Amelia Rayno's short takes

A seat hotter than Tubby Smith's?

• Think Gophers coach Tubby Smith has been feeling some heat? Wake Forest's Jeff Bzdelik might have the edge when it comes to the level of frustration among fans. On Thursday, someone took out an ad in the student newspaper, the Old Gold and Black, calling for the firing of the basketball program's coach. Fans have also dedicated a website with a countdown to the end of Bzdelik's third season and a Twitter hashtag (BuzzOut) to the cause.

• Kentucky coach John Calipari tends to be a little intense in everything he does — most successful people do, right? — but it's quite refreshing to hear a coach take so much of the blame for a team's shortcomings on himself. After the Wildcats' loss to Georgia this week, Calipari responded by heaping the team's troubles on his shoulders: "The biggest thing is: I am so disappointed in the job I've done with this team, I can't even begin to tell you. I look at a team — I've done this twenty-something years; I've never had a team not cohesive this time of year. Every one of my teams [was] cohesive. Every one of them had a will to win more than how they were playing. Every one of them had a fight. Well, if this team doesn't have that, that's on me. ... I'm going to go back and evaluate how we practiced, what I accepted, because they're giving us what I've accepted — which is, 'It doesn't matter whether we win or lose, I'm going to play the way I want to play.' "

• The ends of basketball games have seemed to creep longer and longer with delays — fouls, timeouts, replays and coaches berating officials — piling up at the end. Sports On Earth's Mike Tannier decided to figure out just how lengthy the finishes typically are. His findings — based on fives games he studied — show that the final minute of a college basketball game can take anywhere from eight to 12 minutes to wrap up.