Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: South Carolina Gamecocks Edition

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

So it’s South Carolina week, and Kentucky gets to travel to Columbia this year for a game which looks pivotal for the success of both teams this season.

South Carolina limps into this game having lost three of its opening four games, the lone victory represented by a victory over Charleston Southern, an FCS school.

Kentucky, on the other hand, is 2-2 and on a two-game slide, both painful, near-miss losses against Florida and Mississippi State. For all the world, it looks to me like the Florida heartbreaker beat Kentucky twice, and hopefully the Wildcats have recovered their equilibrium by now. Because if they haven’t...

Anyway, Vegas has the Wildcats as a 2-point dog, which seems about right to me. I’ll leave it to others to go into detail as to what Kentucky needs to clean up, but it is my fervent hope that the learning curves in the secondary are steep.

Neither of these two teams is in shape to compete for the East with both losing their starting quarterback. Sawyer Smith was banged up after the MSU game, but it appears that he’s almost back to 100%, although we will still be without Isaiah Epps at wideout and possibly Jordan Griffin in the defensive backfield as well.

But both teams need a win, and although this game is arguably more important to the Gamecocks, Kentucky probably wants it just as bad.

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Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Kavosiey Smoke will face the school that almost successfully recruited him this weekend.
• Is South Carolina really the best 1-3 team in the nation? John Clay looks at the question.
• A third of the way through the CFB season, what do we know about this Kentucky team?
• Mark Story looks at the UK-USC matchup with analysis and a prediction.
• Lynn Bowden talks about his difficulties last game and how he will move forward.

• SDS: Why Saturday’s game is actually more important to Mark Stoops than Will Muschamp.

Kentucky basketball

• Kentucky suddenly looking very good for 5-star 2021 point guard Devin Askew.
• Nick Richards says he’ll be disappointed if he’s not the best big man in the country. Me, I’ll take second-best.
• Freshman UK walk-on Brennan Canada credits his parents for getting him here.
• Tyrese Maxey has the personality to be a star at Kentucky.
• AJ Rose’s performance Saturday solidified his hold on the #1 tailback spot. Seems right to me.

Other Kentucky sports

• Two students file Title IX lawsuit against Kentucky for a lack of women’s sports, citing denial of lacrosse and field hockey varsity status, among others.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Tuesday Wildcat Links.

College football

• Tennessee Football: Southern dumpster fire.
• SEC Power Rankings, week 4.

College basketball

• Oregon basketball has been on a recruiting roll lately, and it shows in their young talent this season.
• SEC recruiting:

• Gary Parrish on the NCAA Notice of Allegations to Kansas. The future is full of very, very dark clouds for Hall of Fame coach Bill Self.

Other sports news

• Coach Cal talks about Marty Brennaman:

Mike DeCourcy has thoughts on that subject as well.

• Updated list of former UK players on NBA rosters.

Other news

• Earth had living organisms 3.5 billion years ago.
• Only the second-ever interstellar object visiting our solar system has been confirmed.
• Einstein’s theory of special relativity predicted a mysterious form of matter, and scientists at the world’s largest particle collider believe they are on the verge of discovering it.