1. As you know from last week’s news, Baylor guard LaceDarius Dunn was arrested for felony assault charges against his girlfriend, Lacharlesla Edwards, even though she later came out to say that she would not cooperate with authorities if they move forward with prosecuting him.  The university then made the next logical move to suspend Dunn from classes, as they typically do with any student charged with a felony.  As Gary Parrish wrote on Friday, no matter what blunt force Edwards (and her dad) say made impact with her jaw, it may not be enough to shield Dunn from legal redress and Baylor from losing out on what could have been another tremendous season.  One Texas columnist, however, doesn’t believe that Baylor will have the stones to make the correct decision here — pointing out that UNLV’s Tre’Von Willis  faces a mere three-game suspension for allegedly choking a woman last summer.  An interesting wrinkle in the Dunn situation is that ultimately the school president will have to make the call on whether he ever sees time in a green/gold uniform again… and who is the new Baylor president?  None other than Ken Starr, the former independent counsel/investigator of President Bill Clinton who uncovered the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and someone certainly no stranger to controversy or afraid of making unpopular decisions.
2. You may have missed the news on Friday afternoon, but UConn announced its self-imposed sanctions relating to the Josh Nochimson/Nate Miles scandal from a couple of years ago, and the general consensus around the web is that a two-year probation involving a loss of one scholarship each year will not satisfy the NCAA.  UConn choosing to stand behind its two-time national championship coach is unsurprising given the stakes, but ESPN.com’s Dana O’Neil gets to the heart of the matter in her scathing characterization of Calhoun as simply another modern-day Sgt. Schulz (that’s a Hogan’s Heroes reference for our younger readers).
3. Pac-10 Commish Larry Scott says that a decision about how the league plans to divide into two divisions should be forthcoming very soon (perhaps by the end of this month).  The question of whether to divide the four California schools up (Cal, Stanford, UCLA, USC) or keep them together has created considerable wrangling as both the top traditional basketball and football draws reside in Los Angeles.  There’s also the issue as to whether a division format would work in basketball as the SEC has utilized for the last two decades; or whether a model like the ACC where basketball comprises a single twelve-team league would work better.
4. That didn’t take long.  Kentucky head coach John Calipari is already making attempts to temper expectations about the 2010-11 version of his Wildcats.  He’d better, as even if UK manages to get lottery pick Enes Kanter eligible, the losses of John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe and the guy everyone forgets, Patrick Patterson, will be more than the additions of Brandon Knight, Doron Lamb and company can make up for.
5. The common adage is that Times Square in Manhattan is the crossroads of the world, and that very well may be true; but the people who started that phrase certainly weren’t talking about the Manhattan (Kansas) that Frank Martin currently resides in.  Thanks to some new direct flights out of the small Kansas airport that connects central Kansas to Dallas and Chicago, the K-State coaches can finally overcome the perception that their Manhattan is just short of impossible to get to.  In the past, coaches typically had to drive two hours east to get to the Kansas City airport, but now they can fly their recruits directly into Manhattan, which makes for a huge recruiting advantage especially when you don’t have to endure the ignominy of driving them right past Lawrence (home of KU) on the way there.

rtmsf (3998 Posts)

This entry was posted on Monday, October 11th, 2010 at 5:11 am by rtmsf and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: baylor, connecticut, criminal matters, frank martin, jim calhoun, john calipari, kansas st, kentucky, lacedarius dunn, larry scott, ncaa violations, pac-10, recruiting. 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.