- The Big Lead scored an interview with Dick Vitale recently, and the elder statesman (he’s 70!) of college basketball announcers riffed on Calipari/Pitino, UNC/Duke and one-and-dones. Worth the few-minutes read, and we hope to meet him again next week in NYC.
- It appears that John Feinstein only recently figured out that the 2kSports Classic and others have already slotted the elite teams into their showcase events for the semifinal and final rounds. He should read RTC more often.
- Virginia’s Jamil Tucker is taking an indefinite leave of absence from the team to deal with some personal issues — he averaged 7/4 last year in a reserve forward role, and Northwestern star forward Kevin Coble injured his foot in practice and could possibly miss time because of it. It’s currently unclear the extent of the injury, but he will be examined Friday and a determination will be made at that time. This could be devastating for Northwestern’s high hopes for this season. Moving away from injuries, there were some more suspensions yesterday, including Charlotte PF Shamari Spears, who will miss the 49ers’ first game on Friday against UNC Asheville, and Hawaii’s Douglas Kurtz, whose heart of darkness begins the season with a six-game suspension for playing three games in a Brazilian professional league in 2007.
- Things aren’t going very well for Tubby Smith at Minnesota lately. One of his prized recruits, Royce White, who was already suspended for a violation of team rules and has recently caused trouble (shoplifting and assault) at the Mall of America, is now under suspicion for the theft of a laptop computer. We’re not exactly experts in this sort of thing, but is it safe to say that White will be at a junior college very soon?
- Yesterday was the beginning of the early signing period, and John Stevens wrote a nice breakdown of some of the interesting recruiting gets. Scout also blogged all day about it and broke down some of the big winners from yesterday — it appears that Ohio State and Memphis both have big smiles on their faces this week in light of their recruiting hauls. There are seventeen of the top 100 players still undecided, and it appears most of them will wait until spring to make their final decisions.
* for recaps of last night’s games and RTC Live from Cal vs. Detroit, visit After the Buzzer.