Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Len Bias Edition

Len Bias, the Maryland star who died prematurely two days after the Celtics drafted him, will be inducted into the Maryland Athletics Hall of Fame on Friday.

Bias’ story was a sad one, and he was a great talent that never got to play one minute of his dream.

Tweet of the Morning

Really impressed w the job Mark Stoops has done with this defense. Season's far from over but I had legit ?s abt the LB position/DT depth

— Rashawn Franklin (@RashawnFranklin) October 2, 2014

Both those positions still have questions, but they are just not quite as pointed. There’s a lot to learn on Saturday.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Eleven Warriors thinks that Ohio St. can steal away Alex Stump from Kentucky. They probably can, I guess, but I hope not.

• Five reasons to experience the Keenland-Kentucky football doubleheader this weekend. They are getting more and more rare, but they haven’t gone away altogether.

• Chad Scott wants the running backs to catch more footballs. I think that’s a great idea.

• Garnet and Black Attack has South Carolina defeating Kentucky 31-21 in their "Digital Season." Maybe this will work out just like Missouri for them. Let’s hope.

Kentucky basketball

• Isaiah Briscoe talks about his visits to Kentucky and UConn, and may push his decision up to the fall.

  Briscoe, who is projected as the No. 7 pick in the 2016 NBA Draft by DraftExpress.com, previously told SNY.tv that reaching the NBA was his goal and he could imagine playing with a group of other McDonald’s All-Americans at Kentucky, as opposed to being the man at another program.

• Thon Maker may reclassify to 2015, and Calipari definitely wants him:

  Still, Smith said Kansas, Kentucky, Duke and Indiana were still working the hardest for Maker, who has drawn comparisons to Kevin Durant and Kevin Garnett.

  This is one talented kid. He also says he has absolutely no intentions of trying the overseas route like Emmanuel Mudiay.

• Alex Poythress talks to Jerry Tipton in a pretty long interview. I found it pretty cool that Alex sees himself as possibly similar to Patrick Patterson. He could not have come up with a better role model than Patterson. Here’s the video:

Other Kentucky sports

• 2015 gymnastics schedule announced.

• Women’s soccer returns to action tonight against the Missouri Tigers.

Links posts

• John Clay’s Big Blue LInks

• John Clay’s SEC Links

• The Leach Report: Thursday Wildcat Links

College football

• College football attendance down 1% in 2014:

  The good news for the game’s attendance health: Crowds are up 3 percent among the top 25 attendance leaders, due in part to some expanded stadiums. Seventeen of the top 25 attendance leaders experienced an increase through five weeks compared to 2013. Only 12 of the top 25 leaders in 2013 at this point had an increase from 2012.

  The bad news: Many other FBS schools continue to struggle to fill seats. Outside of the top 25 attendance leaders, crowds for the remaining Power 5-conference schools are down 3 percent from 2013.

• Where FBS stands after Week 5.

• The five richest football conferences have notified the NCAA of proposals to provide more benefits to student-athletes. Consider:

  The autonomy structure went into effect yesterday, which also was the first day for the power conferences to offer suggestions about what rules they want to implement. The NCAA board of directors passed a proposal in August to give autonomy to the five major conferences. The transition to the autonomy structure will happen in January.

  It will be interesting to see what the SEC and Kentucky do.

• Week 6’s 24 best bets.

College basketball

• Dick Vitale will no longer be doing prime time ESPN games, that spot is going to Jay Bilas. But he’ll be doing "the best game that is out there on Saturday afternoon." Vitale is a nice man, my wife and I met him in New Orleans.

• Is DeMarcus Cousins growing up? Thankfully, there is no mention of Krzyzewski being responsible, but that will no doubt come.

• Why top college basketball recruits sign late:

  It’s simple: recruits at the top of the board hold all the power. The difference of 20 spots in a recruiting ranking might seem ultimately negligible once players advance to the next level, but it gives them an incredible amount of leverage during the process.

  Kentucky wasn’t going to wait for Charles Matthews (its lone 2015 commitment) to make up his mind. Matthews, ranked No. 56 by Rivals, knew that if he didn’t take John Calipari’s offer, it might not be there two, three or 10 months from now. Zimmerman and others, by virtue of being more highly touted, are able to flip that script completely.

  Read the whole thing.

Other sports news

• LeBron James embraces young girl with leukemia.

• Dan Rubenstein thinks the Lakers could possibly make the playoffs next season. Okay, there are a ton of "ifs," but still…

• The Donald Sterling saga will never end.

Other news

• The real story behind the "man in the moon."

• Another Darwin Award nominee.

• Only two cities are left in the race to host the 2022 Olympics. Most cities have been scared off by the ridiculously high price tag.