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Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Blue-White Scrimmage Day Edition

News and commentary from around the Big Blue Internet. Blue-white basketball scrimmage tonight in Rupp Arena. UK men's and women's soccer have big weeks. More.

Mark Zerof-USA TODAY Sports

Tonight, in case you have forgotten, is the Blue-White game. The Herald-Leader today talks about how this scrimmage will “fine-tune” the platoon system, or at least help to do so.

The Blue-White game, which will be televised by the SEC Network, will be the first dress rehearsal for a Kentucky team that features nine McDonald’s All-Americans, plus Willie Cauley-Stein, proven contributor Dominique Hawkins and promising forward Derek Willis. It gives Calipari a chance — under pseudo game conditions — to work on one of his major objectives: creating effective units out of an array of celebrated players.

“Trying to settle units and then coach those guys,” Calipari said at the Southeastern Conference Media Days last week. “I’m trying to get two units cohesive versus trying to jumble in nine or 10 guys, which I do think is too many.”

While “too many” is theoretically a good problem to have, it is still a problem.

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Your Quickies:

Kentucky football
Kentucky basketball
  • Sometimes Jerry Tipton’s cynical snarks get to me. This one did:

    This follows ESPNU’s two-hour infomercial on Kentucky (a.k.a. UK’s NBA Combine) and the Cats’ six exhibition games in the Bahamas that helped launch the SEC Network.

    Informercial Jerry? Really? You know, reporters should really refrain from this stuff. I get that Jerry wants to be seen as a fair guy, but this wasn’t fair. Andy Kennedy, to his credit, acknowledges the reality of Kentucky’s power — in the end, it’s all about money. The SEC commissioner suggesting the SEC might change it is kidding himself, not me.

    Look, I don’t care if the SEC Network carries Big Blue Madness or not. I do care if they decide not to broadcast it and won’t release the rights locally. Then, I’ll be arguing for Kentucky to tell the SEC and ESPN to pack sand and sue them. But none of that’s going to happen.

  • Georgetown and North Carolina were cut from 5-star 2015 forward Ivan Rabb’s list. Kentucky was not.

  • Calipari on Andrew Harrison’s leadership:

    "I’ve had all the people at the (NBA) combine came up to me and said, ‘I can’t believe he’s the same kid. Can’t believe his body. Can’t believe his body language on the court. Looking at his skill and speed and saying, ‘Wow.’ So it starts with you’ve got to lead yourself first, and then from there you’ve got to be about everybody else. You don’t have to be ‘rah-rah.’ They just have to know you care: ‘He’s worried about me. He’s caring about me.’ And he’s doing it.

Other Kentucky sports
College football
  • Even Ole Miss found it tough going in Death Valley. I don’t feel quite as bad about our loss to LSU now.

  • Five lessons from Ole Miss’ loss to LSU in Baton Rouge. I think this is the crux of the biscuit:

    If you’re still a believer in anything other than Lou Holtz’s “you’re a different team every week” theory, I don’t know what to tell you.

    Word.

  • Mistakes in officiating? Say it ain’t so! Consider this familiar one:

    In another play, Ohio State kicked a 49-yard field to increase its lead to 17-0 in the second quarter despite the snap coming after the play clock expired. The Big Ten said in a statement “a breakdown in officiating mechanics occurred and the crew failed to properly monitor the play clock. There is flexibility for a slight delay between the play clock and the snap of the ball, but in this case, the timing far exceeded the tolerance for normal play clock procedures. The proper ruling should have been a five-yard penalty for delay of game.”

    At least they admitted theirs.

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