Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Cold Winter Edition

Welcome to the cold of winter, the coldest in a long, long time. Remember 1996? Yeah, that was a great year for basketball, but it was also some very cold winter weather. As long as we don't have a repeat of 1993's Storm of the Century, I guess we'll get through.

Tweet of the Morning:

I want Mark Stoops in the same position as his brother next year #Goals

— Alexander Montgomery (@IjustWannadoME) January 3, 2014

That would be something.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Matt Elam's coach talks about his "impeccable" footwork. While we are looking good for landing Elam, I'm not counting chickens before they hatch.

• Land Grant Holy Land talks about the Glenville trio, tries to quell rumors of defection. I have no idea what's going to happen, but we'll know something Saturday.

• Wescott Eberts writing for SB Nation has a piece today on Matt Elam.

• Mark Story thinks the coaching carousel could help UK football by getting James Franklin and Charlie Strong out of their respective schools.

  That seems a damning kind of positive, doesn't it?

Kentucky basketball

• Coach Cal takes to his blog to describe why the Kentucky job is both so hard and so great. I think he hits the high points. He never fails to include a plug for the academic success of his program, no doubt to both preemptively strike at his critics and tug at the hearts of his recruits' most important advisor; their parents.

• Kentucky a 4 seed in Lunardi's latest bracketology. Right now, it doesn't matter. All UK needs to do is win.

• Is focus helping the Wildcats? Well, it will if they continue to ... you know, focus.

Other Kentucky sports

• Kentucky women's basketball handles Alabama on the road.

Links posts

• The Secondary Break

• John Clay's Big Blue Links

• The Leach Report: Friday Wildcat Links

College football

• Nacarius Fant of Bowling Green High wins Kentucky Mr. Football over Drew Barker and Matt Elam. Fant is headed to Western Kentucky to play college football.

• Alabama goes down to Bob Stoops' smack-talking Oklahoma Sooners in the Sugar Bowl.

• The Sugar Bowl Numerical.

College basketball

• Rush the Court — Morning Five

• Ken Pomeroy delivers his final installment of his conference race simulations. Kentucky is a narrow favorite over Florida, but note this and remember:

  UK isn’t shooting the ball great, but they lead the nation in offensive rebounding percentage and free throw rate. Which means the eye test won’t give their offense as much credit as it deserves.

  This is a very important observation which will really matter as the Wildcats begin to shoot the ball better later in the year.

  He also has LSU as his contrarian pick, which I like very much. This year's version of the Tigers has much to recommend them, and I'm very high on their chances to get into the NCAA Tournament.

  Also, he projects Syracuse the winner of the ACC in their first year in the league. I wonder how that feels to Duke and North Carolina fans?

• I'm sure you've heard by now (if you even care, which you well may not) that Chane Behanan intends to check into the John Lucas Treatment and Recovery Center, famous for helping players with substance abuse problems.

• Wow, Arizona holds Washington St. to 25 points — total.

• NCAA is thinking about tweaking the transfer rules again. I think they should leave it alone.

• Weekend college basketball preview.

Other sports news

• Doron Lamb still searching for playing time in Orlando. Part of it is due to his ankle injury, but he's got a pretty big hill to climb to get on the floor. Hat tip: Aaron's blog.

• This is interesting.

• Randall Cobb completes the Packer's offense. Based on the first game of his return, I'd say they're right.

• John Wall will not be voted an All-Star by the fans, but Mike Wise seems to think the coaches will put him in the game.