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Kentucky Wildcats Mid-Day Quickies: New Normal Edition

News and commentary from around the Big Blue Internet. UK men's soccer now ranked in top 25. Men's basketball picked to win the SEC. More.

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Brandon Larrabee at Team Speed Kills has a very good piece up discussing how the SEC is undergoing a fundamental change, mostly because the lower-tier teams are recruiting better, hiring better coaches and making more investments in football.

Suddenly,with a few teams getting just a little bit better, even a team that’s no worse than 50-50 odds to win each of its games sees a pretty dramatic drop in its chance to go undefeated. (And if you want to know at why it’s so hard to go undefeated in college football, there’s your answer.) Lower the number conference wins need to win the division by one or two, and you make it easier for other teams to get into the mix.

Read the whole thing.

Tweet of the Morning


That’s former pitching great and long-time U.S. congressman and senator Jim Bunning, of course.

Your Quickies:

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  • Stewart Mandel says the NCAA must severely penalize North Carolina. Consider:

    So today, Emmert and the NCAA face a defining moment. What are they going to do about North Carolina? How do you appropriately reprimand a university whose employees spent 18 years making a mockery of higher education? Who put the competitive needs of athletics above the academic development of students? Who made "the most serious academic fraud violations in 20 years" — Haskins’ 18 cheating basketball players — seem like child’s play when compared with the unfathomable scope of UNC’s "shadow curriculum."

    Ouch. That’s going to leave a mark, and it’s pretty persuasive. Read the whole thing.

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  • Look who Petra and I met last night at dinner:

    Will Purdue


    Yep, that’s Will Purdue, formerly of the Vanderbilt Commodores and Chicago Bulls. He also played for San Antonio and Portland. He’s going to be an analyst for the SEC Network along with Tony Delk, Barry Booker, Darrin Horn and others. I recognized him right away.

    He’s a very nice man and very, very tall. You don’t really know tall until you’ve stood beside a 7‘1" guy. I know we’ll all be looking forward to his analysis for the SEC Network this season.

  • Eric Bledsoe demonstrates the concept of "momentum" to Jared Cunningham:

    Hat tip: Deadspin

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