Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Team USA Under-19 Edition

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

Today, I want to talk briefly about John Calipari’s latest part-time job coaching the USA Basketball Under-19 team, and what that may mean going forward for Kentucky basketball.

This is a gig that Billy Donovan had for quite a while when he was at Florida, and many people saw this as a big help to Billy D. on the recruiting trail. Assuming that is so, it can’t hurt for Coach Cal to have the job, either. The thing is, Calipari really doesn’t need the help, but hey — I’m sure he’ll take it!

Dick Weiss has a piece on this subject today, and although he does mention the possible recruiting benefits, he talks about Calipari’s desire to be the coach of Olympic basketball team, a job that Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski has excelled at over the last few olympic cycles:

Calipari has paid his dues. He built a Naismith Hall of Fame resume at UMass, Memphis and Kentucky that includes one national championship in 2012 and six trips to the NCAA Final Four in 1996, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015 as well as producing an assembly line of players who have been NBA first round draft picks.

And he was willing to step up under adverse conditions, taking his team into an seemingly unstable situation in a Middle East country that has experienced its share of violence recently.

Read the whole thing.

Tweet of the Morning

john calipari's assistants on u19s will be tad boyle of colorado, danny manning of wake forest.

— Dick Weiss (@HoopsWeiss) June 20, 2017

Sounds like a very good group of coaches.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• UK football self-reports violations involving “Last Chance U” star. Minor stuff, fortunately.

• UK signee Jarren Williams thinks Louisville’s Lamar Jackson will defend his 2017 Heisman. That’s where the smart money seems to be.

Kentucky basketball

• Kentucky looking very good for their top 2018 point guard target, Immanuel Quickley. Consider:

  "I think Kentucky is definitely the team to beat for Immanuel Quickley," Scout.com’s Evan Daniels told the Herald-Leader last week.

  Asked if he saw another one of Quickley’s finalists as the Cats’ top competition, Daniels didn’t hesitate. "Not really," he said.

• John Calipari and Kentucky are taking over the NBA. Pretty good stuff.

• Coach Cal talks about Bol Bol, sone of Manute Bol.

  Related: Bol Bol’s basketball journey has taken him from Sudan to top UK recruiting target.

• PJ Washington is the model for “positionless” players that Kentucky wants.

Other Kentucky sports

• UK’s 2017-18 Hoops schedule looks pretty challenging, although not as tough as some recent schedules have been.

• Incoming women’s soccer player Eva Mitchell named Kentucky Gatorade High School Player of the Year.

  Related: Youthful Cats should have time to grow before schedule gets too tough.

• Sydney McLaughlin “mania” is coming to Kentucky.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Tuesday Wildcat Links

• Cats Illustrated’s News Stand for Tuesday. Always worth your time. Consider:

  You may still be naive on certain points, and you’re probably no less a homer, but at this moment in history your optimism is more justified than ever. That’s because things haven’t looked this good for Kentucky football, in almost every respect, since the late 1970’s.

• John Clay’s Big Blue Links

College football

• Quarterback transfers becoming an epidemic in the SEC.

College basketball

• NBA draft links and opinion. Matt Norlander thinks that Malik Monk is overrated.

  I disagree strongly with Norlander. I think he is about where he should be. Monk is a prodigious talent that just needs to be coached to achieve a very high, perhaps all-star level.

• How will the NCAA’s punishments for Louisville affect North Carolina? Well, I suspect that if they declare player academically ineligible due to fraud, some more banners will be coming down. UNC could be the first team to win and lose a NCAA Tournament championship in the same year.

Other sports news

• Now this right here is a Green Bay fan: Man changes his last name to his wife’s so he can be a Packer too.

• Remembering Len Bias. What a tragedy.

Other news

• What would Planet Earth be like in a Black Hole?

• NASA has discovered 10 more exoplanets that could sustain life. It’s looking more and more like we are not alone, but always keep the words “great filter” in the back of your mind when you root for alien life.

• Yearning for new, post-Higgs physics at CERN.