- The big news over the weekend was the decision by North Carolina not to apply for P.J. Hairston‘s reinstatement. As we have said for several months now it seemed unlikely that Hairston would ever come back to the Tar Heels as his involvement in multiple highly questionable situations that could lead to questions from investigators well after this season ended. Although UNC remains one of the most enigmatic teams in the country they are undeniably talented and on a given night they can beat any team in the country as they have proven with wins over the preseason #1, #2, and #3 teams in the country. Hairston’s departure means they will take a big hit in terms of their potential, but in the long run it will probably help the team as it can move on without Hariston’s potential returning lingering like a cloud above their season. The next question is where Hairston goes from here. Coming into the season he was a potential first round pick. Now after a lost season we have no idea where he will fall on NBA draft boards and he might be best served by finding a professional team to play before the NBA Draft.
- Coming in a close second to the P.J. Hairston news was the announcement by Jerian Grant that he had been dismissed from the Notre Dame team “due to an academic matter”. The news comes as a devastating blow to a Notre Dame team coming off a brutal last minute collapse on Saturday against Ohio State. Grant, a redshirt junior, had been averaging 19 points and 6.2 assists per game so his loss is actually a bigger blow to Notre Dame than Hairston’s is to UNC, but UNC is a much bigger player on the national stage than Notre Dame so Hairston’s impact will be felt more on a national level. Based on Grant’s statement we are assuming that his dismissal is probably related to plagiarism. If Grant returns to Notre Dame next season, he would likely only have one more season of eligibility left since he already used a redshirt year.
- Duke certainly gets more than its fair share of notoriety, but one of the thing that does not get enough publicity is how ridiculously consistent they have been. As Matt Norlander notes, the Blue Devils are on the verge of being ranked in the top 10 of the AP poll for 120 straight weeks. That puts them 35 weeks short of the record set by John Wooden’s UCLA teams between November 15, 1966 and January 20, 1976. If they manage to stay in the top 10 of the AP poll the rest of this season (frankly, we are not sure they belong in it right now), they have a very solid chance of doing so for all of next season with their ridiculous incoming freshman class. Of course, we probably would have said the same thing about this group of Kentucky freshmen, who were considered to be of even higher quality, and you can see how that has turned out so far. Perhaps, the example of this Kentucky team should underscore just how impressive this current Duke streak is.
- After Billy Donovan’s comments earlier in the week it was merely a formality, but Florid officially dismissed Damontre Harris from the team. The loss of the South Carolina transfer will certainly hurt the Gators in terms of frontcourt depth particularly on the defensive end as Harris averaged 2.3 blocks per game as a sophomore at South Carolina. However, with the imminent arrival of Chris Walker the Gators might be able to overcome it. After being hit with a series of injuries and eligibility issues in the early season, the Gators are showing signs of being a legitimate Final Four contender. As for Harris, we are not sure where he goes from here and much of his fate will probably depend on what the issues were that led to Harris’ dismissal from the team. Assuming they are not legal issues, we would not be surprised to see him end up on another BCS-level conference team.
- It takes a special kind of talent to be kicked off a team when your father is the assistant coach, but that is what once-heralded recruit J-Mychal Reese appears to have done at Texas A&M. Reese, a top-75 recruit in high school in 2012, had already been suspended for the first four games of this season for a “violation of athletic department rules and regulations” before getting kicked off the team this weekend. His father, John Reese, had been serving an assistant other Billy Kennedy. We use the past tense there because neither J-Mychal nor John traveled to the team’s game against Oklahoma over the weekend. According to reports, Reese’s dismissal was related to drug use. Unlike Harris, the next stop for Reese will probably be a level or two lower than the Big 12 given his reported drug issue. Despite his off-court issues, Reese is a talented player who averaged 7 points per game while shooting 42.9 percent from three-point range this season in between his suspensions so there will probably be many mid-major programs willing to take a chance on him.