Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Tragedy in Lexington Edition

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the Big Blue Nation, and welcome to the Tuesday Quickies.

Today’s lead story is the shooting death of Olympic sprinter and Lexington native Tyson Gay’s 15-year old daughter Trinity. On Sunday around 4:00 AM, Trinity Gay was killed by an apparently stray bullet fired in an altercation by two groups of young men in cars.

When I heard about this tragedy, the first thing that went through my head was, “What was a 15-year old doing at a burger joint at 4:00 AM in the morning?” This sort of thing is exactly why I never would’ve been allowed to be out that late at fifteen. I could understand if she were a college student, or about to graduate from high school. Still, it seems … incongruent, and we have to acknowledge that mostly bad things happen in the wee hours of the morning. It really tears me up that we have to be reminded of that fact so tragically, and all too often.

Having said all that, the worst tragedy here is that this young, promising life was lost for nothing to wanton reckless violence by people with no regard for life or safety, most of them apparently young. I have long since come to understand that there is simply no way to stop this sort of thing — it comes with the territory of life and being a human — but it would be nice if we could at least learn something from it in hopes that Trinity’s tragic demise will not be completely in vain.

Our prayers and sympathy go out to the Gay family, and her friends. We grieve with thee.

Tweet of the Morning

UK will honor the 1976 Peach Bowl team on Saturday and, for the sake of their Twitter feeds, I hope every single player shows up.

— TJ Beisner (@Beisner_cn2) October 17, 2016

Do what I do — ignore Twitter.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Jen Smith has the updated depth chart for the UK-Mississippi State game. Interesting to see Benny Snell in as the kick returner. Also notable is Bunchy Stallings getting a start at right guard.

• Kengera Daniel is now back from suspension and ready to make an impact. We need him to do so. He did a good job late in the Vandy game.

• Reddit map shows Kentucky’s struggles with football.

Kentucky basketball

• Mark Story revives the technical foul Isaac Humphries received in last year’s game at Texas A&M where he slammed the ball down in exuberance after getting a huge rebound while being fouled that appeared to seal the win for UK. The resulting technical foul shots led to the eventual defeat of Kentucky, effectively snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Humphries says that sequence of events taught him something:

  In the UK locker room, "I was beside myself," Humphries says. "I was very upset for the team. Not even for me, it was more for the team. But everyone had my back. They actually started getting mad at me because I kept apologizing. They said, ‘Stop apologizing. We wouldn’t even have been in that position (to win) if it hadn’t been for you the whole game.’"

  That’s the thing so many people angry about that game miss. Humphries’ play was a big reason why UK had a chance to win at all, though obviously his mistake led to the opposite result.

• Jon Rothstein says Kentucky has a chance to run the table in the SEC. That’s probably true, but I think it’s unlikely. I think it more likely that we’ll lose at least a road game or two, but probably not much more than that based on what we’ve seen so far.

• Calipari’s goal is clear: He wants UK to be the best defensive team in the country. From the tiny bit I have seen so far, I think this is a theoretically achievable goal, but it will take some real commitment.

Other Kentucky sports

• On a roll: Volleyballer Leah Edmond wins her fifth SEC Freshman of the Week award as UK remains undefeated in the SEC at 8-0. They are now ranked #21.

• Men’s soccer concludes non-conference play today.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Tuesday Wildcat Links

College football

• Mike Leech, now of Washington State, says that police unfairly target college football players:

  “First incident. A brawl at a party, the whole room is involved. The room erupts in a brawl,” Leach says. “Everybody’s hitting everybody. The only guys accused of doing anything are football players. The only guys accused of anything are football players. Where’s everybody else? What about the other 100 people in the room? What was their role?”

  Interesting. He does seem to have a point, at least in theory.

College basketball

• Louisville to receive notice of allegations this week. That should be very, very interesting.

• SEC basketball media days: 20 questions. I like this one:

  Does Tennessee know it’s almost basketball season?

  Doubtful. UT’s basketball team earned only six SEC wins in 18 conference games last season, and the football team may reach that mark in only eight tries. Hoops will be on the back-burner on Rocky Top until January.

  Heh.

Other sports news

• Anthony Davis is looking for a personal assistant on Craig’s List.

• The Mavericks have signed Boogie Cousins’ brother, Jaleel as a free agent.

Other news

• MIT marks another step toward cold fusion technology. Faster, please!

• The universe has 10 times more galaxies than previously thought. Wow, galaxies are really cheap these days, it seems.