- There are a lot of appealing things about Miami. Outside of the great weather, beaches, warm weather, “scenery”, and
the best pro basketball team on the planetthere is also plenty of playing time available after the Hurricanes lost their six leading scorers from last year’s ACC Championship team. The latest player to decide to pack his bags for Coral Gables is Sheldon McClellan, who chose Miami over Oregon, Marquette, and LSU. Unlike Donovan Kirk (graduate student waiver) and Angel Rodriguez (seeking a hardship waiver), McClellan will have to sit out next season. When McClellan is able to play, he and Rodriguez could form one of the more potent backcourts in college basketball although McClellan will need to become a more efficient player (shot just 38.2 percent from the field while scoring 13.2 points per game last season) if the Hurricanes are to come close to the success they experienced this past season. - It has been several weeks since news broke that Trevor Lacey was transferring to North Carolina State, but Lacey insisted it was not a done deal. Now it appears that Lacey is officially headed there as sources told CBS Sports that Lacey had sent in his paperwork to North Carolina State. Lacey may have some holes in his game, but he is about as close to a sure thing as you can have for a transfer as he averaged 11.3 points and 3.2 assists per game playing for Alabama. The timing of Lacey’s transfer should work out well for the Wolfpack who are expected to be down next year, but should return most of their team for the 2014-15 season when Lacey will be eligible again.
- It seems like we have a weird transfer story fairly frequently in the off-season, but Jermaine Marshall‘s tale is unique even among the those stories. In May, Marshall left Penn State saying that he was planning on pursuing a career overseas. Yesterday, he announced that he will actually be looking to transfer to another school for his final year of eligibility. Marshall, who averaged 15.3 points per game last season, should be a hot commodity on the transfer market even if he put up his numbers on a bad team.
- Many consider the 1996 Kentucky Wildcats one of the best teams in college basketball history and a good case can be made for them being the best team of the post-Wooden era. While there were many memorable players on that team one of the most popular among fans was Walter McCarty. So when McCarty’s NCAA Championship and special commemorative ring from that team appeared on eBay it surprised many Kentucky fans. It turns out that the rings ended up on the site in what has been described as a “Misunderstanding with [a] family member”. [Ed. Note: I hate when that happens.] Although we would assume that McCarty’s career NBA salary of $15,217,495 would be more than enough to sustain him to this point we have seen many athletes (and individuals from other endeavors) blow through ten times that money. We hope the reports are true and McCarty is not trying to unload the rings for financial reasons.
- We were a bit surprised to see Andy Glockner write a pair of columns about luck without utilizing Ken Pomeroy’s “Luck” data heavily, but his columns on the teams that he expect to have better luck and worse luck next season is still an interesting read. Although the column does not rely on advanced metric it does go into detail about why the teams should expect to have a better or worse record next season even if it has nothing to do with fortune or misfortune.