- ESPN: North Carolina played an exhibition game Friday night — a 111-58 rout over Fayetteville State — but the headline continues to be all the fallout from the Wainstein Report released last week. In the postgame press conference, Roy Williams made his first public comments since the release of the damaging report. An emotional Williams acknowledged the pain he’s felt over the scandal at his beloved school, but his comment that “I feel strongly, strongly that we did things the right way” makes you wonder who the “we” is, exactly. As for the game itself, a peek at the box score reveals that Justin Jackson continues to impress, leading the team with 18 points in 22 minutes of action, including a 3-of-4 performance from three-point land.
- Durham Herald Sun: Saturday night Duke held it’s annual “Countdown to Craziness” event, and freshman center Jahlil Okafor stole the show during the scrimmage, scoring 27 points and grabbing eight boards in 24 minutes. The drinking word of the article is definitely “dominant” and its other forms – dominates and domination – that are used to describe Mike Krzyzewski’s latest Chicago prodigy. The scarier thing is that, according to the Duke coach, Marshall Plumlee did a pretty good job defending Okafor. Perhaps that is just coachspeak for trying to keep up the confidence level of a reserve, but expect most opponents to have their hands full with a Duke post player for one of the few times in recent memory.
- Winston-Salem Journal: Wake Forest‘s latest recruit has a familiar last name to Deacons fans. Current assistant coach and legendary Deacon player Randolph Childress’ son Brandon has pledged to join the program in two seasons. Danny Manning now has three commitments in the Class of 2015 and hopes that Childress, his first commitment from the current junior class, is just the start of great things. Not only is Wake getting a good player and the good legacy feeling of bringing in a legend’s son, Manning also hopes to now improve the Deacs’ position with a certain teammate of young Childress at Wesleyan Christian Academy in nearby High Point.
- Louisville Courier-Journal: It appears that Louisville head coach Rick Pitino is happy with the progress being made by his young center Mangok Mathiang. The wiry sophomore appears to be following a similar career path of former center Gorgui Dieng, a key member on the Cardinals’ 2013 National Championship team. Like Mathiang, Dieng came to school as an unknown and was expected to take a long time to become a high-level college player, but he became a poster child for Pitino’s well-respected player development system, and ready for the NBA after only three years in the program. While no one is saying Mathiang will progress at the same rate, he certainly has a great role model to follow.
- Hurricanes Sports: This is a very good read on Miami‘s new point guard Angel Rodriguez. It tracks his path from his native Puerto Rico to Miami for high school, Manhattan, Kansas, to play for Kansas State, and finally back to Miami as a transfer. It seems that Rodriguez has made the best of his redshirt year, immersing himself into practice. Jim Larranaga is counting on the junior point guard to be the prime leader for the young Hurricanes even though he’s yet to play a game yet in a Hurricanes uniform.