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Happy Labor Day to all our readers. We hope you enjoy the end of the summer, and beginning of fall sports.
Tweets of the Day
Stoops thinks they'll be able to get Javess Blue and Braylon Heard back on the field this week, but it's still day-to-day.
— Jeff Drummond (@JDrumUK) September 1, 2014
Obvious today that Mark Stoops wants to make sure his team's heads aren't still in the clouds after Saturday
— John Clay (@johnclayiv) September 1, 2014
Your Quickies:
Kentucky football
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Patrick Towles is standing tall for Kentucky in more ways than one, according to John Clay. Consider
Better still, Towles seems blessed with a stubborn streak that is advantageous to the job at hand. Saturday, he held fast when presented with a pass rush — and there will be those — and provided authority on his throws. He doesn’t seem one to back down easily.
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Howard Schnellenberger offers his assessment of what has held the Kentucky football program back:
"Because they have not been willing to do what the University of Louisville has done," Schnellenberger said. "The only reason the University of Louisville has been able to make the turn, it had the introspection to be willing to really look at what it had done wrong and what had to be done to change that culture. That was my key (to take the job).
"The University of Kentucky has seemed satisfied with mediocre football as long as the basketball team wins a national championship every five years or so. It’s a culture. Kentucky needs to go through that process (of change) that Louisville did."
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UT Martin highlights:
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Patrick Towles and A.J. Stamps get talked about on the SEC Network.
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Heard makes the most of his two carries. No kidding.
Kentucky basketball
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2015 small forward Brandon Ingram has Kentucky in his final six.
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2015 5-star shooting guard Antonio Blankney is visiting Louisville this weekend, and hopes to visit Kentucky during Big Blue Madness.
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Jerry Tipton has an excellent column from Saturday, including many quotes from former sportswriters Joeff Calkins, Mike Freeman Gary Parrish who covered John Calipari in Memphis regarding the kerfuffle between Calipari and Mike Francesa. I think that both Calkins and Parrish are right; Calipari does care, about everything. And I think he should.
The old Latin aphorism "Tacet qui consentire videtur," roughly "He who is silent is understood to consent" would seem to apply to the seemingly never-ending meme that Calipari is a great recruiter but a poor technical coach. As both Parrish and Calkins said, and neither of them were beloved of Calipari when he coached in the land of the Delta Blues, anybody with an inkling of knowledge about college basketball knows that Calipari is a great coach. Said Freeman:
There will still be the non-believers who will say Calipari couldn’t coach his way out of a YMCA league. Calipari’s previous critics, like this one, must admit their error. Those who can’t see what Calipari is doing still believe the Earth is flat and Britney Spears can sing.
And Calipari is right to be sensitive on this point. It was his lack of challenging this slander earlier in his career that led to it becoming "conventional wisdom" among the uninformed.
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Land Grant Holy Land says Kentucky has definitely caught up with Ohio State recruiting Ohio’s top player Carlton Bragg.
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E.J. Floreal gets a scholarship for this year. The kid can definitely play.
Other Kentucky sports
Links posts
College football
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North Dakota State is an FBS nightmare. Heh:
DO NOT PLAY NORTH DAKOTA STATE.
DON’T DO IT.
DON’T EVER DO IT.
North Dakota State is better than you. If you pay them to play you, they will take your money and kick the hell out of you. We wrote about them being better than you last year, and we are writing about them being better than you now.
Today, North Dakota State took $350,000 from Iowa State and won. Demolished them, really, 34-14. They outgained them 495-253. This was not a close football game, by any means.
Hat tip: Real Clear Sports.
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We haven’t really linked these yet because golf weekend, but the SEC didn’t look very SEC-ish this weekend (via Hank):
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Georgia defends the SEC’s honor by thumping the Clemson Tigers in Athens.
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Florida didn’t get to play because of weather. We’ll have to wait another week to find out if people are standing outside of the Swamp with torches and pitchforks.
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Arkansas hangs tough for a half, but gets run over in the second stanza by Auburn.
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Reminder: We have the ULM Warhawks later in the season, and they stuck Wake Forest with a black eye on Saturday. Via Hank.
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Jalen Whitlow off to an inauspicious start at Eastern Illinois.
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SEC Power rankings after week one. Kentucky’s effort did not go unnoticed.
College basketball
- Tennessee lands a player named Admiral Schofield. Definitely a guy that belongs on my all-name team.
Other sports news
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This was linked earlier, but Team USA didn’t exactly whip up on Turkey in Spain.
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Minor league baseball notes for Kentucky. AJ Reed nearly hits the cycle, including a three-run homer
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Louisville will now drug-test their cheerleaders after one of them tragically perished from an overdose. Our prayers go out to the young woman’s family.
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Rumors that Rajon Rondo wants to leave Boston are denied by his spokesperson.
Other news
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New iPhone 6 may turn your phone into a "digital wallet." No thanks. After hackers have taken a bunch of celebrates’ nudie pics off their phones, I don’t think I’ll be trusting my valuable information to my phone.
Also, in case you need advice, here’s some: don’t take nude pictures of yourself, or your loved ones unless you are fine with them being published on the Internet. Just don’t. If you have any, get rid of them. If they are digitized, use a secure deletion program.
Of course, that comes a bit too late for J-Law or the others who’ve gotten just a bit more exposure than they bargained for.