Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Bronko Nagurski Trophy Edition

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

The big news of today is all football: Kentucky’s Josh Allen wins the Bronko Nagurski Trophy as the best defensive player in college football.

From the Football Writers Association announcement:

Kentucky linebacker Josh Allen was named the recipient of the 2018 Bronko Nagurski Trophy on Monday night before a sold-out banquet crowd of 1,200 at the Charlotte Convention Center. Allen, a 6-foot-5, 260-pound linebacker from Montclair, N.J., accepted the award given to the best defensive player in college football and becomes Kentucky’s first major award winner since Bob Gain won the Outland Trophy in 1950.

That’s a long time between major football awards, and I admit a talent for understatement. I can’t even wrap my mind around how big this is for Kentucky football, and what this says about the ability of Mark Stoops & Co. to develop underrated talent. Allen came to Kentucky rated a 2-star by most services.

If that isn’t enough for you, most of us still remember Jadeveon Clowney when he played for South Carolina and blew up the Internet on a weekly basis with his play. He won the Ted Hendricks award as the best defensive end (an award that Allen is a finalist and must now be considered the favorite for) but even Clowney did not win the Nagurski Trophy.

There are a lot of things to be proud of this season, and Josh Allen is certainly one of them.

Tweet of the Morning

Amen, brother Tom.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Kentucky football among the biggest overachievers vs. Vegas expectations. Incredible year, and the hell of it is, it could’ve been significantly better. And from the same article, there’s this:

But the champion for the most disappointing of all, is Louisville. Louisville’s number was seven, and it finished with just two wins!

Ah, schadenfreude. How sweet it feels.

• Jen Smith has more on Josh Allen’s Nagurski Trophy.
• New Louisville coach Scott Satterfield faces an early recruiting battle with Kentucky over current Louisville commit Zach Williamson.
• Former UK star wideout Craig Yeast is now head coach at Kentucky Wesleyan. Congratulations!
• Mark Stoops is your AP SEC Coach of the Year, and Josh Allen the SEC defensive Player of the Year. Benny Snell, Buchy Stallings and Mike Edwards all were All-SEC team members along with Allen. Congratulations!
• With Citrus Bowl win, Kentucky can achieve a perfect 10. Nice round number, that.
• 5-star defensive end Bryce Langston commits to Florida over Kentucky and others.
• John Clay gives Matt House a lot of the credit for Josh Allen’s development, and Mark Stoops the credit for hiring him.
• I’ll just leave this here.

Kentucky basketball

• Ashton Hagans has a connection to the #2 Clemson Tigers in childhood friend Trevor Lawrence, the QB for the Tigers.
• Wildcats up to #9 in the AP poll. They sure don’t feel like a top ten team right now, although the second half against UNC-Greensboro was encouraging. Ashton Hagans was particularly good defensively, but he really needs to do something about a 41% turnover rate.
• Kentucky’s reward for beating UNCG? Lots of quality time with Coach Cal. Look, we’ve talked about “Camp Cal” a bunch of times, and it’s never really yielded much in the way of improvement, at least immediately, so I’m keeping my powder dry regarding lots of coaching time.

Other Kentucky sports

• Volleyball Wildcats in Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. Hopefully, they can get at least as far as Men’s Soccer did, and reach the Elite Eight.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Tuesday Wildcat Links.

College football

• Louisville hires Appalachian State head coach Scott Satterfield after being dissed by home town hero Jeff Brohm. App State is known for great football, and that means great coaches, so this hire may look below the radar, but most think it was rock solid. I do, too.
• Urban Meyer will retire after the Rose Bowl, to be replaced by Ryan Day.
• Wow, Joel Klatt with the suplex slam of Clay Travis:

• What to make of this troubling interview with Alabama star Tua Tagoviloa?

College basketball

• Calipari’s buddy Tom Crean is now coaching the Georgia Bulldogs, and doing pretty well so far.

Other sports news

• Chicago Bulls send coach Fred Hoiberg packing.
• Jamal Murray’s “Blue Arrow” gig is wearing on some of his NBA peers, and he’s taking pride in pissing some NBA players and coaches off.

Other news

• 100 people’s cremated remains launched into space on a SpaceX rocket. Well, that’s one way to get there…
• Large Hadron Collider down for upgrades. So I guess we can stop worrying about it causing the end of the universe, at least for a while.
• Scientists detect largest known black hole collision.