Kentucky Wildcats Friday Links: Hittin' Kittens Edition

Yesterday, Kentucky softball defeated Louisiana-Lafayette 4-1 to advance to the Winner's Bracket of the Women's College World Series. We'll have a bit more about that in another post coming up later this morning, hopefully.

Tweet of the morning

All three #SEC softball teams in the #WCWS - Alabama, Florida, Kentucky - all pick up wins on opening day Thursday.

— SEC Sports (@SEC) May 30, 2014

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Mark Stoops unhappy with poaching of the South by northern schools using an NCAA loophole. Of course, one would think it works both ways, but the SEC has a rule that doesn't allow SEC coaches to use that same loophole.

• Scouting report on 2015 linebacker target Roquan Smith.

Kentucky Basketball

• This is kind of interesting.

• John Calipari wants the SEC to be a "cool league" to play college basketball in. Unfortunately, that has to start with fan support at schools like Auburn, South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. When SEC fans embrace basketball, the coolness will come.

• Young reporter interviews Karl-Anthony Towns Jr. Very cool. Hat tip: KSR

• Calipari talks about Kentucky basketball's summer trip this season.

  "The normal summer tour is that you have 10 days of practice. You figure out your team. You try to put in some stuff, see if you like it or don’t like it. Then you go play three bad games and you come back," Calipari said. "This is a different deal. What we’re trying to do is play good teams that have really good players that will be hard for us to beat."

• Devin Booker will wear #1 at UK. Sounds good to me!

• Willie Cauley-Stein expected to sit out summer basketball trip to recover from surgery.

Other UK sports

• Girl woman power! Seriously, the ladies have upstaged the men to a large degree this season, and are propelling Kentucky to the best year I can ever remember in college sports overall. Consider:

  Of Kentucky's 701.5 total points in the current Directors' Cup standings, UK's women's teams have accounted for 57.7 percent (404.5) — and that does not take into account the 85 points earned by the coed UK rifle team.

• Bat Cats saving A.J. Reed for possible clash with Louisville. I think this is wise, if they can get away with it.

• Bat Cats take on Kansas today. We'll have an open thread, of course.

• KSR previews the Louisville regional.

• Wildcats not overlooking confident Kansas team. Consider:

  Kansas makes the trek to Louisville having won its last nine Big 12 conference regular-season games before entering postseason play, including 11 of its last 15 games overall. Prior to reeling off nine straight Big 12 regular season wins, the Jayhawks sat at 23-20 on the season with slim hopes of making the NCAA Tournament, but that's the funny thing about baseball: Any team can get hot at any time of the season.

• Kentucky on course for a record Director's Cup showing.

Links post

• John Clay's Big Blue Links

• The Leach Report: Friday Wildcat Links

College football

• The SEC is thinking about tweaking tie-breaker rules for the playoff era:

  The SEC is leaning toward using cross-divisional schedule strength to break ties for teams to advance to the league's championship game, sources told CBSSports.com

  Such a method would be at the bottom of a lengthy list of tiebreakers. But this being the SEC and football in the South, such things matter -- a lot. A change has to be made with the end of the BCS and beginning of the College Football Playoff era. The league previously used the BCS standings to break ties to decide a division.

• So college football is "Inhumane?" So says Malcolm Gladwell:

  In what way is dog fighting any different from football on a certain level, right? I mean you take a young, vulnerable dog who was made vulnerable because of his allegiance to the owner and you ask him to engage in serious sustained physical combat with another dog under the control of another owner, right?

  Dude, you are seriously disturbed. Seek help.

• SEC Lunch Links

College basketball

• UConn deleted the academic performance requirement for Kevin Ollie's latest contract. I don't think that speaks very highly of UConn's commitment to academic progress, especially considering that UConn is just coming off an APR-required post-season ban.

• The SEC votes to test the 30-second shot clock in exhibition games next season. Great, I can't wait to see how that works out.

• NCAA files emergency motion to delay the O'Bannon trial. The judge in the case has shown no appetite for continued delays, so I expect this one to also be denied. The NCAA appears to be trying to create an issue for appeal.

Other sports news

• So Donald Sterling is set to sell a team most valued at under $1 billion, and perhaps only $500 or so million, for a whopping $2 billion? I'm just about positive that if someone had offered him that much for the team before his racially-offensive remarks, he would have sold it. Racist or otherwise, this guy was born under a lucky star. He stepped into a pile of dinosaur dung and came out smelling like money.

• John Daly says gambling has cost him $55 million. Dude, I'd say you have a bit of a gambling problem.