Another busy day that prevented me from posting during the day, but here’s some links on what happened.

• Biggest item of the day: the DeAndre Liggins recruitment story. ESPN’s massive report on an Indiana AAU team contained six separate items, one of which is this one. The report says that a coach tried to adopt Liggins to influence his college decision; the coach denies that. More pertinent is that the reason for Liggins sitting out nine games at the beginning of the year — a reason previously undisclosed — was because of this recruitment. The ESPN story says that “the NCAA held Liggins” out of those nine games; UK officially responded by saying it was UK’s “choice to withhold Liggins from competition … while eligibility questions were being resolved. Once they were resolved the number of games we voluntarily withheld him from was considered sufficient. The original withholding was not mandated by the NCAA.” I have a few questions about this issue: if the problem was the recruitment, why did the games he sat out happen in 09-10? Did UK know about the problems in his recruitment in Liggins’ first two years? Would playing him any of those nine games potentially cost them wins? And while I may not especially like it staying undisclosed for that long, I understand why UK wouldn’t want it to be public — Calipari was just starting his first year, and John Wall was having to sit out games of his own, and for a coach like Calipari that isn’t a very good start.
• The UK Athletics Association held its last meeting under President Todd. It approved an $83.6 million budget, placing UK in the middle of the SEC. The athletics/academics issue was again raised, with Mitch Barnhart and Lee Todd noting that the Athletics donations to the school “exceeded the $1.7 million annual allocation for non-athletic scholarships. That included an additional $2.1 million generated from licensing fees in 2010-11 and a $1.8 million payment for the use of UK offices and services,” as Jerry Tipton reports. UK will provide training table meals for all sports in 2011-12, according to Brett Dawson. They currently only do that for men’s basketball and football.
• UK hired a new associate athletics director of basketball operations in Chris Woolard, who is replacing the departed Martin Newton. Woolard worked in the C-USA offices since 2004, and since 2008 has been in charge of directing the conference tournament. “The University of Kentucky is unique in that you really need someone like Chris who has experience at the highest level to be a part of our men’s basketball program,” UK head coach John Calipari said in a release. “He will be involved with all aspects of our program and will have an active role as a liaison for me personally in regards to our campus and the Commonwealth. We have had a strong working relationship in the past and I look forward to our future at UK.”
• UK women’s basketball team will be playing Duke in Rupp Arena next season, which sounds awesome.
• The players of UK Tennis all lost in the second round of the individual NCAA Tournament, including Eric Quigley and Alex Musialek in singles and the Quigley/Brad Cox team in doubles.
• The NCAA added the block/charge circle under the basket for next season. (For those unsure, a charge can’t be called if the defender is inside or on the new circle, which extends three feet outside the center of the basket.)