John Clay’s Sidelines

Surfing the blogsophere:

• Over at A Sea of Blue, Ken Howlett give his take on UK events, including one lament: “After watching Tennessee’s Scotty Hopson play Sunday against Gonzaga, I almost wish Billy Gillispie would have went after Hopson a bit more passionately.  The kid can play, and he most certainly can shoot the ball (although his shot makes Richard Madison’s look flat).  On the year he’s averaging 9.8 points per game (in only 20.5 minutes per game), while making 50.0% of his three-point attempts.”

• 

  Layla Kiffin.

  Rocky Top Talk claims it will resist the temptation to give you a photo gallery of Layla Kiffin, wife of new Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin. Instead, it links to a video.

• Mr. SEC is convinced that the winner of Saturday’s SEC title game will be in the BCS title game, even if the winner is Florida: “Last year, the poll voters jumped LSU over Georgia to get the Tigers into the title game.  LSU also went on to smash the Buckeyes. So I would be very surprised if they don’t pit the SEC champion against the Big 12 champion.”

• Kentucky’s football season may have been a disappointment to many, but it didn’t rank in the Top 5 disappointments as ranked by Orange and Blue Hue, which put Georgia at the top of the list: “Georgia’s losses besides the Gators, Georgia Tech and Alabama, were two teams expected to be in rebuilding mode this season.  While still a difficult schedule, the underachievement of a number of teams made it much more manageable.  Losing to the top two teams in the league is hardly a condemnation of the Bulldogs program.  Getting BLOWN OUT in both games is not as forgivable.”

• Garnet and Black Attack is trying to get South Carolina fans to calm down after Saturday’s loss to Clemson. On the other hand: “Chris Smelley must never again start for South Carolina. It’s that simple. This was “Bad Chris” at his worst, and comparing his performance to Blake Mitchell is an insult to Blake Mitchell. (And I say that as one of Blake’s most consistent critics.) A fumbled quarterback sneak, overthrowing leaping receivers by two or three feet, almost getting intercepted when he tried to throw the ball away — it was awful.”

• The good folks at Fulmer’s Belly (the saddest site in sports) are fighting a copyright battle: “We recently got a comment on a post, protesting our use of the word “FootVols”  as a violation of copyright and intellectual property laws.  First of all, who the hell is Terry Burnette and why is she such a stick in the mud?  Besides, the copyright Terry Burnette owns is for Foot(-)Vols with a football in the middle on a Tshirt.”

• Wildcat Country rehashes UK’s wins in Las Vegas: “According to Ken Pomeroy and his magical computer, Kentucky has the #11 defense in Division I. That isn’t too bad when you consider that the first two games were against the best offense in the country and the fastest offense in the country.”

• At Kentucky Sports Radio, Bryan the Intern gives Billy G. some love: ” Billy G has taken alot of heat this season about his “coaching ability”, but you have to give the man credit.  In Vegas, he had a pretty good week.  That’s not to say that the team played very well, but Gillispie seemed to press the right buttons.  We know now that he was tied up with Porter against WVU, but his insertion of Harrelson and Darius Miller for serious minutes in the Kansas St. game turned out the be a great move.  And the halftime change to lob inside to PPat and Jorts was a great strategy move.  So, the moral of this story is: STOP BEING SO DAMN FRUSTRATING COACH!!”