Kentucky Wildcats Tuesday Quickies: Kenny Payne Edition

Assistant basketball coach Kenny Payne will make roughly $700,000 a year for the next three years, according to several media sources on Twitter. This comes on the heels of a raise to $500,000 a year from just last season. Per several media sources, the new salary will place Payne's pay higher than 22 head coaches who made the NCAA tournament this year. Payne is the associate head coach, primarily works with UK's post players, and has reeled in a lot of UK's best recruits. The other assistants saw a raise in pay too, but nothing like Payne.

Tweet of the Morning

If you missed the college baseball selection show today, a couple of SEC teams got cheated http://t.co/uD7ghLk1nG

— Brandon Larrabee (@TeamSpeedKills) May 25, 2015

Brandon's case is pretty convincing. How Texas A&M didn't make the cut despite having a higher RPI than four of the national seeds is certainly questionable.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Paul Jordan at Wildcat Blue Nation does a game-by-game breakdown for the coming season.

• Per KSR, UK is after a highly-ranked JUCO offensive tackle. Presumably he's an early enrollee given UK's track record on offering JUCO's, and it would be good for the offensive tackles from the 2013 and 2014 signing classes to have another year to develop. At the same time, this seems like an offer based on want rather than need. I don't think they'd take any JUCO tackle, in other words. Not sure what an average JUCO tackle would get them that they don't already have.

Kentucky basketball

• Jamal Murray to likely decide in June. I'll confess, I watched more of his highlight tapes on YouTube after declaring I was fine with the squad as-is last week. I've reconsidered my previously uneducated viewpoint.

• Calipari just offered a guard in the 2018 class.

Other Kentucky sports

• KSR provides a round-up of what some of UK's athletes were up to over the holiday weekend.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Monday Wildcat Links

College football

• David at TSK looks into the data to see if a stouter run defense correlates with creating more fumbles. It's great work and worth the click.

• UofL received a commitment from a highly-rated dual-threat quarterback. Mark Ennis spots a trend in regards to the quarterbacks Petrino has signed since returning.

• SEC East opponent South Carolina looks to bolster its thin receiver corps.

• Oregon State is still undergoing winter conditioning due to the coaches flip-flopping the traditional spring schedule to get in more recruiting.

College basketball

• Sports Illustrated has a Q&A with Jahlil Okafor.
• USA Today's latest mock NBA Draft has a new No. 1. I would be very happy for UK's former players if this mock draft comes to fruition. Booker at the Heat, WCS with Boogie, and KAT with Randle and possibly Rondo in LA would be great.

Other sports news

• The Rockets avoided the series sweep against Golden State winning 128 -- 115. The Rockets scored 45 points in the first quarter alone, and were able to hold on from there. Stephen Curry suffered a scary fall, but did return in the second half and eventually scored 23 points. Both teams incredibly combined for 37 three pointers (20 for GS and 17 for Houston). How many teams hit 20 three's and lose? Oh, and this was James Harden in the second half:

• This was James Harden: 2nd half He finished with 45 pts. Only Rockets player with more in playoffs- Olajuwon (49/46) pic.twitter.com/M3Lp76hHvW

  — ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) May 26, 2015

• Real Madrid just fired their coach who had "only" won The Champions League last year. He'd also won 74% of his games. No mercy.

• Peyton Manning talks about his relationship with David Letterman.

• Major transfer rumors in the world of soccer. Gareth Bale to Chelsea? They need a scoring wing player.
• Denver wins the NCAA men's lacrosse title. This sport has grown a lot in the last decade.

Other news

• Daredevil is the top-rated show on Netflix. It was fine, at times pretty good, but the best?

• The last of the soft shells turtles.
• Drew Magary, writing for GQ, flies a drone. Hilarity ensues.