- After leading North Carolina in scoring last season many people expected PJ Hairston to build on a game that many considered worthy of a first round pick next year. If Hairston was planning on doing that, he is off to a very bad start as he was arrested on Wednesday night for driving without a licence and for possession of marijuana. We are guessing that not much will happen to Hairston other than a lecture from Roy Williams and possibly some early-season punishment.
- One of the things that critics of the NCAA have latched onto recently is the difficult financial situation that some former athletes are put in when they get injured playing and are forced to endure a lifetime of medical bills with little assistance from the entities that they were representing when they sustained those injuries. In response to that the NCAA is creating a $10 million catastrophic injury insurance pool. As anybody who has dealt with trying to collect on an insurance policy is aware this can be extremely complicated so we are hesitant to say too much about it, but we will be interested in seeing how this money is distributed in cases where many would deem it necessary.
- With Michael Dixon’s move to Memphis there will be quite a bit of talk about whether or not he should be allowed to play immediately as he essentially sat out one season. As Dana O’Neill points out the precedent set by the Dez Wells case suggests that Dixon should be able to play immediately. Perhaps more importantly it also sets a dangerous precedent for how transfer cases are handled when dealing with issues involving sexual assault. Having said that there are plenty of other things that the NCAA needs to fix with the transfer process although this one may strike a chord with a bigger audience given the political and social implications of these type of cases.
- If you did not get a chance to watch a college basketball game on a ship the past two years, you may be waiting a while to see the next one. After the initial success of the Carrier Classic between North Carolina and Michigan State in 2011 there was relative explosion of games on ships. Unfortunately, the games last season were affected by bad weather and it appears that there will be no games on ships this season. As we have stated in this space before these types of games/events are nice in select conditions, but they need to be saved for special events not just as a gimmick to be used frequently. As such it makes sense to put a hold on these games for now until somebody can come up with a sensible plan for if (and how) these games should be played in the future.
- It always bothers us when we see a former college basketball player get into legal trouble and former UNLV star Patrick Savoy is no exception. Savoy, who led the Rebels in scoring his senior season, was arrested Wednesday night after attempting to sell $300 worth of cocaine to an undercover detective. Savoy, who never played in the NBA, but played internationally until 2007, was released from jail yesterday morning. We have not heard anything about Savoy’s past records and are not aware of how tough the drug laws in Nevada are (we would assume not too stringent given our image of Las Vegas), but given how quickly he was released we would be surprised if he faced a substantial penalty.