Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Kevin Stallings Edition

There was a big brouhaha yesterday when Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings loudly and profanely berated one of his players, Wade Baldwin IV, after a Tennessee assistant notified him that he had done something offensive.

Apparently, after that, Stallings publicly upbraided Baldwin, telling him "I’ll f-ing kill you!" That made SportsCenter, of course, which is were I bumped into the kerfuffle.

Stallings subsequently apologized, Balwin tweeted that it was no biggie, and the world returned to properly revolving around the sun. Here’s the apology from Stallings:

"After the game, an incident occurred in which I need to apologize for," the statement from Stallings read. "One of our players acted inappropriately and violated what we believe is good sportsmanship following the game. In my haste to resolve the situation, I made a very inappropriate comment. While obviously it was not meant literally, it was still inappropriate. I apologized to the player immediately following the game, although displaying good sportsmanship is of the highest priority in our program."

John Calipari can tell you a thing or two about upbraiding players with f-bombs. Kevin Stallings is an outstanding coach, and I suspect this is not characteristic of his player interaction. I am also of the opinion that the player still has some discipline coming for that unsportsmanlike behavior, and maybe Stallings does as well. But overall, I think this is just a minor incident that we can all learn from.

MORE: John Clay — If Kevin Stallings was wrong, he was also right.

Tweet of the Morning

In 38 hours, it will be March. The Madness is here…

— Anthony Wireman (@awireman) February 27, 2015

When you put it that way …

Your Quickies:

Kentucky basketball

• Miley Cyrus likes Kentucky. Well, I guess she has to like somebody, and after all, her dad is from the Commonwealth.

• Wilie Cauley-Stein is a finalist for the Oscar Robertson Trophy, which is given out to outstanding players by the US Basketball Writers Association. Former winners include Anthony Davis, Jimmer Fredette, Trey Burke and Doug McDermott among many others.

• Arkansas coach Mike Anderson says his team doesn’t "fear anyone."

  Good. Fear is optional. Defeat, however, is inevitable. Resistance is futile.

• Bill Raftery will call tomorrow’s game. Awesome! I love that guy.

Other Kentucky sports

• Softball is off to a good start this season.

• UK Hoops snaps their 3-game losing streak on the road at Arkansas. Read about it in Jords’ open game thread.

Links posts

• John Clay’s Big Blue Links

• The Leach Report: Friday Wildcat Links

College football

• SEC Morning Links (ESPN)

• LSU hit with NCAA penalties for bizarre recruiting violation.

College basketball

• SEC weekend outlook: There are two huge games this weekend, and neither one of them involves the Kentucky Wildcats. Quite right. UK’s game against Arkansas is sexy, but pretty meaningless.

• Kevin Stallings may have dominated the news, but the Vanderbilt team won the game in Knoxville.

Other sports news

• Cleveland is suddenly hot after managing to be mostly lukewarm all season.

• Eric Bledsoe and Russell Westbrook put on a heck of a show last night.

Other news

• "Cloud holes." Weird.

• Cuban cigar makers are banking on U.S. visitors and the eased sanctions.

• Not good: Drones threatening commercial aircraft, close calls alarm FAA,