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Tonight is the big game between the Texas Longhorns and Kentucky Wildcats as part of the Big 12-SEC Challenge. So far, the Big 12 is kicking SEC butt. The ‘Cats and Gators have a chance to get a bit of payback for the SEC tonight.
I’d link Alligator Army, but all they want to talk about is their football coaching hire. Can’t blame them, really.
Well, I guess I did link them after all, didn’t I?
Tweet of the Morning
THEY BLINDED THEM! http://t.co/rpWuXlcYCU pic.twitter.com/N0UwZzKuDR
— SB Nation (@SBNation) December 5, 2014
Bwahaha!
Your Quickies:
Kentucky football
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Landon Foster named academic all-American. Congratulations.
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Not surprising, I just hope he sticks with us:
Louisville and Michigan State have now offered 2016 UK cornerback commit Jordan Griffin (@3sport_Athlete).
— Justin Rowland (@RowlandRIVALS) December 5, 2014 -
Why you should be excited about the 2015 football Wildcats. I am excited, but the Wildcats still have a lot of holes to fill. We saw how depth problems caused the team to crash and burn this season. Will we have enough next season to avoid a repeat? On the upside, the schedule is a bit more favorable.
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Mark Stoops is reportedly considering East Carolina’s offensive coordinator, Lincoln Riley. That looks like a good fit, as Riley is an Air Raid coach.
Kentucky basketball
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Keith Taylor of the AP observes that Kentucky’s platoon system is working. Well, duh — ya think, Captain Obvious? It isn’t exactly unproven, although you’d think that the Big Blue Bahamas never happened.
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Thon Maker talks about Kentucky basketball. I think this is kind of interesting:
He asked me if he wants to recruit me. I definitely want him to recruit me, so I, ‘Yeah, definitely.’ So he’s on his work, and I’m on my work to getting better.
How many coaches ask for permission to recruit a player? I honestly don’t know, but I’ve never heard this before. That’s pretty cool.
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Nicole Auerbach of USA Today previews the Kentucky-Texas game.
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Jonathan Tjarks takes a look at the UK-Texas game for Barking Carnival. Both the SB Nation Texas blogs are good friends of A Sea of Blue, and I highly recommend reading their stuff.
Other Kentucky sports
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Volleyball hosts NCAA first and second rounds Friday and Saturday.
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Two UK women’s soccer players honored as NSCAA all-South Region players.
Links posts
College football
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Who saw this coming? Oregon State head coach Mike Riley is moving to Nebraska. Interesting.
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Florida finally comes to terms with Colorado State’s Jim McElwain. Again, this is one I just didn’t see coming.
College basketball
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Matt Norlander says the Big 12 is clearly the best conference in college basketball right now. I’d be hard pressed to argue against that right now, although he doesn’t think Texas is likely to upset UK:
But it’s that Texas-Kentucky game I’m homed in on. Though Texas clearly has Final Four talent, no one outside of that state is thinking UT will go in to Rupp Arena and give No. 1 UK its first loss of the season. I don’t think it either.
Neither do I. They’re wounded, for one thing, and for the other, they just aren’t deep enough.
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LSU gets a big win over West Virginia. They needed it. LSU has been anything but impressive in the early season, but this adds significant credibility to anotherwise weak non-conference slate.
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Iowa State runs over Arkansas. This was a super-disappointing loss for a team that really needed another resume win. They’ll have one more chance at Dayton, but beating a top 60 team is not the same as a top 25 team (in Kenpom’s rankings). Still, this was a legitimate road game and you are going to lose a few of those. Arkansas still looks like an NCAA Tournament team to me.
Other sports news
Other news
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Some people from Seattle won the $90 million Powerball jackpot. They say they’re going to buy a new Subaru Forester and quit their jobs. A Subaru Forester? Really?
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Firefox replaces Google as its search engine of choice with Yahoo. I’ve never been a great fan of Yahoo search, but I do love their news aggregation, it’s very good.
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News you can use: Four ways to take better care of your laptop’s batteries. What I do is try to discharge my devices to below 20% before hooking them back up. That seems to work rather well.