Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Basketball Media Day Edition

Today is Kentucky Basketball Media Day. We’ll have updates as they become available.

Tweet of the Morning

Please keep our friend & ex-Wildcat Reggie Warford in your prayers. He is undergoing heart transplant surgery at this time. Please retweet.

— Oscar Combs (@wildcatnews) October 16, 2014

Our thoughts and prayers are with you, Reggie. Get well soon.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• This sounds good:

  Boarding flight to NOLA. A lot of #BBN heading south to see UK play at Tiger Stadium on Sat. I suspect you will see BBN on Bourbon tonight.

  — Pete Roussel (@coachingsearch) October 16, 2014

• Mark Stoops is having none of the "his guys" versus "Joker’s guys" talk. They are his guys. The ones he didn’t want are probably no longer with the team.

• Kentucky’s priority is stopping the LSU running game. That’s going to be tough, considering our run defense is 62nd in the nation. That’s worse than Louisiana-Monroe, who LSU thumped to the tune of 31-0. Of course, UK can score, but can we possess the ball enough times, and long enough, to mount a challenge?

• You can never count LSU out as long as Les Miles is coaching. That’s true. You never know what that grass will tell him to do.

• 2015 football schedule announced, including 8 home games for the Wildcats. Eastern Kentucky is on the schedule, as is Charlotte. The last two games will be non-SEC games. Interesting.

  Next year is the year for Kentucky, and the schedule sets up well. We have Mizzou and Tennessee at home, as well as Florida.

Kentucky basketball

• Are you ready for Big Blue Madness? Tomorrow is the day.

• Dana O’Neil writes about the top ten most important shooters in college basketball. Players for the Louisville Cardinals and Kentucky Wildcats are #1 and #2. See if you can guess who they are, and the order.

  Actually, there are two Wildcats on the list, one of them former.

• Do you remember all the crap Kentucky caught for insisting on a neutral site game with Indiana? Consider this:

  Fans closer to home complain that they want to see more marquee opponents come to Assembly Hall, and that’s not an unfair point. But it’s also hard, in the current climate of college basketball, to convince Georgetown or Louisville or UConn to play in Bloomington, when they could make plenty of money and avoid the hassle of a hostile environment with a neutral-site game.

  So it’s okay when UConn or Georgetown decline to come to Assembly Hall, but not Kentucky. Nooo, it’s gotta be home-home or nothing for Kentucky.

  Seriously? Hypocrites, much?

• Meet the Cats: Trey Lyles. Also:

  • Derek Willis
  • Tod Lanter

• Antonio Blakeney, formerly committed to Louisville and the genesis of Pitino’s rant against shoe companies, will not be coming to Big Blue Madness.

Other Kentucky sports

• Heh.

  Matthew Mitchell is even yelling at practice players this morning. Funny.

  — Jen Smith (@jenheraldleader) October 16, 2014

• Sophomore outfielder Marcus Carson shines in intrasquad baseball scrimmage.

Links posts

• John Clay’s Big Blue Links

• John Clay’s SEC Links

College football

• I’ll just leave this here.

  Hearing Kirk Herbstreit defend Jameis Winston this morning on Mike & Mike reminded me why a lot of people have a hard time liking this guy.

  — Brandon Castel (@BCastOZone) October 16, 2014

• Georgia likely to be without Todd Gurley again this week. He’ll probably be back for the Kentucky game, I’ll bet. I hope so, I don’t want to hear "but if’s" if we win.

• Heh. Dan Mullen might care. Or not. Who knows?

College basketball

• Wisconsin unanimously picked to win the Big Ten. They’ll be good, all right.

• Because that’s about all he can say:

  Indiana's Tom Crean just talked for a long time … all I heard was … we have Yogi

  — Matt Charboneau (@mattcharboneau) October 16, 2014

• That’ll leave a mark:

  B1G media is not so much picking IU to finish 9th in the conference as much as it's predicting Tom Crean to be looking for work elsewhere.

  — Ramzy Nasrallahween (@ramzy) October 16, 2014

• Curious, indeed.

  At a dinner with others from BTN last night, we discussed this curiosity: Maryland is now the most recent Big Ten team to win NCAA title.

  — Michael DeCourcy (@tsnmike) October 16, 2014

• Lots of Midnight Madnesses tomorrow night, and at some really high-profile schools.

• Ten candidates for breakout basketball players. Yes, Kentucky has one, but it wasn’t who I thought.

• Texas basketball preview. They are going to be good this year, and will be a good early test for Kentucky — a test we may well not pass.

• I’m confident you’ll want to order this right away. After all, it would make a great tailgate grill starter. Or adornment for a port-a-potty.

Other sports news

• Your guide to 2014-15 NBA coaches and their futures.

• Five reasons the surprising Royals won the AL pennant.

Other news

• Conspiracy continues about US government’s secret space plane, the X-37B.

• Apple expected to unveil new iPad today. I’m still loving my 2-year old Nexus 7.