It’s time to get back in the saddle. After a week’s vacation (a much-needed one at that), it’s time to get this blog rebooted for the summer and the offseason. While we certainly won’t have as much content on here during the summer as we would during the year – only one team, track and field, remains in action – we’ll do our best to keep some original content on here and keep you up-to-date throughout the summer. Not a ton going on this week, but there is the MLB Draft over the next three days and the NCAA Track and Field Championships later on in the week, both of which I hope to touch on briefly on here at some point.In the meantime, I’d like to quickly review some of the big news we missed on here last week while I was gone. Most of it you’ll already know, but if you’re like me and lived under a rock last week (or just unplugged all technology), this might be a good start in catching up.- What I believe to be the biggest story of last week, although it’s not UK related, was the passing of the greatest coach to ever coach any sport, John Wooden. The legendary UCLA coach, appropriately nicknamed the Wizard of Westwood, died at the age of 99, long remembered for being as great of a person as he was a coach. I know this is a UK blog and this university has featured some of the most dominating coaches in college basketball history in Adolph Rupp and Rick Pitino, but I think it would be an injustice – even on this site – not to acknowledge that Wooden was the greatest coach of all time. Over 27 years, Wooden won 620 games, including 88 straight during one historic stretch, and coached many of the game’s greatest players such as Bill Walton and Lew Alcindor. Wooden led the Bruins to 10 NCAA championships, including an unmatched streak of seven in a row from 1967 to 1973. His final game was actually against UK, a 92-85 win over the Wildcats for Wooden’s 10th national title.
– UK football received a bit of bad news last week when Derrick Locke broke his arm in a moped accident. Locke suffered a slight crack in the ulna bone in his left forearm. The good news for UK and Locke is the injury is not expected to be serious or affect Locke’ senior season. Kentucky’s No. 1 tailback will be in a splint for four weeks and then be re-evaluated. The injury does not require surgery. If all goes according to plan, Locke should be on the field in early August for fall practice.- The latest – and second-to-last – Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup standings were released last week. Kentucky fell to No. 23 in the standings but still sits in relatively good position compared to previous years. Despite the drop, Kentucky is still on pace to break last year’s 34th-place Directors’ Cup finish of 607.80 points and ranks third among all Southeastern Conference schools. With a current total of 598.00 points, UK needs a mere 10 points to beat last year’s mark. The latest sports to be included in the rankings were women’s water polo, men’s volleyball, women’s golf, men’s and women’s lacrosse, and men’s and women’s tennis. The lack of UK participation in some of those sports certainly hurt the department’s rankings this time. The rankings, the final of which will be released July 1, rate the top athletics departments in the country. Kentucky will have to rank in the top 15 by the year 2015 to achieve the 15 by 15 by 15 Plan, a department-wide mandate to win at least 15 conference, tournament or national championships and rank among the NCAA’s top 15 athletics programs by the 2015.- Former Wildcat Rajon Rondo continues to stake his claim as the hottest point guard and quite possibly fastest-rising player in the NBA. Just last night, Rondo, a two-year Wildcat, notched his fifth playoff triple-double. Rondo scored 19 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists in the second game of the NBA Finals, providing the game’s most important plays down the stretch to tie the NBA Finals at 1-1.