Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: College Basketball 2014 Begins Edition

College basketball season officially begins tonight. SB Nation has an article about why college basketball season is so awesome. I really prefer the regular season to March Madness. Yes, the latter is more meaningful because it is a tournament, but it’s in the regular season where you see the moments of greatness that sometimes just disappear, and when you can develop the context for your team.

For example, if we hadn’t seen the struggles of last year’s Kentucky team in the regular season, would we have even been surprised that they got to the finals? There is so much richness that the regular season brings to college basketball that is lost on the college football crowd who can’t get excited until March.

Tweet of the Morning

.@KentuckyMBB goes for win No. 2,141 tonight. Here they celebrate No. 1,000 Jan. 1969 with 1,000 candles on a cake pic.twitter.com/tS7ocusvxe

— KY Photo Archive (@KYPhotoArchive) November 14, 2014

Awesome memory from a bygone era. Why can’t we celebrate milestones like that anymore with a simple cake? Nostalgic.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Calling Kentucky-Tennessee a "rivalry" is a stretch now. Yes, it is. You have to win games for it to be a rivalry. It’s not enough just to hate the other team.

• Five keys for the Volunteers against Kentucky.

• Rocky Top Talk tries to discern the most important Vol player against Kentucky.

• Rocky Top Talk invited me onto their podcast the other day to talk about the Vols and the ‘Cats. I meant to put it up earlier, but I forgot. Here you go. It’s fairly short.

Kentucky basketball

• Marcus Lee on dealing with the hype:

  Only at Kentucky does a sophomore qualify himself as "older," other than technically. Having said that, these guys are more experienced when it comes to hype, pressure, and the NCAA Tournament than most.

• We’re all well aware of the disturbing reports around Skal Labissiere and his guardian recently. Ben Roberts has a brief run-down here, and I think this point is the most important one for UK fans to remember — a quote by Gary Parrish, of all people:

  "I don’t think that John’s put himself at risk," he said. "John’s too smart to do that. John Calipari ain’t risking an $8 million job and his reputation … over a top-10 recruit when he signs three of them every year no matter what."

  I think that’s right. Aside from "In Sandy we trust," we also have to recognize that Calipari doesn’t need to do anything edgy at Kentucky when it comes to recruiting. The proof is in the nine McDonalds All-Americans on the current roster.

• Tony Delk sees a little 1996 in this year’s team.

• Coach Cal is kind of wishing for some adversity for this team. I think his wish will be granted, no worries about that. I just hope it’s nearer the beginning of the season than at the end.

• Winston Bennett, super fan. Winston works with my wife at a Louisville insurance company. Nice man.

Other Kentucky sports

• Women’s basketball collides with the men on Friday. We’ll have the usual coverage for the men, and the women will also have a brief preview and thread dedicated to their game, and the aftermath discussion.

Links posts

• John Clay’s Big Blue Links

• John Clay’s SEC Links

College football

• Heh:

  Taylor Swift's next album will include an angry song about the CFP selection committee.

  — Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) November 14, 2014

  
  

College basketball

• It’s come to this: Pitino vs. Pitino the "marquee" matchup of tonight.

• Worth reading in it’s entirety, even if you don’t like Mike DeCourcy (which is hard for me to imagine, but some don’t). He recalls 20 great moments in his 20 years of covering college basketball for The Sporting News. There are a couple of Kentucky moments in there, one good and one not so good.

• Basketball pre-season All-Americans from SB Nation.

Other sports news

• Stay humble, stay hungry:

  Anthony Davis: 1st in NBA in Blocks, 1st in Rebounds, 4th in Scoring. The last guy Top 5 in those categories… Tim Duncan 13 years ago.

  — Doug Mouton (@DMoutonWWL) November 14, 2014

  
  

• The Philadelphia 76ers did not have any fun at basketball last night.

• Blake Griffin is facing a domestic battery charge. Without offering any judgment on Griffin or anyone else, just a reminder — Don’t hit women.

• Controversy in the NBA. Sacramento is appealing to the league.

Other news

• The best features of Google’s newest version of the Android operating system. The author refers to this update is "the most significant yet." Sounds good to me.

• How strong will the U.S. dollar get? Pretty strong, apparently. That’s good news for people traveling overseas, but bad news for overseas competitiveness of U.S. goods and tourism.

• Apple still leads the tablet computer market, but is losing market share. More affordable "white box" Android-based tablets are beginning to erode the market share of higher-end makers like Apple and Samsung.