In a move that would make the SEC (the financial one) proud, the NCAA announced late this afternoon that Memphis recruit Will Barton had been cleared to play for the Tigers. This comes just two weeks after the same body declared Barton academically ineligible for the upcoming season after questioning his high school grades, a decision which Barton appealed. While we are happy for Barton, we can’t help but think that the person who had the second most at stake in this decision was second year Memphis coach Josh Pastner who had taken over for John Calipari following the latter’s decision to bolt for greener pastures at Kentucky. The latter left behind a mess of allegations involving Derrick Rose, resulting in the erasure of one of the greatest seasons ever (statistically); Pastner then had to deal with allegations against himself, as well, before being hit with the possibility that he might not have three of his players (Barton, Hippolyte Tsafack and Chris Crawford) eligible for this season.

The addition of Barton, a top 10 recruit in by almost any service (including our own Zach Hayes), will add a measure of scoring explosiveness that the Tigers have missed in the past two seasons following the departure of Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts. Whether or not that scoring translates into more post-season success remains to be seen.

A local Memphis television station caught up with Pastner earlier tonight after he had heard that his top recruit had been declared eligible by the NCAA. As you can guess, Pastner was excited to have Barton in a Memphis uniform this season.

We have to say, we’d definitely be as excited as Pastner if we learned that a player of Barton’s caliber was joining our team this close to the start of the season. [Ed. Note: Will, the offer is still on the table if you want to play for the RTC 3-on-3 team. We can slide John Stevens over to the bench, put some gel in his hair like Pat Riley, and have him draw up some plays — mostly you dribbling and the two of us standing in opposite corners to “space the floor”.]

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Friday, August 20th, 2010 at 10:08 pm by nvr1983 and is filed under player eligibility. Tagged: chris crawford, chris douglas-roberts, derrick rose, hippolyte tsafack, john calipari, josh pastner, kentucky, memphis, will barton. 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.