Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Ken Norton Edition

Ken Norton, the man who broke the legendary jaw of Muhammad Ali in 1973, has died. Rest in peace.

Tweet of the Morning:

it's hard to believe college basketball practice starts in just eight days.

— Dick Weiss (@HoopsWeiss) September 19, 2013

For me, it's hard to believe it's taken so damn long to get here.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Mark Stoops continues to praise Kentucky's practices. I have to admit, this trows me off just a little bit — when will this successful practice begin to show up in games? I suppose you could argue it already has. No doubt we've seen improvement.

• Maxwell Smith likely to be good to go against the Florida Gators. I'm glad, but I'm not sanguine about his long-term prognosis in the SEC. The odds are very much against him making it through the whole season. I hear we've been giving Patrick Towles more reps. That's good.

• Kentucky should be embarrassed losing two straight to Western.

• Some love and hate from the Louisville game.

• This is fairly fascinating stuff from Football Scoop. Kentucky's player's aren't allowed to listen to music during workouts, and it has to do with the "fight or flight" response.

Kentucky basketball

• Three ESPN writers opine on which coach has "the most on the line" this year. Myron Metcalf, no surprise to me, picks John Calipari. I suppose if this team performed far below expectations he'd have a point, but let's be honest — the odds are very much stacked against that. Almost anyone with basketball acumen who has seen the incoming players play understands this much — they could even play for Isaiah Thomas and be highly successful.

  Given that, Calipari would seem an odd choice. Metcalf justifies it thus:

  So what could go wrong? Well, last season, another talented young crew in Lexington lost to Robert Morris in the first round of the NIT. Was that a fluke? There’s immense pressure on Calipari and this Kentucky squad to prove that it was. He’s always been a premier recruiter, but recruiting alone, as we learned last year, is not the only quality that breeds success within the coaching ranks.

  Metcalf perfectly well knows last year's team lost it's best player at a crucial point in the season, but he doesn't seem to mention that even in passing. I wonder why?

  Jason King and Dana O'Neil make much smarter choices, but the winner, hands down, is King. Steve Alford has a major uphill battle to win over Westwood, and they are not inclined to give him much of a chance. Dana O'Neil's choice of Josh Pastner is also good, just as good as Alford.

• Ben Roberts says Tyler Ulis embraces competing against the best at Kentucky. Well, if that's really his attitude, then he has come to the right place.

• Alan Culter caught up with former Wildcat Andre Riddick. He has some interesting comments.

• All Kentucky's coaches showed up at Devin Booker's high school gym Wednesday.

• Public gets a look at the redesigned Rupp Arena at a hearing last night.

• The entire "Meet the Wildcats" series. Good stuff.

Links posts

• The Leach Report — Thursday Wildcat Links

College football

• Teddy Bridgewater's Heisman odds have dropped significantly.

• I haven't really been following this whole Bo Pellini thing and the expletive-laced rant that produced some national controversy. But Corn Nation has a funny take on it.

  College football coaches swearing. Hmm. What a novel concept. I hope I don't have to apologize for my swearing, it would take a long [expletive] time.

College basketball

• Does the new early start to college basketball diminish Midnight Madness? Yes, possibly a little bit, but with the exception of schools like Kentucky, it has been in decline for some time.

  I think it could actually be a good thing. Programs that use MM to impress recruits can now wind up putting themselves in a competitive situation. It used to be that if a recruit picked one school for MM, it was seen as a major advantage. Now, schools can set up similar events and try to compete for advantage rather than be granted one by the calendar.

• Former UConn player Tate George conned his fellow UConn alum, Charlie Villanueva, out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

• This may have sounded like a good idea at the time, but when somebody who bought a ticket gets told there is no seat available, there's going to be hell to pay.

• Steve Alford isn't having much success selling Bruins Nation on his recruiting class, and I can see why.