Kentucky Wildcats Saturday Quickies: Commencement Day Edition

Today is commencement day at the University of Kentucky. Congratulations to all the graduates.

Tweet of the Morning

Congrats to today's graduating Wildcats from @UKAgriculture, @UKCollegeofEd, @UKGattonCollege, @UK Engineering & College of Nursing! #UKgrad

— UniversityofKentucky (@universityofky) May 10, 2014

Congratulations to all!

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• The Orlando Sentinel ranks Kentucky 107 out of 128 teams. I hope we do better than that.

Kentucky basketball

• Dominique Hawkins is traveling to the Far East with Sports Reach on a cultural exchange basketball trip. That should be fun.

• The Saturday Edge asks me some questions about Kentucky football.

• NBA scouts are excited about the 2014-15 Kentucky Wildcats, and reckon that more than five first-rounders are possible.

• Could Calipari be the greatest Kentucky coach of all time? It depends on what measurements you consider most important, but he could certainly wind up as a strong contender.

Other Kentucky sports

• Softball advances to SEC Tournament final after a 4-3 win over LSU. This will be the first appearance in the SEC Tournament final by Kentucky in history.

• A.J. Reed powers Bat Cats past Auburn with his 21st homer, and his 9th win as a pitcher. If there is a better player in college baseball, I want to see him.

• Men's tennis reaches the Lexington regional final in the NCAA Tennis Championship.

• Women's tennis advances to the second round of the NCAA Women's Tennis Tournament.

• Five Kentucky women's basketball players to graduate today.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Saturday Wildcat Links

• John Clay's Big Blue Links

• John Clay's SEC Links

• KSR Saturday Links

College football

• 2014 Draft picks by college, conference, state, and recruit rankings

• Day two NFL Draft reactions

• Johnny Manziel being... Johnny Manziel. If he can reign in his tendency to be self-destructive, he might just be a good quarterback in the NFL.

College basketball

• This is where a presumption of innocence meets "the seriousness of the allegations":

  Whatever the case, Oregon played two players in an NCAA Tournament game who were being actively investigated for an alleged rape. Ducks coaches received bonuses for winning a game. They had no idea where the investigation would lead, but they now look a pack of win-hungry pigs. We were all so proud of that team for beating BYU and playing its heart out against Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

  I'd be prouder had Oregon been blown out by BYU, playing shorthanded, because it believed nothing matters more than the core values of a great university. I'd have loved that message because it's one we could all get behind.

  This is just a bad situation. The police allegedly told Oregon to back off the players, and the coaches can now be accused of interpreting that to include suspending them or not playing them while the investigation was ongoing. Of course, the police deny going that far. No way they are going to take a PR hit.

  Rape is a very serious crime, perhaps the most serious crime that does not involve taking a life. However, without due legal process, three players have been dismissed from the team, and at this moment, have not been indicted or charged.

  What happens if they are innocent of this crime? The dismissal cannot be undone. The presumption of guilt associated with the dismissal cannot be cured. Regardless of the outcome of the legal process, these players are now presumed rapists. Even if they are not charged or found not guilty, they will always be tainted by this.

• Centers to watch next season. Two Kentucky players are on this list.

• Russ Smith's NCAA championship jersey goes missing. The author thinks its a conspiracy, and that somebody in Memphis took it/has it.

Other sports news

• Former Wildcat Steve "Stevie got loose" Johnson was traded by the Buffalo Bills to the San Francisco 49ers.

• Manzielmania in Cleveland. Steve Politi at the Star-Ledger has more, and says the teams that let him pass by will regret their choice.

• Bill Plashke of the Los Angeles Times says Donald Sterling's wife must also be divested of her ownership in the Clippers:

  If Shelly Sterling is the boss this summer, and if the NBA doesn't have an obvious plan to eject her, it would not be surprising if some of the Clippers — including and especially Rivers — petition the league to be free of their deals and play elsewhere.

  Even if the NBA has the authority to force Donald Sterling to sell (which I don't believe they do), I don't think they can do that to his wife. Consider that it took a recorded act of racialist commentary to put Sterling on the hot seat. Shelly Sterling has no such albatross — what the writer is asking us to conclude here is that she is worthy of being declared actionably guilty by association.

  I don't know about you, but that concept makes me very nervous. How long before we start disqualifying people for any number of things based on who they are married to or associate with?

• Washington goes down in a painfully awful game 3 against Indiana. John Wall has had much better games than this. But the WaPo says there is plenty of room left on the Wizards bandwagon, and this story contains some Kevin Grevey commentary.

• What happened last night in the NBA playoffs.