- Players are doing individual workouts and getting a good amount of fullcourt run on their own time as they ramp up to the start of practice next weekend, so injuries are inevitable. A couple of notable ones reported yesterday include St. Peter’s star forward Wesley Jenkins, who is suffering from a partial tear of his ACL, and Michigan State freshman Russell Byrd, who has a stress fracture in his foot. MSU will be fine without their youngster in the lineup, but St. Peter’s is a team expected to contend in the MAAC this season, so potentially losing Jenkins and his 14/5 averages from 2009-10 could seriously hurt the long-term fortunes of the Peacocks.
- Better to be injured than dismissed from the program, we suppose. UNC’s Will Graves, a player who seems to have been in Tar Heel blue since Matt Doherty was hanging out at Top of the Hill, has been kicked off the team for failing to comply with team rules. The 6’6 redshirt senior was supposed to be UNC’s top returning scorer (9.8 PPG) and three-point shooter (73 treys last year), but Roy Williams is going to have to find offense elsewhere now. That Harrison Barnes kid better be pretty good, or it’s progressively looking like another rough season in Chapel Hill.
- A little nepotism never hurts, especially when your brother is a successful basketball coach and you’re looking to get back into the game. Oral Roberts head coach Scott Sutton has hired his big brother Sean as an advisor, er, “executive advisor to the coaching staff,” which essentially means help out where you can but stay the hell outta my way. The position is a voluntary one, which means that Sean can advise the coaches but he cannot interrelate with the players. Of course Sean is coming off an ugly addiction to painkillers that resulted in several felony charges for which he pled guilty, but if he can keep his nose clean the next six months while assisting his brother, we’re sure that a college somewhere out there will be willing to take another chance on him.
- Luke Winn’s transparency with how he picked his 53-player Naismith Award ballot last week shows a remarkably similar process as to how we here at RTC went through the country to pick our sixty Impact Players for 2010-11. What’s that saying? — great minds… although we’re going to definitely take some heat in coming weeks for a few of our omissions. No doubt about it.
- There were a couple of big commitments yesterday in the recruiting world. Tony Wroten, a 6’4 point guard from Seattle ranked in the top 30 on Rivals.com, signed with his hometown school Washington over Louisville, UConn, Villanova and Seattle. Down the I-5 a piece, new head coach Dana Altman got a huge recruiting coup for Oregon by grabbing 6’4 shooting guard and #22-rated Jabari Brown out of Oakland over Arizona State, Washington, Georgia Tech and UConn. Brown specifically stated that the Nike affiliation and the new facilities drew him to Eugene. There are now only seventeen uncommitted players in the top 50 of the class of 2011.