Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Football Week Edition

Today begins the first week of college football. Hooray!

Tweet of the Morning:

Woke up today and realized it's college football week. What a happy thought.

— J.Rowland (@RowlandRIVALS) August 26, 2013

Indeed.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Paul Jordan looks at the football Wildcats' prospects for this season.

• D.J. Eliot's mission is to fix the most glaring weaknesses on the Wildcats defense. Well, to do that, he'd going to have to wait a couple of years. The defensive secondary is to broken to really be fixed this year.

• Khalid and Pancho Thomas, the two brothers dismissed earlier this year from Kentucky for possessing magic mushrooms, will be facing the Wildcats this year — in Alabama St. uniforms.

• More about Max Godby getting a scholarship. Pretty emotional stuff. I'm very happy for him, and he seems really deserving.

• Stoops will not name a starter for the Western game. Interesting.

• I'm quite unhappy that the series between Kentucky and WKU won't be continued. Pity.

• Bummer. Former UK lineman Matt Smith was cut from the Falcons.

• Raymond Sanders to Larry Vaught:

  "Everyone’s just telling me I’m too small, too small," Sanders said. "My mom always told me it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog. My sophomore year was a bad year because I had my two knee surgeries. Last year I feel like I improved. If I keep improving every year, it will be better. We have a lot of guys that are stronger, faster across the board. We are playing harder and making more plays and that will open the passing game and running game. We are just going to balance each other out and make plays for each other."

  I like that.

• I think Kentucky wins this competition.

• Okay, we're a "sell" on this guy's SEC list. That's no surprise.

• John Clay says the emphasis on defense by Stoops & Co. will pay off for Kentucky. I hope he's right.

Kentucky basketball

• Julius Mays works with new Wildcats before heading off to Italy to play professional ball.

• More from NBC on the loss of Emmanuel Mudiay. Quite a coup for Larry Brown, but geography is often a major factor in losing a desired recruit. We have seen it at least twice that I know of: C.J. Leslie and Shabazz Muhammad. But let's not underestimate the power of Larry Brown as a recruiter. I know Coach Cal doesn't, and I don't want to minimize his influence here.

• Not only have the Harrison twins arrived, as reported by James this weekend, but also James Young. Up yours, hatazzz...

• Rick Bozich makes several good points, which I know is pretty rare, about Emmanuel Mudiay's commitment to SMU on Saturday:

  I also know that Mudiay committing to SMU was such big news in Dallas that when I checked the Dallas Morning News web site Sunday it was buried under 117 Dallas Cowboys' exhibition game stories and a few words about Johnny Manziel. [my emphasis]

• It would be quite a coup for Larry Brown, indeed, if he were to land Myles Turner as well as Emmanuel Mudiay. Knocking Coach Cal out of one recruit is impressive enough, but Kentucky also covets Turner.

• Interesting. Mudiay's brother also attends SMU. Another reason that he picked the Mustangs over Kentucky, I'd imagine.

• I think this is right. Calipari may never again land six McDonald's All-Americans, but he doesn't need to. He's clearly changed his model to allow for some development and retention, so recruiting at that level again won't be as critical as it was before.

• 2014 small forward Stanley Johnson on Calipari:

  "That’s their prerogative to make offers to the kids they think they can get or they want," Johnson said by phone Thursday from Brooklyn, N.Y., where he was preparing for Saturday's Under Armour Elite 24 all-star game. "... I think Coach (John) Calipari has been really good to me, and everybody else has been. I’m the person that he wants."

  Johnson, who is a senior at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, Calif., said Calipari reminds him every time they talk or exchange messages that he remains UK’s No. 1 priority at the position, and "that’s once or twice a week."

  Trust me, Johnson has always been Calipari's #1 priority.

• The aforesaid Johnson wins co-MVP honors with Emmanuel Mudiay, but their team lost to that of Tyus Jones.

Other Kentucky sports

• Men's soccer kisses their sister again against Northern Kentucky.

• UK women's soccer coach Adam Lipsitz drops the "U" bomb on his team, vows major changes after tie with Utah.

Links posts

• The Leach Report — Monday Wildcat Links

• Rush The Court — Morning Five

College football

• Kentucky isn't the only program to be playing 2 quarterbacks in the first game.

• SMU basketball may be celebrating, but their football program may have some trouble on the horizon.

• Bret Bielema really did outkick the coverage when he landed his wife, despite her ridiculous outfit.

• The good folks at Roll 'Bama Roll predict Louisville will go undefeated, and like Boise St., will have no real shot at the BCS Championship.

  Not only is this a lame schedule of epic proportions, the Cardinals have 3 bye weeks.

College basketball

• Remember Tennessee Volunteers forward Dale Ellis? I do. He scored over 2,000 points at Tennessee, and that was before there was such a thing as a 3-point shot in college basketball. His jersey will be retired this year during the Vanderbilt game. I guarantee, if UK had been on the schedule, it would have been retired against us. He was one of the great all-time Cat-killers at Tennessee, and UT was .500 against us when Ellis was around.