Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Florida St. Seminoles Edition

Congratulations to the Florida St. Seminoles for winning the final BCS championship ever. Join the celebration, if you are so inclined, at Tomahawk. Nation.

Tweet of the Morning:

Poor SEC fans. Lose the title game and now you've got to watch your basketball.

— Mark Ennis (@Mengus22) January 7, 2014

About time, too.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Matt Elam says that not committing on Saturday as expected doesn't hurt UK's chances. I still feel good about getting him, just not as good as before.

Kentucky basketball

• Julius Randle #3 on SI's Wooden watch list.

• John Calipari not worried about the free throw shooting. Well, the Big Blue Nation will worry about it for him, have no fear.

• The good, the bad, and the ugly from Camp Cal. This is a pretty funny video set to the music of the namesake movie. Poythress has at least one filthy dunk, and the helmet ceremony for Marcus Lee is just priceless.

• Wildcats make the most out of the semester break. I did not know this was the longest break between regular-season games since 2007, but it has been a long one and could not have come at a better time. Will it carry over to the court? We all hope so, of course.

• John Calipari portion of the SEC Teleconference.

• Interesting perspective from Ira Combs:

  Let's lay all our cards ( no pun intended ) on the table right up front . Would Jurich consider pulling the trigger ( and possible PR nightmare for him and president Ramsey ) and give Bobby Petrino a chance at redemption ? Even more intriguing , would Petrino bolt WKU after one year for another shot at the national limelight if Jurich got bold ?

  My guess is ............... in a heartbeat .

  What do you think, dear reader?

• As you can hear if you listened above, Calipari thinks Derek Willis and Marcus Lee can be important to Kentucky this season. Well, we'll find out shortly.

• Four of UK men's signees and one women's signee nominated as McDonalds All-Americans

• Alex Poythress focusing more on defense. That's a great idea, Alex.

Other Kentucky sports

• Several baseball players receive pre-season honors.

Links posts

• John Clay's Big Blue Links

• John Clay's SEC Links

• The Leach Report: Tuesday Wildcat Links

College football

• Where have we heard this before?

• The Courier-Journal editorial page comes out against re-hiring Bobby Petrino at U of L. Heh. Well, at least they said something.

• Jameis Winston looked like a star for Florida St. when it mattered most. Indeed he did. What a great game it was last night. Great effort by both teams.

• Spencer Hall of SB Nation writes about his experience in Pasadena last night.

• Interesting. Consider:

  The hiring of Strong suggests a few things. First, it seems Texas might be willing to drop the holier-than-thou attitude when it comes to NCAA issues. Strong, after all, is the head coach who kept assistant Clint Hurtt at Louisville after the NCAA slapped Hurtt with a show-cause penalty for recruiting issues at Miami. The Texas of a few years ago would have crossed Strong off the list after that. This one hired him. Also, Strong's hiring suggests Texas leaders did not place Longhorn Network concerns ahead of football ones. That bodes well for people still learning to navigate the intersection of running an athletic department and a media company.

  Well, now, is Texas going to let him bring Hurtt with him? I rather doubt that. So I'm not convinced on this point, I'm afraid.

• Tim Tebow misses calling the shot by 1 point.

College basketball

• Iowa's Fran McCaffrey gets suspended one game for getting ejected.

• Some people still think that Louisville can be a "dynasty." Really? Well, don't count me among them. Louisville doesn't have what it takes to be a dynasty based on what I have seen.

• Feds investigating two UTEP basketball players.

• Duke falls from the top ten for the first time in over six seasons.

• Scoring down in December throughout college basketball. That's because officials are reverting to old habits, in my view.

• SEC stock watch reactions from Rush The Court. Seth Davis had his "buy/hold/sell" stock recommendations for college basketball yesterday, and RTC takes a look at them for the SEC. For what it's worth, I totally agree about LSU.

• SEC basketball preview.

Other sports news

• Tiger Woods has reportedly earned 1.3 billion (with a b) dollars. Not bad for a golfer.

• This is depressing news. Well, I had my doubts about the timing of this comeback for Lindsey.

• Jerry Sandusky wants his Penn St. pension. Good luck with that, convict.

• Do the words "meltdown" and "Dennis Rodman" seem vaguely oxymoronic to anyone but me?

Other news

• LSU blog And The Valley Shook reviews Buffalo Trace bourbon. BT is a nice, inoffensive, affordable, and tasty but not particularly distinguished. For the money, it's a nice everyday bourbon.

• Alex Trebek rapping a Jeopardy category. Glad I missed that.

• CES gadgets unveiled — a timeline.