Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: A.J. Reed Edition

Former All-American Bat Cat A.J. Reed is the 2014 Kentucky Sportsman of the Year. I am so pleased to have had the opportunity to help select him, he really was inspirational in his time at UK. I wish we could clone him and have another. Congratulations.

From a record 150 ballots submitted by media members from across the commonwealth, Reed was named on 130 and received 81 first-place votes. Both are new Sportsman of the Year records. Reed’s margin of victory, 647 points, is the largest in the 34-year history of the award.

Tweet of the Morning

Excited for @ajreed18UK on winning the @heraldleader KY Sportsman of the Year Award. I know Coach Henderson is proud! pic.twitter.com/bnk3CKBL2g

— Keith Madison (@KeithMadison32) February 5, 2015

Congrats, A.J.! You were my #1 selection.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Late flurry elevates Kentucky’s signing class. Kentucky wound up #35 (Rivals.com), which is significantly higher than I thought they would be on Tuesday. Great job by Mark Stoops & Co. to weather a storm of high-profile decommitments and garner a solid class that addresses many needs. See Will’s postmortem for more, and share with him your appreciation for the hard work he put in doing a great National Signing Day.

• An early signing period may be closer to reality. Mark Stoops has long been in favor of one, and you can understand why with all the decommitments that happened to UK late in the process.

• UK rebounds with strong NSD class for 2015. It was touch-and-go there for a while.

• Vince Marrow talks about the recruiting class:

  Hat tip: John Clay

• Andy Buh is officially our special teams coach.

Kentucky basketball

• Thon Maker will make his reclassification decision next week.

Other Kentucky sports

• UK scholarships to cover full cost of attendance. Outstanding. More here from UK.

• Mitch Barnhart to receive Bluegrass Sports Commission award.

Links posts

• John Clay’s Big Blue Links

• John Clay’s SEC Links

• The Leach Report: Thursday Wildcat Links.

College football

• Bobby Petrino is still a liar. In other news, the sun rose this morning. Consider:

  But it turned out that Louisville had more good players commit to this year’s class than they were expecting. So many good players that they couldn’t fit them all under the scholarship limit. So instead of telling some of the new kids who have come along, "Sorry, but we don’t have any more scholarships to give," this week Petrino decided that Colburn — who shut down his own recruiting eight months ago when he committed to Louisville — wouldn’t have a scholarship to enroll at Louisville in the fall after all.

  That’s a lousy way to treat a kid who made a commitment to your football program, and it leaves Colburn in limbo. The other schools that had been recruiting Colburn moved on when he announced his commitment to Louisville eight months ago, and they’ve now reached their own scholarship limits and no longer have a scholarship to offer him — and unlike Petrino, those other coaches won’t kick another kid to the curb to make room. So Colburn is now scrambling to find another college to attend.

• National Signing Day’s biggest winners.

College basketball

• Syracuse has banned itself from the post season in response to an NCAA investigation. Convenient, since they weren’t looking like an NCAA team anyway.

• Calipari, Mark Fox defend the SEC’s honor. I think the SEC is a very decent basketball conference this season. They currently rank #4 and keep moving up on Ken Pomeroy’s rankings. That’s the best they’ve been since 2012. People have forgotten that back in the early to mid part of the last decade, the SEC was arguably the best basketball conference in the land.

• I’m so tired of seeing flops. Somebody please call a technical foul, willya?

Other sports news

• Grantland: Raising the Brow - how Anthony Davis revamped his game to become the most dangerous 2-point shooter in the NBA. Consider:

  In the past, Baynes might have sagged a bit off Davis, giving him a free look at the jumper. Those days are gone. As defenders have to creep up now, suddenly those rim attacks are more available. It’s a classic example of the chain reaction that can happen when player development goes well. An improvement in one area makes you look better in another.

  Man, this is spot on. When you have a deadly midrange shot in the NBA, all sorts of possibilities open up for you.

• Russell Westbrook has a big game.

• Stephen Curry gets hot, stays hot, scores 51 points.

Other news

• About time: Twitter CEO says they suck at dealing with trolls, vow to get tougher on abuse.

• Best and worst cities in the U.S. to get a job. No Kentucky cities are on either list.

• Seven secrets to getting ultra-low air fares. These are all good points.