1. By now you should know that we are not surprised by Craig Robinson getting fired even if we are a little surprised by the timing. Robinson’s time in Corvallis was highlighted by the fact that he is the brother-in-law of President Obama. Unfortunately for Robinson and Oregon State fans his team actually had to play games. With the exodus of talent from Corvallis following a 16-16 season things were not looking good so it makes sense that they would cut ties. Our only question is the timing this late in the recruiting season and less than a week after Nick Faust committed to play there. Late last night, Jeff Goodman reported the Oregon State players were making a push with the school’s AD to hire ex-Oregon State & current UCLA assistant David Grace and even mentioned the possibility that Hallice Cooke might return to Corvallis if Grace is named head coach.
2. Oregon State was not the only school in the state to make headline es yesterday. In Eugene, news broke that Dominic Artis was transferring while Brandon Austin and Damyean Dotson were no longer participating in team activities. While the team has not released any information on this, The Oregonian uncovered a police report from two months ago implicating the three took part in an alleged rape (full report here–warning: graphic descriptions). The police did not go forward with the investigation because of a lack of evidence, but it might be enough to finish their time there. Artis appears to be the first to exit following a rough sophomore season highlighted by a nine-game suspension to start the season. Despite a bad season he was expected to be the team’s starting point guard. Although Austin has not made any comments about leaving we would assume that he does not have much leeway after transferring from Providence following a suspension for a report of sexual assault. Dotson’s background is not quite as controversial, but it will be interesting to see how Dana Altman handles this situation since he is already losing so much of his team from last year.
3. Speaking of programs spiraling out of control, Mark Turgeon came out yesterday and “took responsibility” for the transfers. Honestly we have no idea what that even means other than Turgeon admitting that a lot of players are leaving Maryland. Unless Turgeon is stepping down or identifying an area that he will change that might make a difference (winning would be a start) we can’t really take too much from this. As we have stated before we would be surprised if Turgeon has more than a year or two left in College Park unless he turns this thing around and the only reason we would give him two years is because they are moving to the Big Ten and the administration is already busy with that.
4. We will give Donnie Tyndall a bit of a pass as he continues to lose players from his Tennessee roster since he just inherited the team. The latest players to look elsewhere are Darius Thompson and A.J. Davis. At this point, both players have asked for their release and although Tyndall says the players might still come back to Knoxville we think that is wishful thinking. Neither player would be considered a significant contributor although Thompson started 10 games last year (averaging 2.6 points, 2.4 assists and 2.0 rebounds per game last season), but he was just a freshman and could have been a steadying influence as Tyndall tried to build his own team. With the way things are going for Tyndall we would not be surprised to see open tryouts in Knoxville pretty soon.
5. Everybody talked about New York City being the center of conference tournament action with conference realignment, but there appears to be quite a bit of action down in Washington, DC. The ACC has already committed to playing at the Verizon Center in 2016 and now the Big Ten will be playing its conference tournament there in 2017. The deal is reportedly an attempt to bring their brand to the East Coast with Maryland and Rutgers joining the conference. With the importance of these areas for recruiting we would not be surprised to see more conferences attempt to make the move to the area to get exposure to the high school players there.

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2014 at 6:00 am by nvr1983 and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: brandon austin, craig robinson, damyean dotson, dominic artis, mark turgeon, tennessee. 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.