1. So all that complaining Tennessee fans did about Cuonzo Martin before he led the team to a Sweet 16 appearance? It is looking even more idiotic now after he announced that he will be moving to California. The move was quite a sudden turn as Martin had just picked up a commitment from Kingsley Okoroh to play at Tennesseee less than 24 hours before. Tennessee is now faced with a difficult situation of finding a coach in the middle of April after the last coach, who made the Sweet 16, left in large part because of the lack of support he had there.
2. Yesterday was a busy day for early-entry candidates. At Arizona, Aaron Gordon and Nick Johnson announced that they would be leaving. As we noted yesterday, Gordon is expected to be a top-10 pick and while Johnson is most likely a mid-second round pick he probably would not improve that stock with another year of college so he might as well start making money even if it is overseas. At Michigan, Nik Stauskas and Glenn Robinson III also decided to leave school early to end the NBA Draft. Stauskas is potential lottery pick so it makes sense, but Robinson’s decision is somewhat puzzling especially his decision to declare so early when he could just wait for his father to get him more feedback and apply by the NBA deadline.
3. Outside of the major NBA announcements there were two other big decisions yesterday. Michigan State forward Branden Dawson elected to return to East Lansing for his senior season. This probably will not be enough to make the Spartans threaten Wisconsin for Big Ten supremacy (at least on paper) it should put them in the next tier. At Washington State, Royce Woolridge announced that he would be transferring to be closer to his ailing grandmother. Woolridge, who already transferred from Kansas to Washington State after his freshman season, is expected to graduate this spring and is expecting to play at a school in Arizona next fall to be closer to his grandmother. Between the graduate student waiver and the family hardship waiver he should have no problem being eligible to play next season.
4. Qu’ils mangent de la brioche. Yesterday, the NCAA passed a series of proposal designed to benefit student-athletes with the most notable one allowing the schools to provide all of them (even walk-ons) with unlimited meals. The prior rule was not quite on the level of the cream cheese ban that was so widely panned, but it was still a bad look for the NCAA. On the surface it might seem like a very minor allowance (along with the other improvements), but it seems like it is a step closer to approaching the cost of attendance number that is so often thrown around.
5. If you thought that the early entries were too much to keep track of, wait until you get a look at the transfer list. Fortunately, Jeff Goodman has taken his transfer list to ESPN.com (previously at Fox Sports and CBS Sports). There are not many pages that we would tell you to bookmark (outside of our main page and microsites obviously), but this will be a good one to check in on every once in a while because we have no idea how Jeff can keep up with so much movement, but he manages to do so.

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2014 at 6:00 am by nvr1983 and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: Aaron Gordon, branden dawson, cuonzo martin, glenn robinson iii, nick johnson, nik stauskas, royce woolridge. 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.