John Clay's Sidelines

For those who don’t want to participate in the liveblog, we’ll have updates from tonight’s Kentucky-Mississippi St game here.

• State 31, Kentucky 24 is the final.

• Anthony Dixon has 32 carries for 248 yards for Mississippi State, holding 31-24 lead over UK with 6:47 left.

• Mississippi State leads Kentucky 31-24 at end of third quarter.

• Mississippi State has burst four runs for 25-or-more yards and thanks to another Dixon score, leads UK 31-24 with 59 seconds left in third.

• Tyson Lee hits Wilder for 67-yard touchdown pass and MSU has tied UK 24-24 with 6:56 left in third quarter. That was a 47-second drive.

• Kentucky answers MSU touchdown with an 8-play, 65-yard touchdown drive. Randall Cobb did honors 3 yards out and 24-17 lead with 7:49 left in 3rd.

• MSU recovers fumble, then drives 47 yards in six plays to tie Kentucky 17-17 with 11:48 left in third quarter. Dixon 157 yards on 23 att.

• Mississippi State had runs of 53, 37 and 25 yards in first half. Take out those three and Bulldogs rushed for 86 yards on 21 carries.

• Mississippi St outgained UK 242-134 in the first half. State rushed for 201 yards. Dixon had 116 yards on 19 carries.

• Randall Cobb’s 46-yard punt return sets up a 38-yard Lones Seiber field goal and Kentucky leads MSU 17-10 at the half.

• Chris Relf’s 53-yard run sets up a 1-yard TD run by Anthony Dixon and MSU answers back, cuts UK lead to 14-10 with 3:43 left in first half.

• Randall Burden interception sets up 41-yard drive with Morgan Newton going 11 yards for TD and a 14-3 Kentucky lead with 5:16 remaining in 1st half.

• Sam Maxwell intercepted Tyson Lee’s fourth-and-goal pass in the end zone to kill State drive.

• State outgained UK 144-77 in the first quarter. Officially, Dixon had 82 yards on 10 carries.

• Dixon rushes for 81 yards in first quarter, but Kentucky leads Miss State 7-3 after one.

• Derrick Locke scores on a 10-yard run and Kentucky goes ahead of Mississippi St 7-3 with 1:28 left in first quarter.

• Anthony Dixon has seven carries for 56 yards with 4:23 left in first.

• Anthony Dixon’s 37-yard run sets up a 33-yard field goal and MSU leads Kentucky 3-0 with 4:23 left in first quarter.

• Kickoff is scheduled fo 7:00 p.m. Fox Sports South is providing the TV coverage.

Randall Cobb

Randall Cobb just sent out a twitpic of his Halloween hat.

I’m not going to post the pic, so you’ll have to check it out for yourself.

Let’s just say it has Halloween colors, with a UK twist.

He wants to know if you like it. If you have twitter, let him know by clicking here.

I meant to get to this topic yesterday, but the fact that Louisville struggled with Happy Osborne’s Georgetown Tigers again in Wednesday night’s exhibition game raised my interest.

Georgetown played the Cards neck-and-neck and even led in the second half before Louisville pulled away for an 80-68 win.

Asked Mike Rutherford of the Card Chronicle to give me his thoughts.

Here’s his reply:

Outside of the spotty outside shooting, it was just about everything I expected. Samardo Samuels dominated in the paint against an undersized NAIA team, the Cards made careless decisions with the ball, they committed a lot of reach fouls becasue they were out of position defensively, but ultimately they found the run they needed in the second half to secure a double-digit victory.

Continue reading ‘So what happened to Louisville the other night?’

A'dia Mathies (H-L photo/Mark Cornelison)

Big Blue Links for Friday:

• Jennifer Smith of the Herald-Leader writes that UK’s Amber Smith has shed her brace for a faster pace.
• Mark Story of the Herald-Leader writes that UK is a comfortable fit for the state’s Miss Basketball.
• Chip Cosby of the Herald-Leader reports on UK cornerback Randall Burden’s search for his swagger.
• Jerry Tipton’s clarification concerning Patrick Patterson’s new truck, something that got blown way out proportion on Thursday.
• Brett Dawson of the Courier-Journal reports that UK spent $185,000 more on Big Blue Madness than the year before.
• Chris Low of ESPN puts Micah Johnson as the fifth scariest player in the SEC.
• Larry Vaught of the Danville Advocate-Messenger talks to Tywanna Patterson about the supposed truck-gate.
• Eric Lindsey of Cat Scratches previews the UK women’s basketball team.
• Nick Craddock of the Kentucky Kernel writes on the hope for a curling club.

Continue reading ‘BBL: Women’s hoops and UK-Mississippi St grid’

Billy Cannon's famous punt return for LSU.

SEC links for Friday:

• Mark Bradley of the AJC wants to know what’s an acceptable result for Georgia fans for Florida game.
• David Jones of Florida Today reports that Georgia-Florida is still intense.
• Scott Hotard of the Baton Rouge Advocate commemorates the 50-year anniversary of Billy Cannon’s Halloween punt return.
• Kevin Brockway of the Gainesville Sun reports that new Florida guard Nimrod Tishman is ready to show off his game.
• Tommy Hicks of the Mobile Press-Register reports on Alabama coach Nick Saban saying that Tide critics are disconcerting.

Continue reading ‘SEC links: Georgia-Florida is still intense’

Update: Everyone under the sun is reporting that Payne is picking Michigan State — Scout.com may  have actually confirmed it first — but we’ll still Liveblog, anyway.

If Adreian Payne is indeed going to make his college choice at 5:30, then we’ll talk about it here. Payne is reportedly down to UK, West Virginia and Michgian State. Buzz this morning is the choice is Michigan State, but people were saying West Virginia last night. Anyway, we can always talk about the Blue-White scrimmage. We’ll start at about 5:15.

Update: Mike DeCourcy says UK is too low at No. 4, and Louisville shouldn’t have made the poll at all.

Ok, so the mainstream media types have placed their paper ballots in the box and Kentucky has placed fourth in the pre-season AP college basketball rankings.

The Cats are fifth as voted by USA Today’s coaches’ version, but we all know that the coaches never actually vote. They have their SIDs, or their wives, or their girlfriends, or sometimes both, do it. The thing about college basketball coaches. They don’t actually watch college basketball. Or at least the college football coaches don’t watch college football, judging by their ballots.

Turns out, UK’s No. 4 pre-season ranking is the best since way back in the 2001-2002 season. Tubby Smith’s Cats started that season at No. 4, but alas ended up at No. 16 in the final AP poll.

So here’s a chart showing where UK ranked in the pre-season, and where UK ranked in the final poll, the one taken just before the NCAA Tournament. (AP does not do a poll at the end of the tournament.)

Update: UK is No. 4 in the first AP poll.

The initial USA Today coaches’ basketball poll is out this morning, and Kentucky checks in at No. 5.

Here’s the top 10:

• 1. Kansas
• 2. Michigan State
• 3. Texas
• 4. North Carolina
• 5. Kentucky
• 6. Villanova
• 7. Purdue
• 8. Duke
• 9. West Virginia
• 10. Butler