Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Blue-White Game Edition

The Blue-White Scrimmage will take place on Monday, October 27th at 7:00 PM. It will be broadcast live on the SEC Network, in case you missed it yesterday.

Tweet of the Morning

The sun is up and @SEC Basketball media days continues @SECNetwork #SECTipoff15 pic.twitter.com/qjTorEQa2s

— Maria Taylor (@MariaTaylor7) October 22, 2014

Yes! The season is now very close, Big Blue Nation.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Former UK player Brad Durham, who was injured in a fall at Commonwealth Stadium, has been released from the hospital (h/t Wild Weasel).

• Will talked about this the other day, but the Kentucky receiving corps has room for improvement:

  Every wide receiver walked away knowing that he had some individual things to work on: what most of them called "the little things" that can make a huge difference.

  For Johnson it was discipline in route running and trying to play at the right tempo.

  For others, it was playing at pad level and using their hands, especially against the big, physical cornerbacks at Louisiana State.

  The LSU game had a little bit of everything — dropped balls, breaking at the wrong time in routes, not being physical enough, you name it.

• Tonight, one of our top targets for 2015 will announce his choice of schools — Kengera Daniel from Raleigh, N.C. Alabama, Louisville, N.C. State and Virginia are also recruiting him.

• Top 100 defensive back prospect from Washington D.C., Marcus Lewis, will visit UK before he decides.

• Neal Brown defends his playcalling. I know some people are exercised about it, and I was critical of the number of swing passes until I read Greenwell’s excellent piece on the subject. I think we need to lighten up on Neal and let him coach. I think he’s doing a fine job.

• Tuesday’s practice report.

Kentucky basketball

• Campus Insiders thinks UK will go undefeated:

  Feh. I’ll allow myself to begin to believe if we are still undefeated in January.

• Happier Harrisons help the UK locker room. I think their famously poor body language last season had less to do with who they are than the pressure they put on themselves. Now that some of that pressure is off, it’s not surprising to see them relax, hopefully have more fun.

  When the going gets tough, that’s when we’ll know how much they’ve matured. If they return to the pouty 2013 Harrisons, we’ll know that they haven’t really cleared that bar.

• Devin Booker talks about the combine, communication, defense, and Alex Poythress.

Other Kentucky sports

• Can the Kentucky Hoops team be the most disruptive in America, like Matthew Mitchell wants? I think that’s exactly what they are built to be — undersized but intense.

• Katy Kunc named Freshman of the Week for cross country.

• Men’s soccer’s Justin Laird has been named National Player of the Week.

• UK Rifle is now ranked #2 in the nation. They head to Annapolis on Saturday to face the Navy Midshipmen.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Wednesday Wildcat Links

• John Clay’s SEC Links

College football

• Kentucky gets a rare mention from SB Nation’s Dan Reubenstein

• A list of "problems" with the College Football Playoff Selection Committee. I rank these into 3 categories:

  • Not really legitimate concerns:
    • #1, #5, #6
  • Minor concerns:
    • #2, #4
  • Legitimate concerns:
    • #3 — Margin of victory should be considered at some level. Excluding it is dumb.
    • #7 — I can see the point about injuries here. Unfortunately, this is a consideration that shows up in the NCAA tournament as well. My inclination would be to consider injuries a factor in future performance, but perhaps only a minor one.
    • #8 — Judging "intent" is ludicrous. I fully agree with the argument that your opponents are what they are.
    • #9 — the lack of transparency is more than weird, it’s a genuine problem. Anytime we set up panels to offer judgments without having to provide reasoning, we have made a mess of it.

• The conspiracy against Notre Dame. Heh. Only EDSBS can give this meme the thorough mocking it richly deserves.

• Could Steve Spurrier return to Florida? Ooooh, so scary. If this were ten years ago, yes, probably. In 2014? Not likely. What would be his motivation, trying to out-Lou Holz Lou Holz?

College basketball

• Florida looks more like a rebuilding team than a reloading team to me. Just sayin’.

Other sports news

• Is an Eric Bledsoe for Julius Randle (plus another player and draft pick) being considered by the Suns and Lakers? Bright Side of the Sun doesn’t think it has any legs.

• Jimmy Dykes defends Arkansas’ hiring of him. I don’t know why he’d have to. He’s never been a head coach, but then again, that was true of every great coach before he became one. I’m not sure Dykes will be great or even good, but I don’t think his selection needs much defending.

• NCAA mocks Sports Illustrated article by Thayer Evans and George Dohrman as "Unfounded." Of course, SI stands by their work, but it was roundly trashed the day it came out. From what I can tell, it was mostly a work of fiction.

  That doesn’t mean Oklahoma State will come away unscathed — the NCAA will issue a notice of possible Level II violations against the school, but they are pinpricks compared to the multiple Level I violations suggested by the SI article.

  Let me just say this as a personal observation — Thayer Evans is, in my opinion, an incompetent boob. I have no idea why SI would keep him on staff. Who knows, maybe after this, he’ll be freed up for other opportunities.

• Lawyers gotta get paid, baby. I’d take them to court and make them justify every red cent. Not that I begrudge lawyers their fees, but I have seen too many cases like this where their fees were wildly inflated. I know that will come as a shock, but it does happen.

• 2014 SLAM online top 50 players.

Other news

• Renée Zellweger doesn’t look all that different to me. A little older, maybe.

• The iPad Air 2 is getting some strange reviews, according to the Houston Chronicle.

• The CEO of the French oil company Total was killed in a plane crash. His private jet hit a snowplow on takeoff in Moscow. Curious.

• New smartphone app can do your math for you. Or for your kiddos. Teachers may be less than totally pleased.

• More changes coming to Gmail? They’ve improved it lately, I think. Here’s hoping this improves it even more.