1. Coming into this season Scottie Wilbekin‘s starting job was in peril with the arrival of talented freshman Kasey Hill at Florida, but you might have reasonably expected that the rising senior could bank on his experience and maturity to give him an edge in playing time. That is until Wilbekin was suspended indefinitely for an unspecified violation of team rules. This is not the first time that Wilbekin has been suspended indefinitely in the off-season as he faced a similar suspension last year and ended up missing the first three games of last season. We have no idea what Wilbekin was suspended for and if it is related to his suspension last year, but it places Billy Donovan in a difficult situation on both what to do with Wilbekin as well as how to ease Hill into the starting point guard job as we would expect Wilbekin to miss at least a few games at the start of the season if the infraction was significant enough to warrant the team disclosing it in June.
2. It should not come as too much of a surprise but Andrew Wiggins will not be playing for the Canadian national team this summer. Wiggins like many of his American contemporaries is passing on the opportunity to play for his country’s U19 team at the FIBA World Championships. Like them Wiggins will be trying to get an early start on his college experience and given how brief Wiggins’ stay is expected to be that makes sense. Of course we do not expect this will have any long-term repercussions for Wiggins in terms of being named to future Canadian national teams as he is essentially viewed as the future of the sport in the country.
3. Even in the crazed world of college transfers the decision by Jerome Seagers to back out of his transfer to Auburn is a curious move. Seagers, who averaged 6.5 points and 2.6 assists per game last season, announced his transfer from Rutgers to Auburn in the wake of the Mike Rice scandal. Now a month later Seagers has decided that Auburn is not the ideal destination for him. We will probably never be sure of the reason why Seagers decided to back out of the transfer, but according to Auburn the stated reason is that  “he hadn’t truly recovered emotionally from his time at Rutgers.” Whatever the reason is for his decision it will be interesting to see where Seagers ends up, but from the school’s statement it would appear that he wants to be closer to his family in Silver Springs, Maryland.
4. Speaking of transfers The New York Times took a look at increasingly onerous transfer restrictions with a focus on a couple of particularly notable cases. The article does not take a look at some notable cases in college basketball where player transfers were blocked although the ones we have seen do not block nearly as many universities (see Todd O’Brien) so we know the problem extends beyond just college football. The big question of what drives these type of tactics is one that the article cannot get to bottom of because coaches will never talk about it, but it is likely one of asserting their power over the athletes to try to prevent future transfers by making the transfer process as difficult as possible.
5. There are a lot of crazy stories happening with conference realignment, but one that will probably be largely overlooked is how moving conferences will change the finances for schools even in areas that are not the school’s primary focus. Take the move of Kenya Hunter for example. Normally we would not highlight the move of an assistant particularly one who has not been rumored as a top candidate for significant head coaching positions, but Hunter’s lateral move from Georgetown to Nebraska speaks to the changing finances of the two schools. This is not to suggest that Georgetown is falling apart, but instead should highlight how TV contracts can alter how an athletic program is built because five years ago we could not even fathom someone leaving Georgetown for a similar position at Nebraska (frankly, we are still having trouble comprehending it).

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 11th, 2013 at 5:45 am by nvr1983 and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: Andrew Wiggins, auburn, florida, jerome seagers, rutgers, scottie wilbekin, uf. 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.