Night Lights" camp.[Hank]

• Kentucky's football recruiting budget gets a nice boost.

• Why Drew Barker will get the luxury of a red shirt in 2014. There's no need to put him at risk as a freshman with three 2013 sophomore QBs and 2013 freshman Reece Phillips ready to play. [Hank]

• Interesting piece on the Texas Tech run game under Tuberville and Brown. Read the comments, too. [Hank]

• Larry Vaught on the UK football attrition. Changing a culture has its costs, but football now is a serious endeavor with no room for stupid behavior off the field. [Hank]

• Hitting the ground running - Kentucky leads for 2015 Florida MLB. [Hank]

• Whoa![Hank]

• Larry Vaught talks with T.V. Williams. [Hank]

• UK Football Women's Clinic news. [Hank]

Kentucky basketball

• Goodluck Okonoboh, 2014 top-40 prospect, likes Kentucky, among others. He was a teammate of Nerlens Noel in high school.

• Johnny Cox, former member of Adolph's Rupp's Fiddlin' Five, will be inducted into the Kentucky Basketball Hall of Fame.

  Cox will be part of the second class of the Kentucky High School Basketball Hall of Fame when he is formally inducted later this month. Curtis Turley, executive director of the Hall of Fame, said the selection process must include coaches and at least two girls’ players every year, and also takes into consideration the different eras of Kentucky high school basketball. Cox’s selection was an easy one to make considering his career and the impact he made on his team.

• Coach Cal, among other elite college coaches, watches Stanley Johnson have a big game at the Peach Jam.

• Angel Delgado, a Dominican Republic native and a rising star in high school basketball, has a great relationship with Orlando Antigua. That will give Kentucky a leg up, much like it did for Karl Towns. If Kentucky is interested, that is, which they may not be.

• John Calipari is using his new position as member of the NABC board to advocate for change in the one-and-done rule.

• Two of Dallas area prep school Prime Prep, founded by former Cowboys star Deion Sanders, were declared non-qualifiers by the NCAA. Since Kentucky recruits Emmanuel Mudiay and Elijah Thomas both go there, the problems with Prime Prep could affect them.

• Mike DeCourcy tells Thomas Beisner of KSTV that Kyle Wiltjer wasted the summer of 2012, and says he is critical of Wiltjer "... not because of what [he] can't do, but because of what [he] won't do." Great points. Watch the whole thing:

• I really want Trey Lyles for all sorts of good reasons, not the least of which is sticking it in the eye of Tom Crean and Indiana. Taking a coveted recruit from Rick Pitino is another good schadenfrude-based reason to want him.

• Can Karl Towns be our hole card in recruiting Jahlil Okafor?

Other UK sports

Links posts

• KSR — Saturday Morning Links

College football

• Thorpe Award watch list for the best defensive back in college football. No UK players there, but there is a Western Kentucky and Louisville player.

• Outland Trophy (best lineman) watch list.

• Nagurski watch list for the best college football defender. "Bronco" Nagurski was always one of my favorite football names. Once again, there is a Western Kentucky and Louisville player there.

• Kate Upton visits the University of Nebraska. Hilarious. Here's a taste:

  Let's be honest, very few people actually care about recruiting. No one pays for recruiting anymore because it's all over twitter in 5 minutes anyway. I also realized that even fewer people probably care about Stephen. Everyone just wants to get their picture taken with Kate. That's the story here. But, since this is a Husker site, I need to at least mention the potential future football star. So, I did some research and found out that Stephen Upton was last rated by rivals as a 6-star "play anything" stud muffin. ESPN rates him as a 7-star "ultimate football player". They also mentioned that he is known as "possibly being the greatest athletic specimen that has ever walked the Earth." Since he had a decent recruiting rating, I decided to make time to ask him one question. "Stephen, what gives man?"

College basketball

• Golden Gate Sports recognizes exactly what the hype for Andrew Wiggins is all about — ridiculous athleticism.

  The writer makes some very good points here, and Wiggins fanboys should take note. He's absolutely right about what Wiggins' strengths are, and what his weaknesses are. But from watching a good number of his high-school games, I can say that Wiggins does not (yet) have the killer mentality of a LeBron James or even a Michael Kidd-Gilchrist or Marquis Teague, let alone John Wall.

  He's a great athlete, maybe even better than LeBron or Kobe Bryant. But his game has a very, very long way to go before he can be rationally expected to be dominant even on the college level. Can he get there in a year? Well, maybe not all the way, but close enough.

  What he has to worry about is realizing that his hype is not reality. MKG got it, always fearing he wasn't good enough his whole time at Kentucky. That's exactly what Wiggins needs to fear, because his game has some real weaknesses that can't be exposed in high school or all-star games.

• Rick Pitino talks about his book, which sounds interesting. The Tattoo, not so much:

• P.J. Hairston admits being a "recreational" user of pot, and that a felon loaned him the rental car he was driving when he was arrested.

  This isn't going to end well.

• Peach Jam update from Dave Telep. Stanley Johnson is a key mention, and trust me, UK is recruiting him hard. Cliff Alexander and Jahlil Okafor are prominently discussed. Also Angel Delgado, from the Dominican Republic that I linked a story on above, gets mentioned.

• Marshall Henderson timeline: A troubled college career.

  This isn't going to end well, either.

Other sports news

• World University Games Team USA is knocked out of medal contention by Canada and Australia. I never liked the makeup of this team. Too defensively challenged.

• Terrence Jones is kicking butt in the summer league. Surprised? Not me.

• Eloy Vargas has been found, and is impressing.

• Anthony Davis, AAU coach? Hat tip: Aaron's blog

• I hate to hear this.

• Update on the Tour de France, for those (like me) who are mesmerized by the event.

• Belize soccer players bribed to fix a game against the USA? I'm not surprised.

• Baron Davis, former UCLA star and NBA player, was abducted by aliens two weeks ago. Baron, I hate to tell you this, but Justin Bieber doesn't count as an alien. I feel you, I do, but he's a Canadian, and despite reports to the contrary, Canada is here on Earth.

• Nerlens Noel will wear #5, in honor of the five teams that passed him over for the #1 draft pick. Don't get too hung up on that, Nerlens, just get better and play the game. I think this is right:

  Cynics may choose to perceive Noel's particular choice as a grab for attention, but it's more likely just the option he settled on to motivate himself as best he can. It's ultimately a harmless decision, perhaps more likely to be taken by the general public as a tribute to Kevin Garnett than a statement of purpose. It matters because of what it means to Noel, not to everyone else.