Kentucky Wildcats Sunday Quickies: Kentucky Softball Edition

Kentucky softball lost to Georgia yesterday 5-2, but they made their first SEC Tournament finals appearance ever. That bodes well heading into the NCAA Softball Tournament, and the selection show for that is tonight on ESPNU

Tweet of the Morning

ACC does it again -- runner up in most draft choices. One of the mysteries of universe why it hasn't translated to better play even with FSU

— Dennis Dodd (@dennisdoddcbs) May 11, 2014

Indeed.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• John Clay says that Louisville's three first-round draft picks underscores Louisville's dominance over Kentucky. I suppose it does, sadly. Perhaps Mark Stoops can reverse this trend.

• Two Western Kentucky Hilltoppers get drafted along with Avery Williamson. Donte Rumph and Mister Cobble have apparently inked free-agent deals.

• Mikel Horton says that if you're not ready for the SEC, don't come play in it:

  "I had no clue. Literally, I was just talking for the hype when I was a recruit," said But it opened my eyes when I got here. There is so much talent here it is ridiculous. There is so much physicality here it is ridiculous."

  Read the whole thing.

• Drew Barker still getting it done on the recruiting trail.

Kentucky basketball

• Mark Story asks if Aaron Harrison hit three of the ten greatest clutch shots in UK history this past NCAA Tournament. He lists them, and you have to admit, they all have a place on that list.

• Jerry Tipton provides us ten reasons to complain, if we must, about next season's team. Consider:

  1. John Calipari figures to continue to use the label "succeed-and-proceed" for so-called one-and-done players. It's better than, say, fail-and-bail or null-and-void. But one-and-done is well established in college basketball vernacular. Succeed-and-proceed is mere marketing ploy. Besides, players proceed without necessarily succeeding (Archie Goodwin, Daniel Orton).

  Umm, Jerry, in case you missed it, Archie Goodwin is succeeding pretty darn well. Just because he isn't a starter doesn't mean he didn't have a successful season.

  While he's right on a couple of things, he's really reaching on most of them. I guess that's what happens when you try to find clouds in a gigantic silver lining.

Other Kentucky sports

• Men's tennis advances to the Sweet Sixteen, beating Clemson. Clemson's coach was magnanimous in defeat, and quite complimentary of the partisan Kentucky fans, all 246 of them.

• Ex-Cat James Paxton is getting back on track after an injury. He plays for Seattle.

• Kentucky softball falls to Georgia 5-2 in the SEC Tournament final. Great job by the 'Cats, Georgia is just a really good team. Now, it's on to the NCAA Tournament. The selection show is today at 10 PM on ESPNU. Thanks to Jords for the game thread yesterday. Charlie Healy at Cat Scratches has more about the positives from Kentucky's SEC Tournament appearance.

• Auburn routs the Bat Cats, ties the series. This is a really, really important rubber match today at 1 PM. Kentucky needs it like the flower needs the rain.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Sunday Wildcat Links

• KSR's Sunday Links

College football

• The SEC led all conferences with 49 players drafted. LSU had the most from any one team. But the ACC was a close second.

• Some notable SEC players went undrafted, including Connor Shaw and several early entrants.

College basketball

• Richmond women's basketball coach presumed dead after hot air balloon crash.

• NCAA proposes a change to the block/charge rule. I hope to have more about this in a separate article soon.

Other sports news

• Jordan Spieth, your next big golf star.

• An excellent analysis of the NBA's legal position in attempting to divest Donald Sterling of the Clippers. I should point out that this is all written from the most favorable possible viewing of the situation for the NBA, and contains mostly analysis from their advocates and lawyers.

  Viewed in isolation, such arguments always seem very strong, but Sterling also has a strong argument against such a divestment and the reading of the NBA constitution. Also, the light they make of the "slippery slope" and hypocrisy points seem way too cavalier for an entity as image-conscious as the NBA. I suggest that is a simple smoke-screen designed to help persuade Sterling not to bother, but I suspect he will bother, and bother quite a bit.

  This is going to be very interesting, and there are many sub-plots such as what the players, coaching, and team management will do while the process is going on.

  I understand why the NBA is doing this — they have no choice, really. Failure to try to oust Sterling would harm labor relations as well as the NBA's public image, perhaps irreparably, and who knows what could come of that. Their success or failure is not really as important as the effort, which I'm sure will be comprehensive.

  Should Sterling eventually prevail, I think that's probably the best outcome of all for two reasons — it would reinforce the idea that people may not be forcibly divested of their private property by creative reading of contracts, and it will force Sterling to face the actual business consequences of his actions rather than just collect a bunch of money for selling the team. The value of the Clippers will almost surely decline to a level where the league may well have a cause of action that they currently may not possess, although I think Sterling will sell the team himself before he lets his investment go completely in the crapper. He's a business man, after all, bigoted or no.

  By winning, Sterling may wind up losing tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars that he would have otherwise pocketed, and that would be a much more just outcome, in my view.

Other news

• News you can use: Nagging can shorten your life. Hat tip: Instapundit.