Kentucky Wildcats Saturday Quickies: End Of Spring Practice Edition

Mark Stoops is clearly very pleased with the spring practice, and based on what I have seen, rightly so. It looks to me like Stoops & Co. have finally hit the point at which we have enough depth and skill to compete in the SEC. Having said that, "competing" is not the same thing as winning.

Tweet of the Morning

Come support a great cause and have a chance to meet me at the cowboy up for a cure rodeo!! pic.twitter.com/iDOwjNsKRL

— Willie Cauley-Stein (@THEwillieCS15) April 18, 2015

Your Quickies:

Kentucky football

• Really nice piece by Kyle Tucker of the Courier-Journal on George Asafo-Adjei. It looks like he may be the rare offensive lineman good enough to play right away. For comparison’s sake, I think he may be only the first or second lineman to have a chance to play significant minutes as a frosh in the Stoops era. I know he redshirted the lot last season.

Kentucky basketball

• Ben Roberts seems to be fretting about the recruiting class now. I’m not worried. Calipari knows what he’s doing, and even if we go 0-fer, we’ll still have a good team.

  My preferred commitments are, in this order:

  • Brandon Ingram
  • Cheick Diallo
  • Thon Maker
  • Malik Newman
  • Jaylen Brown

  We need two things: shooting and size. I love Diallo’s size and his effort, he is just a great open-court player and rebounder. Ingram is the kind of wing scorer we absolutely lack right now. Maker is multidimensional and can fill the 3 through 5 spot. Newman is a pure wing scorer, but is not a pure shooter. Jaylen Brown is a powerful slasher but lacks 3-point range.

• Skal Labissiere is confident that the NCAA will clear him. Very confident. I can’t see that as a bad thing, but I do think about it sometimes.

• Cheick Diallo wins the MVP at the Jordan Brand Classic. I sure do love how this kid plays. His skill needs work, but his near-freak athleticism and amazing motor are what we need.

  MORE: Isaiah Briscoe was a big reason why Diallo won, according to… Diallo.

• UK loses transfer to Illinois:

  UK target Mike Thorne has committed to Illinois, according to @EvanDaniels

  — Ben Roberts (@NextCats) April 18, 2015

  I don’t think he was right for us, honestly.

• Skal Labissiere vs. Thon Maker at Nike Hoop Summit:

• Drew Franklin at Kentucky Sports Radio linked my post about media hypocrisy vis-a-vis Coach K and Coach Cal yesterday. Thanks for that.

Other Kentucky sports

• South Carolina and Kentucky softball will play a doubleheader today to finish the series due to the threat of rain. USC won the first game 6-4.

• Baseball hosts Tennessee today for the third game of the series. UK won the first two.

Links posts

• The Leach Report: Saturday Wildcat Links

• KSR’s Saturday Morning Links

• Kentucky Wildcats Morning Links - Wildcat Blue Nation

College football

• Roll ‘Bama Roll writes about spring football games and their attendance. UK will not have a spring game this year due to Commonwealth Stadium renovations.

• CFB playoff seems set at the moment, according to Team Speed Kills.

• PFT Commenter, writing for SB Nation, compares the NFL Draft to Hitlerian facism Sarcasm alert. If you can’t get enough of it, there’s this.

College basketball

• Luke Winn doles out the first-ever Effy awards, based on efficiency. Kentucky gets one team and one individual, but Wisconsin garners the most.

• Lost Lettermen writes an interesting article attacking Big Ten commish Jim Delaney. They make a lot of great points, including this one:

  In a 12-page letter sent to the media on Friday, Delany said his goal is to correct the imbalance between academics and athletics during this "critical moment in the evolution of intercollegiate athletics."

  As Delany said in February: "We’re trying to figure out a way to communicate that education comes before athletics. We don’t want to be a minor league for the NBA and the NFL. … College sports need to be about college. The educational experiences need to be real."

  Let’s cut through the B.S. and say what this is really about: The one-and-done rule in college basketball that college commissioners hate because it has shifted the power in college basketball from administrators to players.

  Exactly right. Delaney is a jerkweed, and it’s time to take him to task. Kudos, LL.

Other sports news

• I think Chris Chase of USA Today gets it exactly right with ESPN’s Britt McHenry. She is an entitled mean girl who should’ve suffered a more significant suspension for her outrageous "Do you know who I am?" - style abuse of tow-truck company employee.

  Her apology was woefully insufficient by my lights, and was mainly "I’m sorry I got caught." Weak.

• Eight former Wildcats are still playing in the NBA Playoffs. Tough to pick a team to root for with that many.

Other news

• Two people have now been arrested for the apparent murder of UK student and Kentucky Kernel photo editor Johnathan Krueger.

• Self-inflating, self-propelled stand-up paddleboard. Awesome.

• Historic revolutionary war ship heads for the United States — under sail.