John Clay's Sidelines

Some Gator links previewing today’s game at Rupp:

• Florida aims to spoil Kentucky’s 32-game home winning streak today.
  • “We’ve broken a lot of streaks this year,” Florida senior forward Alex Tyus said with a smile to Kevin Brockway of the Gainesville Sun. “So we’d like to break some more.”
• Gators eager to try and take down the Cats in Rupp Arena.
  • David Jones of Florida Today writes, “If UF wins one more SEC game, it will clinch the SEC East title outright. UF is 7-1 in true road games and can pick up its eighth win on the road for the first time in the Billy Donovan era with another victory. The Gators have not won eight true road games in a season since 1993-94.”
• Erving Walker doesn’t always have a plan, but he’s always ready.
  • Jason Lieser of the Palm Beach Post writes, “He made an equally crucial play two weeks ago to beat Tennessee. Down by one point with 14 seconds left, he took the ball into the lane on Florida’s final possession and lofted an off-balanced lay-up over Volunteers forward Tobias Harris. Walker slid out of bounds as the ball banked in and gave Florida a 61-60 win.”

Continue reading ‘Some Florida links for today’s game with the Cats’

SEC links

• Will Muschamp’s assistants get a $3 million payout, reports David Jones of Florida Today.
• Knoxville News-Sentinel video of Don DeVoe on UT coach Bruce Pearl’s troubles. DeVoe, former UT head coach, has been critical of Pearl.
• Message must continue beyond Toomer’s Corner in Auburn-Alabama rivalry, writes Jon Solomon of the Birmingham News.
• It has been a crazy hoops season, writes Joe Biddle of the Tennessean.
• Time to put up or shut up on Cameron Newton, writes Mr. SEC.
• Tennessee must do its homework today against a dangerous Mississippi State, writes Mike Griffith of the Knoxville News-Sentinel.

Continue reading ‘SEC: Florida football assistants rake in the big bucks’

Lost in the loss at Arkansas was the fact that Brandon Knight took a season-high 23 shots on his way to 26 points. That’s not a season-high for Brandon. That’s a season-high for any UK player. In fact, it’s the most field goal attempts for a UK player since Patrick Patterson went 10-for-24 against South Carolina on Feb. 25, 2009.

Knight scored 26 points on his 23-shot night. So I went back and looked up the 10 most field goal attempts by a player over the past five years, and figured total points per field goal attempt.

John Calipari openly questioned whether his team was angry enough about losses. DeAndre Liggins is angry. Well, actually, Liggins used another word.

Kentucky’s Terrence Jones talks about the team’s losses, and playing Florida on Saturday. If you stick with it to the end, Terrence talks about the threes that Arkansas’ Marshawn Powell made over him on Wednesday night, and ends by mumbling “It sucks.”

After today’s practice, DeAndre Liggins talked about the technical fouls he has picked up in UK’s last two road games.

Alan Cutler

WLEX’s Alan Cutler wants to help John Calipari.

Cutler has written an open letter to the Kentucky coach.

An excerpt:

Cal, if you are smart, and normally you are, you need to know that no one wants to hear that you have a young team anymore. You say it all the time. UK is closing in on 30 games. STOP! is how you would put it. You are making it a built in excuse.

The coach recruits the players. You want one and dones. You could have recruited a couple of other really good players who would stay longer, but you decided not to. I’m fine with that, but that was your choice.

If the SEC Tournament were played today, here’s how it would look:

FIRST ROUND – March 10 (Thursday)
Game 1 (Western #5) LSU vs. Georgia (Eastern #4) [SEC Network] 1:00 p.m.
Game 2 (Eastern #6) S Carolina vs. Arkansas (Western #3) [SEC Network] 3:30 p.m.
Game 3 (Eastern #5) Tennessee vs. Ole Miss (Western #4) [SEC Network] 7:30 p.m.
Game 4 (Western #6) Auburn vs. Kentucky (Eastern #3) [SEC Network] 10:00 p.m.

SECOND ROUND – March 11 (Friday)
Game 5 Game 1 Winner vs. Alabama (Western #1) [SEC Network] 1:00 p.m. ET
Game 6 Game 2 Winner vs. Vanderbilt (Eastern #2) [SEC Network] 3:30 p.m. ET
Game 7 Game 3 Winner vs. Florida (Eastern #1) [SEC Network] 7:30 p.m. ET
Game 8 Game 4 Winner vs. Miss State (Western #2) [SEC Network] 10:00 p.m. ET

At today’s media opp, John Calipari was asked if his team has too many nice guys.