Kentucky Wildcats Afternoon Quickies: First Loser Edition

USA Today tries to figure out who will lose first this season, Kentucky or Virginia. I think you can probably guess the consensus, but read the whole thing anyway. My buddy Randy McClure from Rush The Court makes an appearance.

Tweet of the Morning

Just to put Kentucky's $790,000 Bahama's trip into perspective, UNC spent around $150,000. Just another recruiting tool for Kentucky.

— Chip Miller (@BLUEChip_Miller) January 16, 2015

You know, this meme is misleading. Almost half of that cost was recovered by contributions from program boosters. $432k is still a lot, but UK had it budgeted, and came in slightly under.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• NFL Draft guru Mel Kipper projects Bud Dupree at #21 overall to the Bengals. That would make Bud only the 14th first-rounder ever to come from UK.

• Shannon Dawson jumping into Offensive Coordinator role.

Kentucky basketball

• Coach Cal previews Alabama:

• Typical Calipari, encouraging a UK fan with Parkinson’s disease. Some of the things he does for people are truly heartwarming.

• Speaking of Coach Cal, he tops USA Today’s list of Coach of the Year candidates.

• UK says UTEP coach Tim Floyd is full of crap.

• More about the cost of the Big Blue Bahamas. I’m totally fine with it. UK wound up spending about $432K overall, and playing those high-quality teams was not cheap. But I have no doubt at all it will be worth it in the end.

  Yes, you’ll hear derision from Kentucky haters, but I suggest you just embrace it.

• Three new teams join Kentucky atop the bracket. Kentucky, however, is not new.

• Kentucky and Florida are the only SEC unbeatens.

Other Kentucky sports

• UK Hoops defeats Florida 62-56. It’s always a close game with the Gators. Makayla Epps was the star.

• #13 Kentucky gymnastics hosts Excite Night tonight, with #2 LSU and #24 Arizona State.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Friday Wildcat Links

• ESPN afternoon Links

College football

• Paterno is pariah no more, at least as far as the record books are concerned. The NCAA has reinstated all the vacated wins that they wrongly (in my opinion) took away from Penn St. as part of a settlement of the "Corman" lawsuit, in which the NCAA had received repeated unfavorable rulings from the judge. It was smart of them to settle, and I think in the best interest of all parties.

College basketball

• Gonzaga barely escaped Pepperdine last night. Looks liike a Hot Team™ to me. Well, the Zags’ free throw shooting was uncharacteristically horrible.

Other sports news

• Apparently, Doc Rivers wanted his son Austin on his team pretty badly.

Other news

• Heh.

  Damn! Why couldn't have this kid been a Louisville fan? http://t.co/475rzlhEUL @Kysportsradio @aseaofblue @lach840 #niceshirtdick

  — Chris Craig (@craigman20) January 16, 2015