John Clay's Sidelines

SEC links for Friday:

• Another player added to lawsuit against Mississippi State’s John Cohen
• Tennessee’s coaching pay lands in middle of the pack
• Georgia’s Thompkins and Leslie reunited by Los Angeles Clippers
• Tobias Harris picked 19th in NBA draft, then traded
• Florida’s Parsons and Macklin picked in second round of draft
• Tim Corbin has built Vanderbilt baseball into an elite program
• Florida must go through Vanderbilt to get to championship series
• Preston Tucker hoping to stay hot for Gators in Omaha
• Morris: South Carolina rules its lineup out of order
• Alabama could be looking at another transfer in football
• Mississippi State football earns respect from pre-season magazines
• Mississippi State hires Alabama pitching coach as softball coach

(NBA.com)

NBA Draft 2011

FIRST ROUND

• 1. Cleveland-Kyrie Irving, Duke
• 2. Minnesota-Derrick Williams, Arizona
• 3. Utah-Enes Kanter, Kentucky
• 4. Cleveland-Tristan Thompson, Texas
• 5. Toronto-Jonas Valanciunas, Lithuania
• 6. Washington-Jan Vesley, Czech Republic
• 7. Sacramento to Charlotte-Bismack Biyombo, Congo
• 8. Detroit-Brandon Knight, Kentucky
• 9. Charlotte-Kemba Walker, UConn
• 10. Milwaukee to Sacramento-Jimmer Fredette, Utah
• 11. Golden St-Klay Thompson, Washington St
• 12. Utah-Alec Burks, Colorado
• 13. Phoenix-Markieff Morris, Kansas
• 14. Houston-Marcus Morris, Kansas
• 15. Indiana-Kawhi Leonard, San Diego St
• 16. Philadelphia-Nikola Vuceiv, USC
• 17. NY Knicks-Iman Shumpert, Georgia Tech
• 18. Washington-Chris Singleton, Florida State
• 19. Charlotte for Milwaukee-Tobias Harris, Tennessee
• 20. Minnesota-Donatas Motiejans, Lithuania
• 21. Portland-Nolan Smith, Duke
• 22. Denver-Kenneth Faried, Morehead State

Continue reading ‘Kanter, Knight, Harrellson and Liggins have a big night’

The Cincinnati Enquirer’s Dames on Games blog has picked its top 10 “hottest’ Reds.

And they don’t mean by batting average. To be honest, I was a bit surprised by the outcome. But I am not a female.

Continue reading ‘Cincinnati blog picks its 10 “hottest” Reds’

(AP photo)

With Duke’s Kyrie Irving the apparent numero uno choice, while Kentucky’s Enes Kanter and Brandon Knight expected to be close behin din tonight’s pro basketball draft, decided to take a look back at how Kentucky and Duke have fared over the last 10 NBA drafts.

Duke has had 12 players drafted during that span. UK has had 10.

If you restrict the criteria to the past five years, the Cats beat the Blue Devils 8-3.

As we know, UK had the overall No. 1 pick last year with Washington taking John Wall. Duke’s last overall No. 1 pick? In 1999, the Chicago Bulls took Elton Brand with the top pick. Duke also had the No. 1 overall pick in 1963 when the New York Knicks took Art Heyman.

Click the continue line for the inevitable chart.

Continue reading ‘Comparing Kentucky and Duke’s recent draft history’

Nolan Jones

Apparently Kentucky coach Joker Phillips knew he was going to lose his director of football operations.

The same day that Clifford Snow left UK to join Charlie Strong at Louisville in the same capacity, footballscoop.com reported Tuesday that:

Kentucky: We have learned that Northwestern director of football operations Nolan Jones has accepted the same position at Kentucky.

Snow left for Louisville to re-unite with Charlie Strong, whom he had an association with at South Carolina.

Meanwhile, Jones was football operations assistant at UK in 2002. He was an assistant at Madison Central High School in 2001 before coming to UK in 2002. He became director of football operations at Eastern Kentucky for Danny Hope in 2003. He was at Princeton from 2004-05 before going to Northwestern.

Here is his Northwestern bio.

Shelvin Mack

Seth Davis pens an NBA draft scouting report for SI.com in which the media dual-threat combines the opinions of several scouts into the voice of one scout, he calls Finch.

Of interest is what “Finch” has to say about some prospects of local interest.

Here is one line from each analysis:

• On Brandon Knight: “To be honest, I think his agent is playing it right.”
• On Enes Kanter: “You love the way he plays.”
• On Shelvin Mack: “I’m a big fan.”
• On Tobias Harris: “He should have gone back to school and lost some weight.”
• On Scotty Hopson: “I just keep waiting for him. Waiting and waiting.”
• On Chandler Parsons: “I watched Florida a bunch this year, and I didn’t come away liking any of them.”
• On Trey Thompkins: “Boy, is he soft.”
• On Josh Selby: “Sheldon Mack would kick his but 10 of 10 times.”

Remember last year when on NBA Draft night, John Calipari called it the greatest night in the history of the program? I don’t expect him to make the same misstep — possibly his only one in two years at UK — tonight when the league goes about choosing players, two of which have prominent Kentucky ties.

Meanwhile, keep your fingers crossed for the other two, DeAndre Liggins and Josh Harrellson.

Check out the Herald-Leader NBA Draft preview slide show.

Don’t forget tonight’s draft liveblog.

Plus, this morning brings an interesting feature on Andre Drummond, the Class of 2012 stud who may or may not have Kentucky on his list, depending on which (real) recruiting site or source you believe. Drummond told the C-J’s Jody Demling he is “not interested in anybody right now. . . . I’m not going to sit around and play games with the coaches. I’m not going to tell them I’m interested when I’m not. It’s just what I want to do. I don’t want to make everything hectic; I want it to be smooth. It’s funny people throw out schools and I’ve never said anything. But people have to say something, so they throw out random schools.”

Click the continue line for today’s Big Blue Links.

Continue reading ‘BBL: NBA Draft night, plus Andre Drummond likes nobody’

Martin Newton

Kevin Scarbinsky of the Birmingham News has a good Q&A with Martin Newton, UK’s former director of basketball operations who was recently named the athletic director at Samford, his alma mater.

In it, Newton says that he and John Calipari talked about a three-game series between Samford and UK before Newton interviewed for the Samford AD position. He also said his job at Kentucky prepared him for being an athletic director.

And in a bit of news, Newton said he was once offered an assistant coaching job at Kentucky by Rick Pitino. That was when Newton’s father, C.M., was the AD at UK.

Continue reading ‘Martin Newton says UK job helped him train for Samford’

Tobias Harris (AP photo)

The NBA Draft isn’t just for Kentucky and Kyrie Irving and Derrick Williams and a slew of foreign players whose names we cannot pronounce.

In fact, there could be a decent SEC presence tonight on ESPN. The site nbadraft.net predicts Tennessee’s Tobia Harris will be taken with the 22nd pick. It has Georgia’s Trey Thompkins being taken by Boston with the 25th pick, and Travis Leslie going at No. 43. It has Florida’s Chandler Parsons being taken at No. 41.

The SEC domination of the College World Series takes a day off. Virginia takes on California tonight at 7 p.m. on ESPN2. The loser is out. The winner must then take two from South Carolina to advance in that bracket.

Click the continue line for today’s SEC links:

Continue reading ‘A few SEC players hope to hear their names called tonight’