Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Texas A&M Edition

Texas A&M makes the near-1000 mile trip from College Station, Texas to Lexington tonight to challenge the Wildcats. I hope the weather is better to them than it was to me this morning. Yech. I hate snow.

Tweet of the Morning:

In 13 games with the normal starting lineup, UK was either outscored or tied by its opponent from tip-off to first sub nine times.

— Aaron Smith (@ASmithRivals) January 21, 2014

Something I'd like to see come to a screeching halt.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Need a reason to root for Denver in the Super Bowl? Here's one: Denver has 3 Kentucky players on the roster, and Seattle has two Louisville players. Sounds like a good reason to me. Go Denver!

• A look at Kentucky's top football signess from years passed. Remarkable how many have been busts.

• Kentucky has more former football players on this year's Super Bowl roster than Alabama, Notre Dame, and Oregon. More than Louisville, too.

• Mark Stoops isn't done with his 2014 recruiting class. Here's a rundown of his major targets as of today. Lots of big uglies in there. I like that.

Kentucky basketball

• Jeff Sheppard continues to give back to the community. Good on him.

• Boxing out a big priority after Tennessee outrebounded the Wildcats on Saturday. I found this very encouraging:

  "As the shot goes, you're watching the ball as opposed to checking out your man and keeping him off the glass," Robic said. "We made a point of that (Sunday), and it was better."

  You shouldn't have to teach this stuff at this level — this is Basketball 101.

• Slow starts still dogging the 'Cats. You see what I did there?

• Robic's pre-Texas A&M press conference standing in for Coach Cal, who was up in Springfield, Massachusetts recruiting Rashad Vaughn.

• Here's why Cal couldn't do his pre-game presser.

• Good news for Kentucky? Possibly...

• Derek Willis... Whoa!

• Kentucky loses one to the Texas Longhorns.

Other Kentucky sports

• UK Golf House? I like it.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Tuesday Wildcat Links

College football

• Mark Richt arguably made the best off-season hire when he brought Florida State's defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt to Georgia. Via Hank.

College basketball

• Calipari's old school, Massachusetts-Amherst (a.k.a. UMass) is off to a blazing start under former Calipari player and assistant Derek Kellogg.

• MassLive has more on the UMass story. They haven't forgotten what John Calipari did for them in Amherst, nor should they.

• Ohio St. has lost 4 in a row. I had doubts about OSU's weak schedule early. Seems the chickens are coming home to roost.

• Kansas' 4th win in a row over a ranked team would be more impressive if it weren't over slumping Baylor, who has lost their last three in a row, and three of their last four.

• Nobody could withstand 21 made 3-pointers. The problem is, that's an anomaly at best, regardless of the anecdotal commentary to the contrary.

• Bad news for the 'Cuse — DaJuan Coleman to have season-ending knee surgery. Get well soon, DaJuan.

Other sports news

• Via Hank: Northeastern's AD Peter Roby blasted Louisville's hire of Bobby Petrino at the NCAA convention. Consider:

  "We keep telling (coaches that) they have to be men of integrity and character," Roby said. "Yet (Petrino) gets another opportunity and is going to make $3.5 million. It's like he didn't pay any price for all the embarrassments he caused to the institutions where he was at, to his family, to the NCAA and to the member schools. We all get painted with that brush."

  Too right.

• On the same topic, Stewart Mandel reports on the NCAA's "Core Values" discussed at the meeting:

  Interestingly, a previously bland Q&A session didn't truly heat up until moderator Jean Frankel, the NCAA's outside management consultant (think "the Bobs" from Office Space), showed a slide entitled "NCAA Core Values" (page 14), first adopted in 2004. She'd made a seemingly innocuous remark about the need to reevaluate the list annually, to which someone replied, astutely, they aren't core values if you change them every year.

  Via Hank.

• Can Marquis Teague match the rise of his brother, Jeff? Nets Daily, SB Nation's New York Nets community, examines the question. Consider:

  Most pundits seem willing to dismiss Teague after a year and a half under Tom Thibodeau. Bulls fans considered him a bust. A first round pick two years ago, he never fulfilled his promise.

  Still, there is a precedent out there that has to give the Nets and their fans some hope: Teague's brother, Jeff, the starting point guard on the Hawks, is now a solid NBA point guard who like his brother was considered a bust his first two years in the NBA. As Hoops Addict stated at the end of last season, "Jeff Teague’s first two seasons in the NBA were an unequivocal bust." In fact, it could be said he was a bigger bust than Marquis.

Other news

• Ball lightning caught on video for the first time. Via Slashdot.

• News you can use: The resurgence of butter.