1. With the regular season coming to an end nearly every day over the next week will be filled with Senior Days/Nights. In nearly every case those honored will be seniors with a few exceptions for others (usually juniors), who are expected to leave for the NBA Draft. Honoring a player that is no longer on the team is almost unheard of, but that is what Michigan State planned to do for Delvon Roe, who retired before the season started due to a degenerative knee injury, on their Senior Day game against Ohio State. The Spartans actually wanted to have Roe play, but that proposal was rejected due to NCAA rules on amateurism. Apparently, Roe’s decision to become a professional actor prevents him from participating in college athletics. While the school will still be allowed to honor him before the game, the ruling seems questionable since Percy Miller (aka Lil’ Romeo) was allowed to play for USC despite his entertainment career.
2. Following Saturday’s phenomenal Missouri–Kansas there were probably hundreds of columns about why the Border War should continue, but you will have a hard time finding a better column on the game and the rivalry than the one written by Joe Posnanski, which isn’t shocking for those who are familiar with his work. We are not sure we are willing to agree with his assertion that it was the best rivalry in college basketball, but it certainly ranks up there. To some degree in the modern age, sentimentality has become overrated and a tired fallback for writers, but we will miss the quality of basketball this rivalry has given us particularly of late.
3. Yesterday was a tumultuous day for Miami as Reggie Johnson was declared ineligible yesterday afternoon due to reports of his family accepting impermissible benefits (not related to the Nevin Shapiro scandal) without his knowledge. Johnson, who has averaged 10.6 points and 6.9 rebounds per game since coming back from an injury earlier this year, was questionable for last night’s game against Florida State due to a knee injury, but was forced to sit out anyways with this news. Remarkably the Hurricanes managed to pull out the win without Johnson’s services. For now, Johnson and the Hurricanes will have to hope that this issue gets resolved quickly as time is running out on the Hurricanes as they sit on the bubble.
4. NCAA handed down one of the stiffer penalties in recent memory on Friday when it placed Radford on probation for two years and gave former coach Brad Greenberg a five-year show-cause penalty. The penalty for the school, which was related to its men’s basketball and tennis programs, was based on recruiting benefits and is not that severe, but the problem was exacerbated by an effort by the coaching staff that was spearheaded by Greenberg to mislead the NCAA about those violations. Brad, who is the brother of Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg, is currently an assistant coach for the Venezuelan national team and given the severity of his penalty we do not expect to see him around the college game any time soon unless his brother decides to take him in.
5. Is he actually going to come back? According to reports, Jim Calhoun may make his (sort of) long-awaited return to the sidelines on Saturday against Pittsburgh. With Calhoun returning for what might be his last game ever at Gampel and Senior Day (admittedly with a rather undistinguished senior class) it should be an interesting atmosphere. If Calhoun really wants to get the crowd (and hopefully his team) fired up, it would seem like an opportune time to announce that he is retiring at the end of this season, which many are already speculating that he will do.

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2012 at 5:00 am by nvr1983 and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: brad greenberg, delvon roe, jim calhoun, kansas, michigan state, missouri, radford. 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.