Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Vols and Valentines Edition

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the Big Blue Nation, and welcome to the Tuesday Morning Quickies. Happy Valentines Day to all and sundry.

Today’s edition is all about the St. Valentine’s Day orange invasion of Rupp Arena tonight (well, at least for the team in the opponent’s uniforms). Tennessee handed Kentucky a loss in Knoxville three weeks ago that was the beginning of a two-game slide and three losses in four games for the Wildcats — unfamiliar territory for Calipari-coached teams at UK.

The rematch tonight promises to be a tough one. Tennessee has been playing well since beating Kentucky, defeating Kansas State, Auburn on the road, and Ole Miss at home. They dropped games to Mississippi State on the road and a tough one to Georgia by a single point at home on Saturday.

Tennessee doesn’t impress by the numbers, they impress with their effort and intensity. Sometimes, their skill doesn’t let them get victories despite their work ethic, but make no mistake, this Tennessee team is a threat to sweep the UK series this season if the Wildcats try to waltz through the Vols.

Rick Barnes tells his team it’s all about a winning mindset, and to take it one game at a time.  Calipari, alternatively, is talking about situational basketball and keeping leads once you get them:

“Just learning how to play in situational basketball,” he said. “You know, you think about it, the fast team that we had in 2012, we were fast. This team could be faster. But, how did we play in the championship game (against Kansas)? What was the final score? Sixty-seven to 59. And it was only because we were shooting fouls at the end. That game was in the low 60s because we had to be in the low 60s to win the game.”

Teams have clearly learned how to slow Kentucky’s roll, at least in the most important area of keeping them out of a constant 94-foot track meet. Kentucky has to learn to win execution games as well, and that’s the challenge that SEC opponents have been presenting to them lately. Tennessee likes to play with more pace than Alabama or Georgia, but they won’t want to run with UK in Rupp Arena. So likely, this will be another execution game with tough defense and longer possessions.

Will Kentucky’s new commitment on the defensive end continue versus the Vols? The season may well turn on the answer to that question. Stay tuned.

Tweet of the Morning

OK, now John Wall is just showing off pic.twitter.com/aGHx6nMVzl

— SB Nation (@SBNation) February 14, 2017

Heh.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Nick Roush at KSR looks at the defensive line’s 2016 performance, and forward to the future.

• Kentucky’s tight ends have depth and experience for next season. No doubt, that’s a position of strength.

Kentucky basketball

• Isaac Humphries has not had the break-out year many predicted, despite some notable improvements in his game. He has lacked patience with the ball in his hands and has been inefficient offensively.

  Still, he’s been a solid presence for short stints, and has shown flashes of great things to come. But for now, it’s a typical sophomore season, and Jeff Drummond talks about it in depth.

• Remember Heshimu Evans? Of course you do. He’ll be signing autographs before the game tonight.

• Calipari says Kentucky must play with confidence, and stop giving up leads:

“Look, you can sit there and go crazy when they give up a lead or you can figure out, ‘Why are they doing this?’ Because we’ve done it five times. Top 25 and all of the sudden you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, we could lose this.’ If we haven’t talked about it, we haven’t really worked on it and shown them – you can’t blame them. Dudes are in high school six months ago. Trying to play what we’re doing against veteran teams?"

• Mulder, Humphries preview the ‘Cats vs. Vols.

• Keith Taylor says the earlier loss in Knoxville represents a “moment of growth” for Kentucky. Well, at least it was the beginning of one. I don’t think they thought it was quite real until Kansas dealt the Wildcats a loss at home, and then Florida put a beat-down on them after a near-miss by Georgia.

  Combined, those games represent the motivation for improvement, because they had to hurt. A single upset, for some teams, is all that’s needed. Others need more… convincing. I think this group is in the latter category.

Other Kentucky sports

• 20th ranked Kentucky softball begins a west-coast swing at #8 UCLA. This ought to be… instructive.

• Kentucky swimming and diving getting ready for SEC championships.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Tuesday Wildcat Links.

College football

• LSU quarterback Brandon Harris announces his plans to transfer.

• Alabama to interview Brian Daboll of the New England Patriots the Offensive Coordinator position recently vacated by Lane Kiffin?

College basketball

• Kansas comes back from a big deficit at home to nip West Virgina in overtime.

• UConn women defeat South Carolina in Storrs for their 100th straight victory. Looks like any upset is going to come out of the blue, if it happens at all.

• Virgina Tech wins and loses in the same game. They beat Virginia, but lost one of their best players to injury. All our wishes for a quick recovery for Chris Clarke.

• Team Speed Kills writes about the three SEC teams remaining in the AP Top 25.

Other sports news

• John Wall names himself as one of the five best point guards in the NBA. I think that’s hard to dispute.

• Tyler Ulis to have his high school jersey retired.

• The NBA Development League will be renamed the NBA Gatorade League.

• U.S. Soccer hiring high-performance coach. Sound familiar?

• Anthony Davis is the highest-paid former Wildcat, but I’ll bet you can’t guess who the second is. I never would’ve.

Other news

• Is the Nokia 3310 poised for a comeback? I loved this phone. I long for the days when phones like this were the norm. Is that wrong? I guess I’m just a Luddite where mobile phones are concerned.

• Here’s a starry valentine for you. Awesome, indeed.

• Tiny magnetic implant offers new drug delivery method. Fascinating.