Zach Hayes is an editor, contributor and bracketologist for Rush the Court. You can follow him on Twitter @zhayes9.

Exam week. The worst period of the college basketball season is nearly behind us.

For players, competitive games are replaced by study sessions and extra practices. For fans, all of the momentum the sport gained from November tournaments and premiere non-conference games disappears. With the handful of intriguing bowl games still weeks away and no NBA to keep us semi-occupied, there’s an undeniable void in the sports schedule. After all, Tebow-mania can only hold our attention for so long.

In honor of exam week, let’s play professor and pass out our own evaluations of what we’ve seen so far this season. Who’s exceeded expectations and passed every test on their schedule? Who’s underachieved and deserves a failing grade? Let’s reveal:

A+: Syracuse- Honestly, no team truly deserves a perfect grade. The only argument could have been Ohio State had they won in Lawrence without Jared Sullinger. Despite two near slip-ups in New York, Syracuse is the class of the undefeated. They’re the deepest team in America, bolstered by a dynamic sixth man in Dion Waiters and the rapid improvement of Fab Melo. The length and aggression of their patented 2-3 zone is confounding the opposition, ranking seventh in defensive efficiency, first in steal percentage and fourth in block percentage. As long as Kris Joseph displays the killer instinct he showed in the tail end of their Stanford victory and Scoop Jardine values possessions, the Orange are Big East favorites.

Marcus Denmon has played a major role in Mizzou's fast start

A: Missouri- Just two months ago, skepticism was a common theme among the Tiger faithful with the controversial hiring of Frank Haith and Laurence Bowers’ devastating ACL tear.  Now they’re enjoying a potential Final Four outfit running roughshod over everyone on their schedule, the most memorable being a 39-point drubbing of expected Pac-12 title contender California. Haith has established a mentality of controlled chaos, preaching the same up-tempo pace encouraged by Mike Anderson without neglecting the half-court prowess of point guard Phil Pressey and the catch-and-shoot proficiency of guards Marcus Denmon and Kim English. The result is a well-oiled machine ranking in the top-15 in two-point, three-point and free throw percentage. The next task: winning a true road game outside of Columbia.

A-: San Diego State- The coaching job by Aztecs coach Steve Fisher has been nothing short of admirable this season. After his program lost three tremendously productive seniors and one lottery pick, a rebuilding period was to be rightfully expected. This isn’t Duke or North Carolina where the loss of program icons are quickly replaced by the latest batch of blue chip prospects. Instead of reverting back to mediocrity, SDSU already has two wins over preseason top-25 Arizona and California and nearly downed MVC favorite Creighton. A major reason has been the emergence of junior guard Chase Tapley, who is averaging 17.7 PPG on a cool 50% from the floor and 51% from deep.

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It’s a slow basketball week in the Atlantic Coast Conference as students presumably take exams and wrap up their semester by focusing on their academics. Or play a lot of video games. Something like that. In any case, there is only one interesting matchup the entire week and thank your lucky stars — it’s going down tonight.

The Only ACC Game Between Sunday and Saturday

• Florida International at Maryland at 7:30 PM on ESPN

Okay, so maybe this isn’t exactly a great game, but it’s all we have until Saturday so let’s try to look at the interesting parts about it. Isiah Thomas‘s team is not a good one. Despite a season-opening overtime win over George Mason, the team has only managed to win two more times. Two-point wins against the likes of Coastal Carolina and Stephen F. Austin aren’t impressive, but at least they are wins. FIU also has more than a couple of bad losses on the books including losses to Alabama State, Arkansas-Pine Bluff, and NAIA school Texas Wesleyan, a school best known in athletics for it’s dominance/scholarships in table tennis. Maryland should win this game to get its third win in a row. The reasons why the Terrapins don’t take this in a walk? The few strengths of the Panthers align well with Maryland’s weaknesses. The Panthers are a good offensive rebounding team while Maryland struggles on the defensive glass. Likewise, outside of the remarkable Terrell Stoglin, the Terrapins guards have had trouble maintaining control of the ball while the Panthers have been fairly effective at forcing turnovers. It’s a long shot, but if FIU gets easy buckets off turnovers, a good number of second chance shots, and gets hot against Maryland’s indifferent defense, they have a reasonable shot at the win. Otherwise, the Terrapins should dominate every other facet of the game, and, provided they take the game seriously, should win easily.

Zach Hayes is an editor, contributor and bracketologist for Rush the Court. He attended last night’s Wisconsin @ Milwaukee game and filed this report.

Memo to Wisconsin fans: don’t worry about Jordan Taylor.

Despite hitting a dagger three with under a minute left, last night’s performance in the Badgers 60-54 win at Milwaukee (5-14 FG) was the latest in a long line of off-shooting nights for Taylor so far this season. The preseason All-American has yet to top 18 points in a single game, forcing role players such as Ben Brust, Jared Berggren and Ryan Evans to handle a larger chunk of the scoring load.

Taylor's shooting slump is bound to end very soon

But it’s the percentage decrease that’s truly frightening. His FG% has plummeted dramatically from 43% as a junior to 36% as a senior. Taylor’s three-point (43% to 33%) and free throw (83% to 70%) marksmanship has also dipped. Even his turnovers are higher than last season’s remarkable rate and the 0-10 FG night against UNLV was certainly an eye-opener.

Still, the Badgers sit firmly entrenched in the top 25 with a 9-2 record on the season. They were a handful of threes away from upsetting North Carolina on their home floor. They controlled tempo and easily dispatched of a top-25 caliber UNLV team. They pulled away and won by 17 against BYU. Every low-major Division I team on their schedule has been no match for Wisconsin.

That’s right, 9-2 and in the top 25 with their preseason All-American, the centerpiece of their offense and one of the single most important players in college basketball shooting a meager 36%.

That simply won’t last. Unless that minor ankle surgery over the summer is causing him ongoing problems or he’s hiding a new injury of some sort, Taylor’s shooting slump will end any day now. He’s way too good of a shooter, finisher and playmaker for his numbers to dip that suddenly. His 18.1 PPG and 43% mark from three last season didn’t happen by accident.

Although one could never tell Taylor is struggling by the way he constantly encourages teammates and plays with that easygoing, free-flowing pace, his emotional reaction after sinking that game-clinching three did suggest he was feeling some pressure. He knows he must step up and carry a team that, on some nights, has a very difficult time scoring on a consistent basis.

“I’m just trying to stay aggressive, stay confident,” Taylor said after the game. “I think I shot alright from the two areas I’ve been struggling most from three and free throws. I just couldn’t finish around the rim so it’s the same thing. It’s just a mental thing, mental toughness. Just got to hang in there and do a better job and be tougher about it.”

Berggren still has all the confidence in the world in his senior leader. I’m sure if you polled the rest of this year’s Badgers, they’d wholeheartedly agree.

“How can you not want a guy like that taking that shot?” Berggren said. “He showed at the end there, when it comes down to it, we all have confidence in him. I know he still has confidence to make that big shot and I think the majority of the time he’s going to come through for us and perform when we need him.”

The big question heading into this season was whether Wisconsin could find a secondary scoring option to relieve some of the pressure from Taylor. The silver lining from his slump is that other players have taken turns shouldering the load, whether it’s Brust making all seven of his threes against UNLV or Evans chipping in with 16 points and eight rebounds in the hard-fought win at Milwaukee.

Taylor will come around. There’s no reason to think otherwise. With their role players showing they’re capable of stepping up when called upon and another stalwart Badger defense stifling opponents, Wisconsin is once again a threat to finish near the top of the Big Ten.

Just wait until Jordan Taylor gets going.

Here’s a look at the power rankings that Drew and I have compiled after the fifth week of Pac-12 games. Here we go!

1. Stanford, 8-1: The Cardinal hold steady at number one despite taking the week off to study for finals. Why then, you might be wondering, do they get all of THIS week off as well? Those brainiacs on the bay needed a full week just to study, and they will take the actual exams this week. Up Next: 12.17 vs. San Diego

Aaron Bright leads the Cardinal with 12.2 PPG. (credit: Patrick McDermott)

2. California, 8-2: The Golden Bears move up two spots after picking up a pair of blowout victories. The first came Wednesday night, an 81-36 beat down of in-state rival San Jose State. And yesterday, it was Jackson State who was the unlucky recipient of a 73-46 loss. Up Next: 12.16 vs. Weber State

3, Oregon State, 6-2: The Beavers suffered their first setback of the season (it was bound to happen sometime) on Friday as Idaho came into Corvallis and stole a 74-60 win. The game did come just 48 hours after the death of Fred Thompson, another student athlete at Oregon State. Still, the Beavers have to do a better job of recognizing and then fighting through screens against good three-point shooting teams. Up Next: 12.13 vs. Illinois-Chicago

4. Arizona, 7-3: It wasn’t a terrible week for Arizona, but it could have been a lot better. The Wildcats opened up the week on Tuesday in Gainesville, where they fell to 12th-ranked Florida by six in overtime. The Cats did bounce back in fine fashion, beating a solid Clemson team by 16 on Saturday. Up Next: 12.17 vs. Gonzaga in Seattle

5. Oregon, 5-2: The Ducks kept up their tradition Saturday of beating bad teams in the ugliest way possible. This time it was Fresno State, who came into Eugene with a 4-5 record. The Bulldogs hung with Oregon all night long, but lack of execution down the stretch resulted in a 74-70 loss. Up Next: 12.12 vs. Portland State

6. Washington, 4-4: An 0-2 week is never good, but Washington has to feel better than they did last week. The Huskies hung with #11 Marquette and #5 Duke (both in New York City) before poor finishes doomed them. Up Next: 12.16 vs. UC Santa Barbara Read the rest of this entry »

1. Just when the circus around Penn State was starting to calm down a little bit the college sports world appears to have an eerily similar situation at Syracuse. The basics of the story are that Bobby Davis, a former ball boy at Syracuse who is now 39 years old, has accused Syracuse assistant coach Bernie Fine of molesting him for more than a dozen years. It should be noted that even the strongest report of sexual abuse that we have heard out of Syracuse pale in comparison to the extent to the accusations and crimes that are now widely accepted as having happened at Penn State. Fine, who has become a fixture at Syracuse as an assistant to Jim Boeheim since Boeheim took over as head coach in 1976, has been placed on administrative leave by the school and has not commented on the accusations yet. However, Boeheim has strongly denied the accusations over the phone and in a press release issued by school. While we disagree with the tone of Boeheim’s statement (particularly the one over the phone) it should be pointed out that the local Syracuse newspaper is reporting that it looked into these claims in 2005 and could not verify any of the claims that Davis made including ones that other boys had experienced something similar as all of the people they contacted reportedly denied those claims. However, given the emotional nature that these cases can take we would caution anyone who might jump to conclusions quickly.
2. We don’t link to rankings very often because we realize that in general they are just educated guesses at best, but very few people do them like Luke Winn. Winn, who consistently puts out some of the best content you will find, came out with his latest power rankings yesterday. We won’t even bother getting into the rankings because they are irrelevant as we already mentioned, but there is a ton of interesting statistical information and even a few amusing photos that make it worth reading every week.
3. By now you have undoubtedly heard about the story of Arizona‘s Kevin Parrom and like rankings we normally would not link to a human interest story on Parrom because many of the details have already been published, but like Luke Winn with ranking posts few people do human interest stories like Dana O’Neil and her piece on Parrom is a great example of that. O’Neil actually does not talk to Kevin much for the article (at least for what is used in the article) and instead goes to those who are very close to him to get a good look at what he has had to endure over the past few months and what keeps him playing despite all that he has been through.
4. We cannot remember many top-tier teams that have had to deal with as many significant injuries as early in the season as Louisville has had to deal with this year. The latest to join the walking wounded is Peyton Siva, who sprained his ankle during a practice on Monday and is listed as “day-to-day”. In the long run, it looks like this should not be a significant setback for Louisville, but could be an issue on Saturday when they take on Butler at Hinkle Fieldhouse. Louisville should have enough to beat a Bulldog team that is not very good right now, but Siva’s injury may make them susceptible to Butler’s guards, who have been solid so far this year.
5. Tuesday night was a historic night in college basketball as Mike Krzyzewski became the all-time wins leader for men’s Division I basketball. After the press conference, Krzyzewski went into a small room close to the court where he addressed a large group of former Duke players who had come to the game to support him in addition to a group of players who played for him on the US Olympic team. One player who was not there, but played for Krzyzewski although not in a Duke uniform was Michael Jordan, who we had always assumed had been targeted by Krzyzewski early in his career at Duke. Recruiting information from the early 1980s is sparse, but a letter appeared online yesterday that appears to have been sent from Krzyzewski to Jordan (h/t Lost Letterman for the find) after Jordan told the new Duke coach that he was not interested in playing for Duke. The letter’s content is fairly generic, but it is amusing to read now and consider what might have been if Jordan had decided to play for the other team on Tobacco Road. While we were looking this up, we noticed that Jordan’s childhood home had been sold in 1998 for $37,500 (ignore the ridiculous Zillow estimate and we are assuming there was a shift in zip code boundaries because the 28405 and 28411 zip codes are next to each other) and found it humorous that you could own the house that Jordan grew up in and the backyard court that he waged his legendary battles with his brother Larry for less than half of what you would pay for for a 1986-87 Fleer Michael Jordan rookie card. For that price, we are surprised that some loaded foreign businessman has not bought the house and transported the entire house and yard to his or her home country as a very unique collectible.

Zach Hayes is an editor, contributor and bracketologist for Rush the Court.

I’ve had a chance to watch both of St. John’s and Arizona’s preliminary Coaches vs. Cancer games, Duke tangle with upset-minded Belmont, and, of course, Michigan State face North Carolina in the Carrier Classic. With the obvious caveat that it is incredibly early in the season with so much yet to be determined, here are my initial thoughts on these teams:

Aside from Malik Stith, Lavin has his hands full with all newcomers

St. John’s: Losing three key members of a loaded recruiting class would be devastating for any program, but it will especially inhibit St. John’s due to their full-court pressure and aggressive matchup zone. Fatigue and a lack of depth could be a major issue once the Johnnies have to contain more athletic lineups than what William & Mary or Lehigh have to offer. God’s Gift Aschiuwa is powerful and efficient, but he’s also their only low-post scorer. He simply won’t be able to play 37.5 minutes per game throughout the entire season. Look for future opposition to mostly zone or play a sagging man-to-man against a roster that’s much more comfortable creating offense through penetration. Even if the young St. John’s guards impose their athleticism and get to the rim, help defenders shouldn’t be afraid to foul; players not named God’s Gift combined to shoot 28-53 from the charity stripe during the first two games, which could be a recurring issue for a freshman-dominated team. I like their individual pieces and future potential. Moe Harkless is a dynamic, face-up four, Naurideen Lindsey is a tough energizer and Aschiuwa is an absolute load to handle. I just worry playing seven-deep is going to catch up to a team that’s already woefully inexperienced.

Duke: I said this before the season and their season opener only re-affirmed my notion that Duke is going to experience some early growing pains before peaking late. The brightest spot was undoubtedly Mason Plumlee, who showed an array of post-up and face-up moves not in the repertoire last season. If Plumlee can combine all of the tools — a reliable mid-range jumper, dependable baby hook, solid post defense — with his gifted athleticism, he’ll impress NBA scouts and could prove Duke’s best post option in a long time. Duke has outstanding individual pieces, but it’s going to take a few months for the coaching staff to put the puzzle together with Seth Curry adjusting to the point, Austin Rivers often playing way too fast and Ryan Kelly looking rather ordinary (worth noting Kelly bounced back with 17 points vs. weaker Presbyterian). The other issue is Curry, Rivers and Andre Dawkins repeatedly get beat on dribble penetration; they’ll miss Nolan Smith and Kyle Singler’s sturdiness on that front. Twice on out-of-bounds underneath plays Dawkins did not stay between his man and the basket and it resulted in a Belmont layup. Fortunately, the trio giveth as much as they taketh away, evident by Dawkins canning a game-clinching three.

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See bottom of the post for the Official RTC Star System

We’ve seen scrimmages, exhibitions, and 2K Sports Classic games throughout the past month, but today just FEELS like the start of college basketball. There is a full slate of games across the nation, including seven Pac-12 affairs. Washington and Oregon State will get their regular season started tomorrow, while Utah and Washington State will wait until Monday night. Arizona is already 2-0 on the season and will play again Sunday afternoon.

Oregon @ #7 Vanderbilt – 7:00 PM PST on Fox Sports South (***)

If Oregon Is To Pull The Road Upset, Stopping Senior Forward Jeffrey Taylor Is A Must

• The Pac-12 game of the weekend will take place in Nashville tonight, where the up-and-coming Ducks will take on national power Vanderbilt. Oregon has caught some breaks in the past weeks in their quest for an upset, mainly with starting VU center Festus Ezeli out due to a suspension/injury. That means Vandy will rely on Jeffrey Taylor to do the scoring down low. UO big men Tyrone Nared and Tony Woods will be charged with handling Taylor on defense. In the backcourt, the Commodores are led by junior shooting guard John Jenkins. Jenkins averaged 19.5 PPG last year and will be held down by double-teams from Jabari Brown and Garrett Sim. Those doubles will leave players like Dai-Jon Parker and Brad Tinsley open, so if those two are able to knock down their open shots the Commodores will win easily.
• If the aforementioned Duck players (Nared, Woods, Brown, and Sim) all step up, Oregon should keep this one close for the first half and some of the second. But with a hostile crowd right on top of them and all of the size and talent that the Commodores bring in, I can’t see Oregon pulling this upset. Read the rest of this entry »

Kellen Carpenter is an ACC microsite staffer and an RTC columnist. Each week, BTN will take an in-depth look at some interesting aspect of college basketball’s statistical arcana.

The phrase “pure point guard” is loaded. It implies that there is a Platonic notion of point guard which all mortal players can only aspire to. We are just fools in a cave looking at a shadow on the wall, but that is all we have when the purest conception of the point guard is beyond our field of vision. I can only assume that this unknowable figure looks something like Bob Cousy. It also implies that outside of “pure point” play, there exists a realm of impure play where the division of basketball labor isn’t as orthodox as it is inside Plato’s basketball cave.

This is What a Pure Point Looks Like

In a point guard, “purity” is code for being a pass-first lead guard. To the traditional school of thought, the roles on a basketball team are strictly regimented: The point guard passes, the shooting guard shoots, but not as much as either forward. The center, near-immobile but Mikan-like in his hunger for loose balls has a single task: rebound the basketball and get it to the point guard. Of course, this idea of the traditional division of labor in basketball hasn’t really held since the days of Mikan himself. Modern basketball, by which I mean basketball since the mid-sixties, has embraced the hybridization of positions. Basketball has for years acknowledged the idea that team roles are mutable and that positions are flexible.  While few have embraced the full-on positional revolution explicated by Bethlehem Shoals and the NBA-heads of the dearly-departed Free Darko, most of us have made peace with the idea that it’s okay for point guards to score occasionally. Kemba Walker and Jimmer Fredette were the break-out stars of the past college basketball season and both undoubtedly play point guard in a thoroughly impure way. If those guys aren’t pure then shouldn’t we all hope to be dirty?

In all seriousness, the concept of the purity of the lead guard is a silly concept to dwell on. Still, like all sports cliches, the idea persists because it’s a convenient way to sum up the play of pass-first point guards, who somehow pay homage to a golden era of basketball which is more than ancient history. Still the idea of the pass-first point guard is an intriguing one in this era of high-scoring combo guards. Like the crocodile, the pass-first guard is a relic of a by-gone epoch, a living fossil and a reminder of the dinosaurs who ruled the earth during that time. Is the crocodile a better predator than the tiger? This isn’t a debate that I’m interested in. The pass-first point guard, by mere value of their odd, antiquarian style is a unique species worth studying.

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1. The early signing period began Wednesday, and Oregon State signed a pair of three-stars on the first day of the week-long period. The first to sign was Langston Morris-Walker, a small forward out of Berkeley High (CA). Morris-Walker could see immediate playing time next season if current Beaver Jared Cunningham decides to forgo his senior season and move on to the NBA. He also had offers from Colorado, Utah, and Washington State, among others. The second to sign was center Maika Ostling. While Ostling is a solid prospect, he will most likely redshirt his freshman season as he will be behind Chris Brown, Joe Burton, and Angus Brandt in the OSU lineup.
2. Pundits around the nation are picking California to either win the Pac-12 or come pretty close to it, and the reason for those high hopes are centered on senior shooting guard Jorge Gutierrez. Gutierrez grew up in Mexico and was lightly recruited out of high school, but coach Mike Montgomery took a leap of faith on him. That leap was well worth it as Gutierrez averaged 14.6 PPG last season and was named to the all-conference team. There is no doubt this season that this is his team, “At first, I thought I didn’t belong here,” Gutierrez said. “But now it’s my house. This is my court, and you play the way I want you to play.” Big words, but he has earned the right to say them.
3. Sticking with the Golden Bears, California signed two players yesterday. We already alluded to Tyrone Wallace in yesterday’s M5, but Wallace made it official by putting ink to paper on Wednesday. The other signee was Kaileb Rodriguez, a 6’8″ power forward from Thunder Ridge High (CO). Rodriguez could see a lot of playing time next season since there is only one other “true” power forward on the roster (Bak Bak). The two signees put the Bears at 12 scholarships for 2012-13, one below the NCAA limit. They are still waiting on decisions from forward Zena Edosomwan of Harvard-Westlake school (CA) and forward/center Landen Lucas of Westview High (OR).
4. Wednesday was also a big day for both USC and UCLA, as both schools signed two players each. The first signee for the Trojans was J.T. Terrell, a transfer from Wake Forest who just began playing this season at Peninsula College. The 6’3″ guard should see immediate minutes because of his size and the overall lack of talent at the position for SC. 6’8″ forward Strahinja Gavrilovic was the other player to sign with Kevin O’Neill’s team. Highlighting the Bruins’ day was Kyle Anderson out of St. Anthony High (NJ). Coach Ben Howland says that he expects Anderson to contribute immediately next season at the point.
5. Regular season play continued last night in Tucson, where Arizona struggled with Duquesne for 30 minutes before finally pulling away for the 67-59 victory. The Wildcats continue to underwhelm fans across the nation, as Arizona has looked far less-than-impressive in their first four outings. Their first was an exhibition loss to Seattle Pacific and that was followed by a closer-than-comfort exhibition win over Humboldt State. Their first two regular season games against Valparaiso and Duquesne have not been decided until the final minutes. The trend of Sean Miller’s Wildcats’ in not putting teams away will definitely be something to watch for Pac-12 fans in the coming days and weeks.

1. Coming into this season we figured that Mark Turgeon was going to have a difficult time with a team that lacked a solid inside presence to the degree that there was quite a bit of speculation that he might play four guards. Yesterday he lost one of those guards for a significant part of the season when Pe’Shon Howard broke a bone in his left foot and is expected to be out for up to 3 months recovering. Howard’s injury leaves Maryland with just seven healthy scholarship players and to be honest those seven are not that good, which means that this could be a very rough start for Turgeon even if Howard comes back midway through ACC play.
2. When the NCAA announced that it would be adopting an APR minimum of 930 (two-year average) or 900 (four-year average) for inclusion in the 2013 NCAA Tournament quite a few writers immediately noticed that defending national champion Connecticut probably would not be eligible. This was based on the assumption that the school would not be able to achieve a two-year average over 930 between the 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons after it scored 826 in 2009-10, which would bring the school’s average down enough that even a reported unofficial 975 in 2010-11 would only get them up to 900.5 for two years and 888.5 for four years. It turns out that the decision may be more complex. Essentially what it boils down to is that in February the NCAA will have another series of meetings to decide whether to use scores from those years or 2010-11 and 2011-12 for inclusion in the 2013 NCAA Tournament. If they were to do the latter, they would have to move up the release of APR scores from the traditional date of May. If they stick with the current measurement, then the Huskies and other programs in a similar situation would have to rely on an appeals process or hope the NCAA creates a waiver. We would say stay tuned, but there is no way that the NCAA would risk losing a school like UConn to a new rule when the Huskies could very well be playing for a three-peat at that point.
3. The NCAA announced another interesting policy change yesterday, but this was involves recruiting. The major change is that coaches can call or send text messages to recruits as much as they want. It also allows increased messaging on social networks and changes the recruiting periods. As nearly everybody on Twitter noted yesterday, it is somewhat amusing that Kelvin Sampson was essentially kicked out of college basketball for something that is legal just a few years later making him a pioneer of sorts.
4. We would  like to send along our best wishes to Billy Kennedy, who revealed that he was diagnosed with early stage Parkinson’s disease in a statement he released through Texas A&M. Kennedy had taken a leave of absence earlier this month to recover from what can best be described as fatigue and other non-specific symptoms. During that time he was seen by physicians, who diagnosed him with Parkinson’s disease. We will not get into the effect this will have on the Aggies (that can come later) other than to note that Kennedy will be taking an extended leave of absence to attend to his health, which is certainly more important than basketball. We also will not delve into the progression and treatment of Parkinson’s disease other than to note that there are several medications and treatments that are available, which should hopefully help Kennedy deal with the condition.
5. Uber-recruit Mitch McGary has narrowed his list down to Duke, Florida, and Michigan after taking Maryland and North Carolina off his list and will commit to one of those three schools next week according to his blog post on ESPN.com. Most of the speculation we have heard so far is about Duke or Michigan and we are not sure how UF fits in here, but they have obviously done something to attract McGary’s attention. At any rate, you can expect Twitter to explode next week when he makes his announcement particularly if he decides to become a Blue Devil as he may very quickly become Public Enemy #1 for the rest of the college basketball world.