1. Providence has booted its star forward, Jamine “Greedy” Peterson, off the team for undisclosed violations of team rules that involved underage AAU players visiting the campus in April.  Whatever he did, PC officials mince no words in stating that kicking him out was the only option (“it wasn’t working here” and “no” was  the answer as to whether the decision was a tough call).  Peterson blew up last season, going from averages of 5/3 in ten minutes per game his freshman season to 20/10 in thirty minutes per game last year.  The all-Big East honorable mention forward was poised to become one of the top players in the conference next year, but will likely look into foreign opportunities rather than sitting out as a transfer in 2010-11.
2. From the looks of these photos, the UNC freshman class of 2009-10 seemed to generally be ok with their NIT season.  Maybe all the sun and fun inspired the Wear twins to move back to the west coast (h/t Deadspin)?
3. Your Big Ten expansion news of the day shows that Commisioner Jim Delany hasn’t changed his timeline for a decision no matter how much we pundits would like for him to do so, and appears to be carefully choosing his words when discussing options.  The only real criteria he regularly refers to is membership in the AAU, which is not the same organization that is currently destroying amateur basketball in the US.  Rather, the AAU Delany refers to stands for Association of American Universities, and there are 63 leading research universities in both the US and Canada as members.  While we don’t think Brandeis and Cal Tech are on the short list despite being AAU member institutions, several of the names we’ve heard bandied about are — Missouri, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Nebraska and Syracuse.
4. Will the Terrence Jones saga finally end today?  Washington or Kentucky — Kentucky or Washington?  His high school coach believes that Jones will follow through on his verbal commitment from three weeks ago by signing with the Huskies today.
5. Despite merely a 10% chance at winning the top pick in last night’s NBA Draft lottery, the Washington Wizards won the (presumably) John Wall sweepstakes.  With Agent Zero set to return from suspension next season, GM Ernie Grunfeld would not commit to the choice yet, but regardless of the decision, DC-area fans have to be feeling very good this morning, especially since there’s no Kwame Brown available.  Wall, to his credit, seemed very excited at the prospect of moving to the District next year.

rtmsf (3998 Posts)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 at 12:45 am by rtmsf and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: big ten expansion, jamine peterson, john wall, kentucky, nba draft, providence, recruiting, terrence jones, unc, washington, washington wizards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.