Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Penn St. Edition

The NCAA is significantly reducing Penn St.'s penalties for the Jerry Sandusky affair. You know, the ones that should never have been inflicted on them in the first place?

Tweet of the Day:

Most bizarre news note of the day: Drake said that John Calipari came to his High school graduation last year.

— Matt Jones (@KySportsRadio) September 25, 2013

I'm not quite sure I would file this under "bizarre," but it is certainly noteworthy.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Florida's Tyler Murphy makes the most of the opportunity presented by Jeff Driskell's injury. Via Hank.

• Gators - from the Gainesville Sun - Who will be the "deer in the headlights" QB this week? Murphy, Whitlow or Smith? (Just between you and me, Glenn, my bet would be Whitlow and Smith....meaning I can't wait to Barker comes on board.) (Hank.)

• Cody Quinn's return. (Hank)

• Jason Hatcher to be a part of UK's strategy against Florida. (Hank)

• Heh.

• How will Tyler Murphy change the Florida offense?

• Max Smith is back in practice. That's really good to see.

• Ira Combs talks 'Cats and Gators:

  [Florida is] the only streak remaining of any significant interest or should I say embarrassment to Kentucky football. You have to admit it will be kind of ironic if it does happen because on the opponents sideline will be ole true blue Joker himself the former UK player and head coach now a Florida receivers coach that laid to rest the Tennessee streak and the other ugly losing streak to that arrogant old ball coach down at South Carolina.

  Ironic, indeed.

Kentucky basketball

• The practice reports coming out of CoachCal.com are always worth a look. Here are the latest two:

  • Cats focus on Dribble Drive Motion
  • Marcus Lee impresses in first practice

• Rant Sports asks who has the tougher non-conference schedule, Kentucky or Florida?

• Rapper Drake says Coach Cal gave him a jersey at his high school graduation.

• Wildcat Blue Nation reports that Athlon considers Andrew Harrison the third best college point guard. I think he should be second behind Marcus Smart, who has earned the right to be considered the best.

• Top 2015 recruit Malik Newman talks about his game, Coach Cal.

• SI.com sizes up 2013-14's best recruits. Two of Kentucky's are listed, see if you can guess which ones before reading. One is a no-brainer.

Links posts

• John Clay's Big Blue Links

• The Leach Report — Wednesday Wildcat Links

College football

• College football lines for this weekend. Kentucky is currently +14 vs. Florida at home.

• The NCAA relaxes the punishment meted out against Penn St. I find it noteworthy that this was a joint column by Pete Thamel and Thayer Evans, and it is my considered opinion that this is an attempt by Thamel to help mitigate the damage done by Evans in his Oklahoma St. debacle.

• Stewart Mandel reminds us that the NCAA's punishment of Penn St. was wrong to begin with, and lauding the NCAA for having the courage to back off at least a little:

  The scholarships and the bowl ban, on the other hand, accomplished nothing.

  At least the NCAA finally recognized that. At least O'Brien and his innocent players can now see light at the end of the tunnel. It sure would be nice if Emmert just admitted the organization never should have gone down that road in the first place, but clearly that's never going to happen. He'll continue to take his share of heat for damaging the organization's credibility, but give him and the executive committee credit for beginning to ultimately right their wrong.

  I'm not sure I would be as magnanimous as Mandel. My tendency would be to mock the NCAA's stupidity and point to this as evidence of their own recognition of it, something that has taken far too long in my view.

• ESPN's Dana O'Neil sees the NCAA's action to reduce the Penn St. penalties as recognition of the winds of change. I think this is far overblown for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that the NCAA still thinks punishing Penn St. like it did was right. Those of us who write about college sports and care about this issue tend to be a bit too prone to reading the tea leaves to say something that we believe to be the trending direction, myself included. I'd love to believe we are seeing the winds of significant change, but I suspect that's not the case.

• Football geeks rejoice. Bill Connelly of Football Study Hall has your massive football analysis fix, this time in the form of LSU vs. Georgia.

College basketball

• The Arkansas Razorbacks have no practice facility, and Bud Walton Arena is flooded, so they're lock out.