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.

By Glenn Logan Oct 27, 2014, 9:31am EDT

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

I love this quote from Mark Stoops:

“Our team is strong,” Stoops said. “They’re strong in the mind. They’re strong in the heart. We’re not perfect. We’re a work in progress. I have no problem with their attitude or what they’re doing. These are pretty good football teams we’re playing.”

I could read that every day until we tee it up for the first time next season.
I guess we’ll have to live with this sort of faint praise until we… you know… beat somebody.
Kentucky lands two 2016 recruits after the Mississippi St. game.
Don’t forget to vote for Bud Dupree as Lott Impact Player of the Week.
Seems Kentucky gave a few MSU fans the vapors. I guess that’s something to be proud of.
Player and coach comments from the game on Saturday.
Ryan Timmons had an up-and-down day on Saturday. We noted that in the postmortem.
John Clay’s “dark clouds and silver linings” for post-MSU. My favorite one:

Dark cloud: LSU had runs of 23, 31, 35 and 38 yards against the UK defense last week. Mississippi State had runs of 22, 23, 38 and 73 yards on Saturday.

Silver lining: Mississippi State is 12th nationally in rushing offense. LSU is 24th. Missouri is 67th nationally in rushing offense.

Kentucky must play better run defense.

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

Links posts

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.

College basketball

Derek Kellogg getting the job done at UMass, and he was rewarded with a three-year extension.
Remember Vinnie Zollo, the recruit Billy Gillisipie got a commitment from, but Calipari convinced was not right for the program? Well, he’s bounced around like a ping-pong ball, but has finally landed at Cleveland State.
You know things are going well when even your boo-boos turn to gold. Randall Cobb, you da man.
The Brooklyn Nets trade Marquis Teague to Philadelphia. Hopefully he can find a home there.
Could the Spurs lose Kawhi Leonard to free agency? As well as he played in the finals last year, I’d think this would be an “all hands on deck” kind of deal.

Other news

Lots of Kentuckians in the White Castle Cravers Hall of Fame. Well, I like White Castle, but I must admit, I haven’t eaten them in a long time.
Hawai’i residents told to prepare for possible lava evacuation. “Lava she come down soft and hot!”
Good news for chocoholics: Compound in cocoa may reverse age-related memory loss.