Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: John Calipari's Defense Edition

John Calipari is one of college basketball’s best defensive coaches. I think that’s right, although last season’s team made me wonder. But looking at his Ken Pomeroy stats, you have to be impressed.

Also, I don't think this year's team is going to do anything to hurt Calipari's record on defense.  Kentucky is currently #1 in the nation in that statistic on Kenpom.com

Tweet of the Morning

"CAN THE SIXERS BEAT KENTUCKY?" Manufactured, artificial, no tangible analysis can be provided based on any kind of real evidence. Lame-O.

— Ethan Norof (@Mr_Norof) November 21, 2014

Amen, brother.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• A win over Louisville would put icing on the cake for Kentucky. That would be nice, for sure. A bowl game in Mark Stoops’ second year would be a remarkable feat.

• Is the seat getting warm for Mark Stoops? No. There, saved you a click.

• Comparing Mark Stoops and Bobby Petrino’s salaries.

• Stoops opens up about the slide and the struggles of year 2.

Kentucky basketball

• Boston University’s newspaper on the game tonight.

• Lindsay Travis, writing for CoachCal.com, says that Kentucky’s returning experience has played a big part in their early-season success. I think that’s right. Having returners has always helped Kentucky, such as in 2011-12 when they had Jones, Lamb, and Miller back from a deep run in the NCAA Tournament.

  I’d argue tournament experience makes their return even more valuable.

• UK platoons smothering opponents in the second half. No question, and I was shocked that UK held Kansas to only 12 points in the second half. I thought holding Buffalo to 14 was probably an unbeatable effort. Boy, was that wrong!

• Forget the season, just mail the trophy to UK. Tongue in cheek, of course. Consider:

  Just last season, Kentucky fans were crowning the Cats as potential undefeated national champs in November, and by February everyone was wondering how everything could have gone so wrong.

  True, but as it turned out, they were only slightly wrong. But there is a lot that can happen in a season, most of it really bad.

• Michael Rosenberg says UK won’t be tested until March. So I guess Louisville is just going to cancel the game? Texas? Florida?

  Maybe Kentucky wins it all anyway. But it’s pretty likely that in the NCAA tournament, the Wildcats will be in a really tight game, perhaps even trailing. What does Calipari do then? If he is still using his platoons, he can’t easily adjust his rotation to take advantage of matchups or hot hands. If he stops using platoons and just plays his best players, the other guys could get awfully grumpy. Not many future NBA players are happy sitting on the bench in college. And if he uses platoons all season and then stops in the middle of an NCAA tournament game, his players may think he is panicking.

  I’m sure we’ll be in tight games before the tournament. The best thing about college basketball season is the season. That’s why we don’t just go straight to the tournament.

Other Kentucky sports

• Rifle closes the 2014 season in the frozen tundra of Alaska today, then faces Nebraska tomorrow, also in Fairbanks.

• Men’s soccer goes down in 1st round of NCAA Tournament to Oakland, 2-0.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Friday Wildcat Links

• John Clay’s Big Blue Links

College football

• Louisville site argues that just playing Notre Dame somehow makes them better than Kentucky. I have no words for the silliness of this argument. I hope Notre Dame kills them and drubs their corpse.

• The college football playoff Risk board. This is pretty fun. Remember Risk? I used to play it all the time.

College basketball

• Chris Walker returns again for the Florida Gators. Boy, they sure need him after losing at home to Miami (FL) the other day.

• Texas escapes Iowa. The score was not as close as the game.

• USA Today asks the question: How good is the Florida job? Pretty good, I’d say. Better than Florida State, better than Auburn, not as good as Alabama, LSU or Georgia.

Other sports news

• Tony Wroten ain’t buyin’ what Eric Bledsoe is selling.

• How Anthony Davis became the scariest force in the NBA. He’s just good, that’s all. And he came from Kentucky, which carries the imprimatur of greatness.

Other news

• 1 in 3 adults drink excessively, but are not alcoholics.

• Customers scam Wal-Mart, get Playstation consoles for less than 25% of their retail price.

• New stellar object has scientists scratching their head. Is it a supermassive black hole, or something else?