Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: UAB Blazers Edition

The University of Alabama-Birmingham appears to be on the verge of shutting down their football program. Is this the beginning of a trend, or just one of those things that happens every now and then.

Think about it though — an Alabama school, shutting down a football program. Scary

Tweet of the Morning

When tempted to be bothered by a coach squeezing a school for more $, am reminded UCLA got rid of Ben Howland after he won Pac-12 title.

— Michael DeCourcy (@tsnmike) December 2, 2014

Indeed.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Neal Brown announced as the next head coach of Troy. Good luck to him.

• The Cats Pause says Mark Stoops is at a critical crossroads with offensive coordinator hire:

  Does Stoops remain with an offense resembling the ‘Air Raid,’ for which two recruiting classes have been signed, but success has been only marginal? Or does he detour dramatically to a run-oriented attack? Perhaps the read-option spread? Maybe the pro set? Is up-tempo still a non-negotiable component given the trend in college football?

  Yes, this is the big question. We never saw much “tempo” at Kentucky, but we know it can work from Auburn’s success.

• Mark Story has more on the Brown replacement.

• Bud Dupree named Co-Defensive Lineman of the Week. He had a really strong final game. We’re going to miss him.

Kentucky basketball

• Ira Combs writes about Texas being next up to try to give Kentucky a real basketball game. Also this:

  Only Kentucky football can make a 3rd team quarterback look like an All American .

  Sigh.

• Texas, Kentucky’s next opponent, is the biggest test of the season. Yeah, no doubt about that, based on their size alone.

• Three writers stubbornly refuse to acknowledge Kentucky as the best team in college basketball. The Coaches Poll has no such recalcitrants.

• Karl-Anthony Towns is the SEC Freshman of the Week.

Other Kentucky sports

• Volleyball earns 13 seed, will host the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament.

• Emily Franklin is the SEC Volleyball Freshman of the Week.

• Women’s basketball struggles, but takes Paradise Jam Reef crown.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Tuesday Wildcat Links

College football

• UCLA and Notre Dame should just refuse to accept bowl bids and mail in the season, according to Bill Dwyre. Consider:

  Is it also heresy to think that some of these players would actually like to go to school, would like a social life and a couple of weeks to just stop and smell the roses? The way it stands now, right after the bowl game, they can start counting the days till spring practice. The aches and pains will barely heal.

  I’m not convinced.

• Hugh Freeze signs $4 million deal with Ole Miss as schools move to protect their coaches from Florida.

• Syracuse isn’t even responding to recruits who want to play for them. Could explain why their football team stinks.

• Ohio State had a really, really bad week. No kidding. I feel for them.

• The Ol’ Ball Coach will return for another year. He won’t be returning for many more, though.

College basketball

• The Big Ten is 2-0 after the Big Ten/ACC Challenge with Nebraska and Rutgers winning. Nebraska looks like a pretty good team this season, and they have a shiny new arena to show it off in.

• Forgot to link this a few days ago. It’s still worth reading.

• Kentucky’s still #1. UConn is out of the top 25 altogether. Good.

• Ohio State-Louisville preview.

• Former KU shooter Conner Frankamp will attend Wichita State. That looks like a perfect choice to me.

Other sports news

• Yikes.

Other news

• 17 reasons why being a 70’s kid was the best thing ever. The biggest reason, to me, had to do with two things; there were no video games to keep you inside all day, so you pretty much left the house in the morning and didn’t return until well after dark except for lunch.

  The second was that you had to earn your money, if you wanted money. And who didn’t want money? I have been employed in some manner since 1971, starting with a Courier-Journal/Louisville Times paper route which I held until I left for college in 1975. My first non-paperboy job was shortly after that, when I began to work for a shoe store in Bowling Green.

• U.S. Navy has to find a way to rethink its strategy in financially challenged modern times.

  The future of surface warfare is continually bleak as billion-dollar surface combatants become overwhelmed by cheaper, plentiful missile systems.