John Clay's Sidelines

SEC links for Thursday:

• Knoxville.com reports that ex-UT coach Lane Kiffin is being lampooned by Esquire magazine’s “Sexiest Woman Alive” contest.

• Mike Organ of the Tennessean reports that a Vanderbilt video of player throwing out a runner after breaking his kneecap has gone viral.

• Florida’s Alex Tyus is putting his name in NBA draft, reports Kevin Brockway of the Gainesville Sun.

• Robbie Andreu of the Sun writes on Florida’s true freshman quarterback, Trey Burton.

• Luke Stocker, a Kentucky native, is a Tennessee anchor, writes Wes Rucker in the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Continue reading ‘SEC links: Is Lane Kiffin the sexiest woman alive?’

Daily randoms for a Wednesday:

You had to feel for Shelvin Mack on Monday night. The former Bryan Stations star said all the right things up at the podium after Butler’s loss to Duke, but as Butler coach Brad Stevens said, “These guys are crushed.”

But Mack’s play this year brings me to Elisha Justice, who should be commended for sticking with Louisville, just as Mack stuck with Butler. It wasn’t until Mack was offered by Butler, that Kentucky and Billy Gillispie and Louisville and Rick Pitino became interested in the Defender. Gillispie seemed to think he could just swoop in with the UK name and cherry-pick Mack at the last minute. Didn’t work that way. And Mack’s original choice was the best choice. He’s blossomed to the point where NBA scouts are starting to make Chauncy Billups comparisons. Mack wanted to play, to show his skills, and he correctly saw that would have a better chance of happening at a place that wanted him all along. Maybe the same will hold true for Justice. I know, Pitino didn’t offer Elisha a scholarship, but you can’t blame Justice for wondering about the revolving-door nature of the Kentucky program.

Check out my Twitter poll, where you can rate Rupp, Wooden, Knight and Coach K 1-4.

On the drive back from Indianapolis, heard ESPN’s Ryan Russillo on the Scott Van Pelt Show, bringing the Daniel Orton Facebook controversy to a national audience. I actually like Russillo. He has a good presence on the radio, with solid opinions and a good sense of humor. Speaking of Facebook, saw his pic there. It didn’t match his voice. But then that’s always the case.

Caught Butler coach Brad Stevens on Letterman last night. Stevens did actually look like he was 15 years old. The All-American boy. Even with a raspy voice, Letterman did his best to bait him into saying something controversial. (Dave called the Duke players “goons”.) Stevens wasn’t having any of it. He’s so polite and humble it’s ridiculous. Sure hope he doesn’t try to parlay Butler’s tournament run into some big-ticket job at one of the cash-cow schools. It would take much of the charm out of the Bulldogs’ ride.

Of all the stuff written on the championship game, I think I liked Joe Posnanski’s piece for SI.com best.

Continue reading ‘Shelvin Mack, Letterman and other daily randoms’

UK basketball seniors Ramon Harris, Mark Krebs and Perry Stevenson throw out first pitch at last night's UK-U of L baseball game. (H-L photo/Charles Bertram)

Big Blue Links for Wednesday:

Jerry Tipton of the Herald-Leader reports that Elisha Justice tells UK no thanks:

Despite 11th-hour recruiting interest shown by Kentucky Coach John Calipari, Kentucky Mr. Basketball Elisha Justice has decided to stick with his commitment to walk on at Louisville. “They followed me all year,” Justice said of Louisville on Tuesday. “I know they’ve been loyal to me. I feel I was wanted more there.”

ESPN.com’s Chad Ford says Daniel Orton is moving up draft charts:

But as we first reported several weeks ago, Orton has caught the attention of a number of NBA GMs, the most prominent of which is the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Sam Presti. According to a source close to the process, the Thunder are sending signals that if Orton is in the draft, they’d take him with one of their two first-round picks. Currently that would put Orton in the early 20s. However, a few other GMs have told ESPN.com that they’d consider taking Orton even higher.

(Hat tip to DailyThunder.com and Spam’s Wildcat Page.)

John Canzano of the Oregonian reports that Terrence Jones is waiting on Oregon:

Terrence Jones, the McDonald’s All-American who plays at Jefferson High School, has narrowed his finalists to a list of five (UCLA, Washington, Oregon, Kentucky and Oklahoma). And, given a reason, he’d like to stay close to home. Said Jones on Tuesday: “I’m waiting to see who the coach at Oregon is going to be.”

(Hat tip to Aaron’s UK Basketball Blog.)

Kentucky Sports Network sent along this video of an interview with Doron Lamb:

Continue reading ‘BBL: Justice, Jones, Lamb, Orton and more UK news’

Dominique Archie

SEC links for Wednesday:

• The State reports that oft-injured South Carolina basketball player Dominique Archie has been denied a sixth year of eligibility.

• Travis Haney of the Charleston Post Courier also reports on Archie’s denial.

• Dave Hooker of the Knoxville News-Sentinel reports that Tennessee quarterback Matt Simms is getting more work with the first-team offense.

• Tyler Bray has almost moved up the quarterback depth chart at Tennessee, reports Wes Rucker of the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

• Winner of quarterback battle might not matter, writes John Adams in the News-Sentinel.

Continue reading ‘SEC links: Archie denied sixth season at USC’

(AP photo)

A sampling of what was written after last night’s game:

Pat Forde of espn.com writes that championship game was nearly the greatest:

You thought it was going in, didn’t you? I did. From my angle on press row, I thought when Butler’s Gordon Hayward rushed up the right sideline with the ball, and teammate Matt Howard leveled Duke’s Kyle Singler with a crushing blind-side screen, and Hayward suddenly was clear at midcourt and went off his left foot and extended his right arm and sent that prayer arcing through the Lucas Oil Stadium air toward the hoop …

Joe Posnanski of SI.com calls it a magical game:

The ball is in the air. And because the ball is in the air, anything is possible. Miracle? Heartbreak? Pandemonium? Silence? Yes. Anything. That’s the beauty of a magical game like this, and also the pain. The basketball is in the air. If it misses, Duke wins one of the greatest championship games ever. And if it goes in (and it looks like it is going in), Butler wins the greatest game that has ever been played.

My column saying that in the end reality trumped a perfect ending:

When the midcourt shot reached the top of its arc, when it seemed to scrape not just the roof of Lucas Oil Stadium, but the bottom of the heavens, you just knew that this was to be the perfect ending to a storybook tournament. After all, it was a shot by Gordon Hayward, the Butler Bulldog from nearby Brownsburg, who had led this mid-major team all the way to this championship game. And if anyone could win it on a dramatic halfcourt heave it would be Hayward.

Paul Daugherty of the Cincinnati Enqurier on Butler’s dream almost fulfilled:

Maybe you wished he’d made one of the last two. Because really, guys like Hayward and teams like Butler are why we watch. The chance we’ll see something we’ve never seen before. Our eyes widen. The shiver begins at the base of the neck and sprints upward. The hair that rises. It really does. If a team we follow – Our Team – is involved, the water that wells in the corner of the eye. This is what keeps us coming back.

Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe says long shot almost came in:

A pass by the Bulldogs’ Shelvin Mack was knocked out of bounds with 13.6 seconds to go. Butler called time. Hayward tried to make an inbounds pass and had to call time when he couldn’t find anyone open. Howard replaced him as the inbounds man, and he got it to Hayward, isolated with Kyle Singler at the top of the key. He tried to get into the lane. Nope. He wound up taking a tough right corner fadeaway, which, had he hit it, would have represented his first outside shot of the night. It hit the far side of the rim and bounded away.

Continue reading ‘NCAA links: What was written after last night’s classic’

SEC links for Tuesday:

• Evan Woodbery of the Huntsville Times writes that if Butler can do it, why can’t Auburn?

• Tim Tebow could be headed to the Eagles to replace McNabb, reports Jeremy Fowler of the Orlando Sentinel.

• Marc Weiszer of the Athens Banner-Herald reports that Georgia players are cleared in taxi incident.

• Georgia’s struggling bullpen undergoes an overhaul, reports Roger Clarkson of the Banner-Herald.

• David Jones of Florida Today reports that an ex-Florida football player has settled a battery case.

Continue reading ‘SEC links: Could Tebow replace McNabb with Eagles?’

I’ll be providing Twitter updates and comments from the NCAA Men’s final tonight.

Daily randoms from Lucas Oil Stadium while waiting for the start of Butler-Duke:

I’ll be providing Twitter updates during tonight’s game. If you have a Twitter account and want to get in on the Twitter/NCAA finals post on this blog (see post below), shoot me an e-mail at jclay@herald-leader.com.

To be totally honest with you, I could care less who put what on Daniel Orton’s Facebook page, or whether the offender was a Louisville fan posing as a Kentucky fan, or vice versa. The internet is a great thing, to a point. And that point is the dividing line between the serious and the idiot fan. There are a lot of idiot fans out there who hide by the anonymity of the internet, be they UK fans or Any Other Team fans. To some extent, I agree with what John Calipari said when Patrick Patterson was upset over putting critical remarks on his Facebook page. If you don’t want that kind of stuff, don’t have a Facebook page. But all you have to do is take a peek at the rampant anarchy on most message boards and forums — things I do my best to avoid — to know that many times reasoned opinion and observation is pushed out by the nonsense spewed by the spitballers. That stuff doesn’t add much to the discussion.

I’m pulling for Butler, but picking Duke tonight. That said, I think it will be close. Duke won’t shoot lights-out as it did Saturday against West Virginia. For one thing, Butler is too good defensively to let that happen. But what maybe impressed me more was the way the Blue Devils did not turn the ball over. Yes, the Devils’ size will be a factor. But Coach K also has experienced guards, and Butler has made a living this tournament turning people over. I hope Butler can turn the Devils over, but I’m not betting on it.

There are tornado warnings here in Indiana, by the way.

And did you know that Tubby Smith and Minnesota beat Butler this year? Tubby did it without Pitino’s players, too.

BTW, should have used this quote from Shelvin Mack on Sunday, when asked about Butler not having athletic dorms, “We have no special needs that any other student doesn’t get. I’m grateful to be a part of something like that.”

When’s the last time the final featured two teams with 90 percent graduation rates, by the way? And there were reports that the Butler players did attend classes this morning.

Continue reading ‘Some random notes before Championship Night’

Big Blue Links for Monday:

Nation of Blue tackles the controversy over fan comments on Daniel Orton’s Facebook page:

Facebook requires people to approve their friends, unless the person doesn’t set up their account as private. Daniel Orton does have his setup for private. Is it really right to post negative comments from a fan on a UK player’s facebook to a public forum for all to see and hence creating a witch hunt? It was already posted on twitter, which probably a low percentage of people use anyway. Two wrongs don’t make it right.

Chris Setters of Kentucky Ink on the Facebook saga with Orton:

With the rumor mill spinning out of control for the last week it has undoubtedly frustrated some fans which is okay because everyone has their opinions on matters. What isn’t okay is when fans take it upon themselves to get ahold of players on their twitter accounts and facebook’s.

Seth Davis sent out this tweet:

Check out what an actual grown man wrote on college kid Daniel Orton’s Facebook page. What a jerk. http://twitpic.com/1d93id

Kentucky Sports Zone has a recommendation:

The Daniel Orton saga continued with Daniel posting the message he received on facebook. If you read my post below you’ll know how I feel about the situation. We here at Kentucky Sports Zone don’t condone retaliation against the guy who’s giving Orton crap. Of course, we don’t condone NOT retaliating either. Use your best judgement. Bottom line, I would suggest when dealing with players facebook and twitter, feel free to praise them publicly all you want. If you aren’t satisfied with them though, I highly suggest you save it for discussions around the water cooler and not post it to the players.

James Pennington of the Kentucky Kernel on the rumor mill:

Surely no one could make up a story about Daniel Orton’s future at UK. That’s why over the weekend, according to all of the rumors that popped up: He dropped his classes at UK, re-enrolled, moved to California, came back to Lexington and then ended up back in California to finish his classes by correspondence so the Cats don’t lose a scholarship next year. All of this surfaced amid the looming Final Four, and it seemed like everyone in Lexington who wasn’t busy rooting for Shelvin Mack and Butler instantly bought into it.

Hawgs Illustrated reports on Arkansas’ grand slam walk-off 17-16 win over Kentucky baseball:

“I don’t know how many games I’ve been involved in as an assistant, as a player, as a head coach, but that might be the craziest game I’ve been involved in,” Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn said. “There was a lot of emotion and both teams really wanted to win. They had a five-run lead, we had an eight-run lead and then all of a sudden we’re down to our last strike.”

Chip Cosby of the Herald-Leader on how UK’s football jucos expect to step up:

Looking back on it, the level of expectation for junior-college transfers DeQuin Evans and Chris Matthews was probably unrealistic. The talent was there, as both players were four-star prospects out of Harbor College in Los Angeles. But the duo didn’t arrive in Lexington until late summer, missing a good portion of off-season workouts and time to bond with teammates and learn UK’s schemes.

Continue reading ‘BBL: Daniel Orton’s Facebook controversy’

SEC links for Monday:

More off-the-field problems at Georgia, where Marc Weiszer of the Athens Banner-Herald reports that linebacker Montez Robinson has been kicked off the team following an arrest. Robinson was “in the Clarke County Jail Sunday evening for a misdemeanor charge of simple battery/family violence when Georgia announced he was off the team.”

Tim Tucker of the AJC also reports on Robinson getting the boot.

Big baseball weekend in the league, as Don Kausler, Jr. of the Birmingham News reports on Auburn’s 7-1 win over Alabama, which kept the Crimson Tide from sweeping that weekend series. Aaron Suttles of the Tuscaloosa News reports on Auburn running its record to 5-4 in the league, while Alabama dropped to 4-5.

Randy Rosetta of The Advocate reports on LSU’s 15-5 thumping of Georgia.

Continue reading ‘SEC links: Big baseball weekend in league’