Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Eight Seed Edition

Kentucky gets the eight seed and will play the Kansas St. Wildcats. should be fun.

Tweet of the Morning

I'm still waiting for someone, anyone, who has published or broadcast antipathy toward Louisville's No. 4 to present a cogent case against.

— Michael DeCourcy (@tsnmike) March 17, 2014

As well, people arguing Louisville should be 3 in place of Cuse remind me of coaches who argue: We're not a 12, we should be an 8!

— Michael DeCourcy (@tsnmike) March 17, 2014

Right, as usual. There is no cogent case. That's why one hasn't been presented. Louisville got about the seed they deserved. Could they have been a 3? Sure. But a 4 is defensible also. Anyone arguing for a two or one are kidding themselves.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky basketball

• Trey Lyles' Indianapolis Tech team wins the Indiana 4A regionals. Hammer and Rails has details about the first game they won against Richmond, and they also won the nightcap against Pike.

• Bring On The Cats, SB Nations' Kansas St. community, notices that they play Kentucky in the first game.

• Adam Himmelsbach on Calipari's more relaxed demeanor. I find this interesting, and there is no doubt that Coach Cal has been abnormally in-your-face this season with the players. He wasn't like that with 2011-12, and he was rarely like that before.

  We'll never know, but I think this is a by product of last year, where he tried the supportive track and it failed utterly. Sometimes, you just don't know what will work, but like Aaron Harrison Sr., I give him credit for dialing it back, and it seems to have worked. Perhaps that's the real "tweak," or at least, the most effective one.

• Calipari jokes about the seeding, says if they'd beaten Florida, they'd probably be a 9-seed.

• The team is not worried about their seed. I'm not either, I think UK's seed is about right given their body of work, maybe a line or two too low, but that's fine.

• Mitch Barnhart is unhappy with Kentucky's seed. I really don't agree. Look, the SEC was bad in the early season, and when you are bad there, you get tagged as a weak conference. How do you become a strong conference? Win games.

  Kentucky didn't win enough, and had only one top-25 win. That, along with the SEC's perception (which is largely backed up by the statistics) is why Kentucky is an eight seed.

• Mike DeCourcy breaks down the Midwest. Regarding the Wildcats:

  Don't be surprised if: Kentucky finds a way to end up in the second weekend. Perhaps you should be surprised, because it probably should take two 40-minute efforts to overcome Kansas State and Wichita State, but the Wildcats played only about 15 good minutes against Florida in the SEC championship game and only lost by a point. The Wildcats remain dangerous to everyone in the field—including themselves, of course.

  Of course.

• Kentucky will play around 9:40 PM on Friday. Good.

• Your printable bracket at SBNation here.

• "Janked?" Looked it up. Couldn't find it. Don't think its a word.

• Kentucky was ranked 29th on the NCAA's seed list, which would make them the "top" #8 seed.

Other Kentucky sports

• Women's tennis drops match to Ole Miss.

Links posts

• The Secondary Break

• The Leach Report: Monday Wildcat Links

College basketball

• I think the angst over Louisville's four seed is crap. They didn't beat a soul, and their schedule was defined by pathetic, hapless teams even more than Kentucky's.

• The Indiana Hoosiers don't even get invited to the NIT. Haha.

• Florida is Vegas' favorite to win it all. I think they've earned it.

• Four SEC teams invited to the NIT: Arkansas, Georgia, Missouri and LSU. LSU doesn't seem to care.

• Ranked SMU left out of NCAA Tournament. Wait... wut?

• Another Midwest Regional preview from ESPN.

Other sports news

• Anthony Davis with another huge game.