Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Groundhog Day Edition

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen of the Big Blue Nation to the Tuesday Morning Quickies. Happy Groundhog Day. Here’s a bit of good news:

Punxsutawney Phil DID NOT see his shadow this morning, predicting an early spring! #Science pic.twitter.com/zO8U2mm1a9

— LEX 18 News (@LEX18News) February 2, 2016

Or maybe not:

"There is no shadow to be cast," says Punxsutawney Phil. An early Spring forecast from the rodent who is wrong 63% of the time. :)

— Matt Milosevich (@WLKYMatt) February 2, 2016

Tweet of the Morning

"If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary." - Jim Rohn

— Chad Scott (@CoachChadScott) February 2, 2016

Seems somehow apropos for Groundhog Day.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• News to me: John Clay has a podcast.

  Listen to John Clay podcast: UK 2016 football signing day preview by Herald-Leader #np on #SoundCloud https://t.co/wLppsalK0u

  — John Clay (@johnclayiv) February 2, 2016

  Speaking of podcasts, did you listen to Will and Coach Greenwell? You should.

• It’s official: Kentucky steals wide receiver coach Lamar Thomas from rival Louisville. In your eye, Cards.

• Mark Story has a good piece on Lexington Henry Clay star Davonte Robinson, who is coming to play for Mark Stoops and the Wildcats.

Kentucky basketball

• Tyler Ulis is a Bob Cousy award finalist. The Bob Cousy award is for the best point guard in America.

• The Wildcats go on the road tonight to try to get well after tough loss to Kansas.

• What Kentucky wants from Skal Labissiere is better rebounding and defense, not scoring. Well, he defended modestly well at Kansas, but rebounding? Not so much.

• Classy Rick Barnes says nice things about Coach Cal.

• Kentucky needs one more good guard, according to Jerry Tipton. I think this is right. If Dominique Hawkins can return to early season form, I think we might just be on to something. He clearly wasn’t ready at Kansas, thought.

Other Kentucky sports

• Bat Cats junior Javon Shelby has earned his third pre-season All-American honor, this time 2nd team by Baseball America.

• Men’s Tennis suffers their first loss of the year at #1 Virginia, 6-1.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Tuesday Wildcat Links

College football

• 12 reasons college football dominates the NFL. Hey, I like college football but I don’t give a darn about the NFL.

• Player for NCAA Division II champ Northwest Missouri State found dead in his dorm room on Sunday. No foul play is suspected, but there is an investigation.

• For the first time in seven years, the nation’s #1 ranked recruit will not be playing in the SEC. Instead, it will be either the B1G or ACC.

College basketball

• How the mighty have fallen: After winning the NCAA championship, Duke falls out of the AP Top 25 for the first time in nine years.

  Don’t laugh, dear UK fan. The same thing happened to us, if you’ll recall, and even though it’s possible, I doubt Duke is NIT-bound. It’s an interesting parallel, though, because the fall of both teams were tied to the injury of a critical player.

• Louisville upsets North Carolina at the Chicken Ranch. Louisville deserved that win, they played good defense and held the high-scoring Heels to only 65 points.

  Related:

  UNC's Marcus Paige is just 11-49 from the field and 4-30 from three-point range over his last five games. The struggle is indeed real.

  — Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) February 2, 2016

• Upset Monday:

  Giant takedown. All of the higher-ranked teams went down tonight. pic.twitter.com/1IcXl2K2QQ

  — ESPN College BBall (@ESPNCBB) February 2, 2016

Other sports news

• The wages of an entrenched bureaucratic mindset:

  The NCAA Board of Governors unanimously voted to extend president Mark Emmert’s contract by three years, the organization announced Monday.

  Emmert will now remain president through October 2020. The contract also has an option to extend his tenure into 2021.

  Because he’s done such a bang-up job so far, I guess. Dennis Dodd notes that it was coordinated with the Super Bowl to produce a gigantic “Meh.”

• Josh Harrellson is starting in the All-Star Game — for the Latvian Basketball League. Congratulations, big guy.

  Thank you everyone who voted! Blessed to be apart of the all star game and blessed to be starting! pic.twitter.com/uz1xIbl9WD

  — Josh Harrellson (@BigJorts55) February 2, 2016

• Finally some good news for Randall Cobb.

• Myles Turner declines to join LeBron’s long list of poster victims. Impressive.

  Myles Turner, so disrespectful: https://t.co/DzrfhLHwJ2 https://t.co/Z7iv7Rw4qx

  — SB Nation (@SBNation) February 2, 2016

• Many happy returns.

  Happy Birthday American Pharoah https://t.co/QKFBRYGAi0 pic.twitter.com/VMmlQnZ0Bs

  — LEX 18 News (@LEX18News) February 2, 2016

Other news

• Physicists investigate the structure of time:

  Motivated by several recent theoretical studies, the scientists further delved into the question of the structure of time—in particular, the long-debated question of whether time is continuous or discrete.

  “In our paper, we have proposed that time is discrete in nature, and we have also suggested ways to experimentally test this proposal,” Faizal said.

  Fascinating.

• The Smithsonian is restoring the original starship Enterprise, sans version.

• Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which describes gravity as the warping of spacetime by mass, revolutionized the way we see the cosmos.

• Want to feel better? Move to Alaska or Hawaii. Alaska is not for me, I’m afraid.