- Kentucky’s Michael Kidd-Gilchrist made some headlines afters the Wildcats beat Vanderbilt Saturday. “I’m graduating here. I’m not going nowhere,” Kidd-Gilchrist was quoted as saying by Brett Dawson of Rivals.com and other reporters who were present at the time. “I’m staying at Kentucky.” When several reporters chuckled, Kidd-Gilchrist then added: “I’m dead serious. I don’t know why y’all laughing.” Whether MKG ultimately decides to stay another one, or three, years at Kentucky is not for us to decide, but we’ve got to wonder why he’s making such statements before the season has ended unless he was just trying to be funny.
- Gregg Doyel came to that Kentucky-Vanderbilt game with no intention of writing about Anthony Davis, but after his 28-point, 11-rebound, five-block effort against the Commodores, all he could say was that “[he’s] even better than I thought he was, and I already thought he was the best pro prospect in college basketball. But he’s more than that. He’s the best player in college basketball, and it’s not even close between him and whoever’s second. A handful of guys in college basketball profoundly impact the game on defense. Another handful profoundly impact the game on offense. How many players do that at both ends? Kentucky has had 52 players earn All-America honors and 100 get drafted by NBA teams, but Kentucky had never had an Anthony Davis. Almost nobody has. The only college player I’ve seen who was this dominant at both ends of the floor, as a freshman no less, was LSU’s Shaquille O’Neal in 1990.”
- Florida pulled off the rare achievement of not only never leading at Georgia, but also never being tied, not even at 0-0. Before the game, Casey Prather was caught dunking in the layup line before the game by officials who then enforced rule Rule 10, Section 6, Article 1, which says that a technical foul shall be assessed to a “team member dunking or attempting to dunk a dead ball before or during the game, or during any intermission.” “I’ve got a little bit of an issue with that,” Florida head coach Billy Donovan said. “I don’t know if that situation was handled the right way. I wasn’t out there. It was hard for me to comment on that. But certainly our players know that. I think the biggest thing with our players is generally there’s an unwritten rule when the officials come on the floor (you stop).”
- When Alabama was securing the BCS National Championship, those closely monitoring the outcome was Kentucky head coach John Calipari. In a Lexington Herald-Leader article entitled “Calipari, Saban demand rare brand of excellence,” Calipari and Saban both offered mutual admiration for the other. “Earlier this winter, Calipari expressed his admiration for Saban and Alabama’s national championship football team. Attention to detail and execution led Calipari to offer the Tide as an example for UK’s basketball team to follow in its own championship quest.”
- As Black History Month winds to close, an article by Mark Wiedmar in the Chattanooga Times Free Press points out, accurately, how far the SEC has come in terms of diversity — to the point now where the SEC can boast about being the most diverse league among the six power conferences. Wiedmar notes “to think the SEC didn’t hire its first black head basketball coach until Wade Houston came to Tennessee in 1989 and didn’t have a black head football coach until Sylvester Croom went to Mississippi State in 2004. Yet in the years since, every school in the league except South Carolina and Florida has had at least one black coach in either football or men’s basketball.”