Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: SEC Tournament Day 1 Edition

The SEC Tournament kicks off today. You can find the bracket here.

The Dagger over at Yahoo says that Arkansas got the best draw, and the Florida Gators got the worst — first Alabama, and then Kentucky if they get past the Tide.

Looks like UK may get a chance to repay the Gators in full for last season.

Tweet of the Morning

Pretty amazing stat on boards at CI. '67-'09 UK was No. 1 in AP poll 33 times. Now 31 times under Cal from '09-'15.

— Justin Rowland (@RowlandRIVALS) March 11, 2015

Amazing, indeed.

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Why Kentucky will get over the hump and go bowling next season. Mark Stoops really needs for that to happen, that's for sure.

• The return of Alexander Montgomery and Jeff Badet, both who were out with injuries last season, bolster the receiving corps in a very good way.

• Mark Stoops, Shannon Dawson report on spring practice:

  Hat tip: John Clay

Kentucky basketball

• It's that time of year. John Calipari earns Sporting News' Coach of the Year award. I doubt if that will be the last. Could it be culminated in April by induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame?

• Yeah, 2016's Harry Giles is pretty darn good:

  Hat tip: BallIsLife.com

• Top Kentucky recruit for 2015:

  Not many high school players can say they've won 4 state championships. Malik Newman has 3 so far & just advanced to state final.

  — Evan Daniels (@EvanDaniels) March 11, 2015

• Andrew and Aaron Harrison gets some advice from Charles Barkley and Reggie Miller.

• Two Kentucky players on Naismith Boys Basketball All-America team. Amazing how many uncommitted players there still are.

• Kobe Bryant follows Kentucky, is a "Big Cal guy."

• Wildcats expect the SEC Tournament to exact a toll. Good practice for what's ahead, in my view.

• Three things from UK basketball's SEC Tourney preview.

• SEC honors start rolling in for the Kentucky Wildcats.

Other Kentucky sports

• Hittin' Kittens host Eastern Kentucky today.

• Bat Cats postpone yesterday's game against Cincinnati due to rain, will travel up to the Queen City today for a game.

• Women's track and field now ranked #3 in the country, a school record high.

Links posts

• John Clay's Big Blue Links

• Rush The Court: Morning Five

• The Leach Report: Wednesday Wildcat Links

College football

• Questions linger about the health of Ohio State quarterback Braxton Miller.

• No changes expected for the college football playoff next season.

• The College Football Playoff committee is interested in former North Carolina State coach Tom O'Brian to serve on it.

• Florida is down to seven offensive linemen for spring practice.

College basketball

• Gonzaga avenges loss to BYU in the WCC tournament, takes title.

• North Dakota State gets into the NCAA Tournament for the second straight year.

• Team Speed Kills has Q&A with Chris Dobbertean, SB Nation's bracketologist.

• Has the rough college basketball season taken the luster off March? I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

Other sports news

• NBA D-league experimenting with referee headsets and other tech innovations.

• Are the Knicks thinking about trading for DeMarcus Cousins?

Other news

• The 12 most luxurious all-inclusive resorts in the world. I'm loving the look of Spice Island in Grenada. Looks like a worthy spot.

• Seven floating destinations that are so much better than a cruise. Wow, pretty neat, but I'm not sure they're better than a cruise.

• It's not just for the Osprey anymore: Tiltrotor aircraft are coming for civilian usage.

• The University of Oklahoma tries to make the students involved in the racist chant sympathetic figures by expelling some of them in direct violation of the First Amendment and their due process rights.

  God knows that these young men deserve consequences, and they are going to get some. But Oklahoma's president has jumped the constitutional shark here and did so with apparently flagrant disregard for the supreme law of the land. That's not a good example to be setting for the young people under his charge. If the students sue, Oklahoma will almost certainly lose huge, and it's as close to a slam dunk as there can ever be in the legal world.

  Great job, President Boren. You just responded to an indefensible act of racial bigotry with an indefensible act of administrative malpractice. My friend Jack Marshall has it exactly right:

  Which is the greater ethics breach: the students abusing their First Amendment rights, or the University of Oklahoma violating them?

  For me, this is the easiest of questions: the worst ethics breach is the school trampling on free speech, even stupid, offense [sic] free speech by racist frat boys. In the end, their conduct, wrong as it is, is just words. They are boorish, rude, mean-spirited clods, and now that everyone knows, they should be shunned and treated like the pariahs they are by those unfortunate enough to have to share a campus with them.

  There is no "winner" here, everybody loses. The students' conduct was abhorrent, but perfectly legal (just another reminder that legal =/= ethical, if that was actually necessary). Now, OU, who had the high ground, just abdicated it in the most embarrassingly flip and wrongheaded way. Seems our educators could use some educating.