We’ll be doing a full BGtD today so you won’t have any interruptions in coverage tonight. Honestly, last night’s games were kind of disappointing. Pittsburgh–Xavier was entertaining, but that was the only game that I would say was memorable from a pure basketball standpoint. Now the other games did have their own interesting subplots. UConn rolled over Purdue in a game that was close at points in the 2nd half, but I never really got the sense that the Huskies were in any danger of losing. I was particularly impressed with how the Huskies played despite the media circus that is going on around them. Missouri‘s victory over Memphis was entertaining although for me it was marred a little by the atrocious free throw shooting. As we mentioned last night, I really wonder what John Calipari does, if he does anything, for his team’s free throw shooting. At this point, I’m convinced J.J. Redick would have shot 70% from the free throw line if he had gone to Memphis. Also, what happened to vaunted Memphis defense. Missouri has a good offense, but they shouldn’t be able to hit triple digits in regulation against a team that went into the game with the #1 defense according to the Pomeroy numbers. I’m sure some of you took great pleasure in watching Villanova pick apart Duke leading to another early March exit for Coach K, but the game wasn’t exactly exciting if you didn’t have a rooting interest for (or in most people’s case against) a team.

The line-up for tonight should give us a couple of interesting games:

• 7:07 PM: #12 Arizona vs. #1 Louisville
• 7:27  PM: #3 Syracuse vs. #2 Oklahoma
• 9:37 PM: #3 Kansas vs. #2 Michigan State
• 9:57 PM: #4 Gonzaga vs. #1 UNC

We’ll be back around 7 for the start of tonight’s action. Leave your comments/questions and we’ll respond to them as soon as we start.

6:55 PM: A couple quick pieces of news to pass along in the midst of this Billy Gillispie madness and these somewhat important games tonight. Clemson‘s star forward Trevor Booker will return for his senior year. The news out of Iowa isn’t as good after Jake Kelly, Jeff Peterson, and David Palmer announced that they are transfering, which means that Todd Lickliter will need to replace 2 starting guards and a reserve forward.

7:10 PM: Chase Budinger makes a great play to temper Louisville’s great start. He’s going to need to have a great game tonight. If both teams use the press tonight, we’re going to get a blowout (and I think it will end up going in Louisville’s favor).

7:12 PM: I should warn you that I’m a big Chase Budinger fan so you’ve been warned. I haven’t seen a lot of him this year (stupid west coast starts), but I think he has the makings of a very solid NBA player.

7:14 PM: That’s not a good stat for Arizona. Only 6 Wildcats have scored in the NCAA tournament.

7:19 PM: Great play by Edgar Sosa feeding it to Preston Knowles. This pressure is going to kill Arizona if they only go 6 deep.

7:28 PM: I don’t think it will matter tonight, but I hope you paid attention to that FT statistic. Louisville shoots 63.8% as a team (307th out of 334 teams). That will come back to bite them. Just ask John Calipari. Actually he probably wouldn’t admit it because his team was just as bad last night. . .

7:30 PM: I think that any Blue Devil who mentions that they made the 1994 title game should put an asterisk by it on their resume saying that they rode Grant Hill‘s coattails there. If you don’t agree with me, see what happened the next year even if Coach K missed the last 2/3 of the season.

7:31 PM: It looks dead in Memphis. What do you guys think? I’m guessing it’s only 20% full. UNC fans must have bought up most of the stadium.

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Nearly two years ago, immediately before the birth of this blog, rumors were rampant that Billy Donovan was ready to leave his two-time defending national champion Gators for the greener bluer pastures of Kentucky after Tubby Smith hightailed it out of Lexington for points northward.  Wildcat fans were tracking planes online, spotters were lurking around the airport, and everyone in town knew someone who knew someone who was sure they’d seen Donovan rolling around Lexington with the blue mist behind him.

Of course, they were all dead wrong, and UK only got their man – another Billy (Gillispie) – after all the Donovan hysteria died down and he publicly stated he wasn’t interested in the job.  Now, despite admonitions to the contrary, it appears that their second-choice Billy will be shown the door – actually, has already been shown the door – by Kentucky brass.  That’s not really in question anymore.  The bigger query we have is who will UK get to resurrect their foundering program?

Based on our sources in the area as well as some circumstantial evidence and a sprinkling of conject… logic, it is our contention that Billy Donovan will saddle up and take the job this time around.

First of all, the same justifications for Donovan taking the Kentucky job in 2007 are still relevant in 2009 – tradition, basketball school, higher salary, devoted fanbase.  Nothing has changed in that regard.  What has changed is where Florida basketball was then, coming off B2B titles, versus now – two straight NIT appearances have taken quite a bit of the luster off the Gator program to the point where empty seats are a regular occurrence at the O’Connell Center.  He must realize by now that he’s taken Florida basketball as far as it can possibly go, and with Urban Meyer down the hall winning titles just as frequently in the sport they really care about in Gainesville, it’s extremely unlikely he’ll ever reach that white-hot pinnacle again.  Ultimately, the time for a change is much more understandable for Donovan now than it was two years ago.

Now, let’s look at what we feel is the biggest piece of circumstantial evidence.  We’ve all heard for most of the week that Alabama is ready and in fact may have already offered Anthony Grant of VCU big money to become the next head coach of the Crimson Tide.  Considering that the Bama offer ($2M+) would more than double his current offer at VCU ($1M), and the additional fact that Alabama has traditionally had a solid basketball program, why wouldn’t he have already accepted this offer?  What on earth could he be waiting on?

Oh, right.  Could it be the possibility probability of his former boss (Donovan) leaving Florida to take the Kentucky job, thereby leaving open the UF job that he was supposed to get two years ago when Donovan took the Orlando Magic job?  You scoff, saying ‘isn’t that risky to put a lot of faith on a maybe?’  Well, maybe.  Then again, maybe not, considering that Donovan and Grant have the same agent (Lonnie Cooper), who is 99.9% likely to have his fingerprints all over these deals.

We’ve also heard from several reliable sources in Lexington that a deal for Donovan to become the next UK coach is already in place, and will be announced as soon as Friday but more likely, Monday.  You combine all of this information into one ball of speculative conjecture, and it seems pretty clear to us…

Billy Donovan is the new coach at the University of Kentucky, and Anthony Grant takes over at Florida.

If what we’re hearing from sources in Lexington is true (and apparently, Jeff Goodman is hearing the same things), Anthony Grant may want to tell Alabama that he kindly appreciates their offer but he’ll need a couple more days to think about things.   As always, the coaching carousel is getting into swing (with Dave Leitao at Virginia merely the first major casualty), but this year’s avalanche stands to once again begin at the very top of college hoops royalty known as Kentucky.   Should the Cats lose their quarterfinal NIT game tonight against Notre Dame, will that be the end of the BCG Era at UK?  Many people in Lexington think so. 

It’s no secret that the loyal followers of Big Blue are not exactly pleased with the way things have gone on the basketball court under the Gillispie regime.  Head-scratching substitution patterns, players refusing to enter games and/or leaving the team only to return later, the first NCAA whiff in an eligible year in twenty seasons…  but it’s been off-court issues that have also plagued Gillispie since his arrival in the Bluegrass that have amplified what goodwill he might otherwise have been afforded. 

His first year was filled with rumors of bar scenes where an inebriated Gillispie would make a fool of himself, getting to the point where UK was alleged to have hired a driver to keep him off the roads (even if unsubstantiated, the public perception was already enabled).  This led to speculation as to why Gillispie wouldn’t sign his contract with UK – instead working under a two-page Memorandum of Understanding – and subsequent allegations that his do-nothingness belied a motivation to avoid inclusion of a “morality clause” into the document.  Then there were the mystifyingly chilly interviews with ESPN’s Jeannine Edwards during the middle of this season, where “Billy Clyde” came off as a condescending putz unable to maintain decorum (with a lady, no less) in a public setting.  Sadly for Kentucky fans, a traditional bunch, these acts of show-your-arse by Gillispie fit the already-established narrative that their coach was a tough guy to deal with. 

As we all know, there are two parts to any job – the outcomes side and the political side.  If you’re really good at outcomes and miserable at politicking, you can still skate by for a good while before the pitchforks catch up to you.  However, if you’re patently unexceptional when it comes to outcomes and still miserable at the political side, good luck finding people who will support you when the barbarians are ultimately at the gate.  And at a program like Kentucky, the barbarians are never too far from the gate.  That’s where Gillispie is right now.  Had he come in two years ago and lit a fire under the UK program to the point where the Cats were still playing in the NCAAs, much of his general surliness and extracurricular activities, whatever they are, would be brushed aside.  But there’s a pervading sense around UK that the much-maligned previous coach, Tubby Smith, could have taken a team with two all-americans to a (severely diluted) SEC title and/or the first round of the NCAAs.  Gillispie couldn’t even do that.  

So for Gillispie the equation looks like this – outcomes: mediocre + politics: miserable =  join the rest of us in the unemployment line.   

The question will now become… who?  where?  when?  One would think Billy Donovan (yes, him again), Travis Ford, Darrin Horn and even John Pelphrey would be on the short list of hopefuls.  Even John Calipari is purportedly intrigued.   It should definitely make for an interesting next couple of weeks as the shakedowns begin in earnest. 

Four More Automatic Bids Tonight.  We’re combining this feature tonight because every game of interest involved a conference tournament final.  The CAA, MAAC, SoCon and WCC all crowned champions tonight, and only one of the four would be considered a surprise.  The other three will all be very tough outs for whichever team(s) have to face up against them in the first round of the NCAAs next week.

#6 – VCU (24-9, 14-4) – Anthony Grant’s VCU Rams rode a home crowd to a 71-50 obliteration of George Mason for its second CAA championship in the last three seasons.  You already know Eric Maynor from his game-winner over Duke in 2007’s first round; also keep in mind his 6’9 frontcourt mate Larry Sanders (not the host of a dated HBO show), who dominated GMU with 18/20/7 blks tonight – this talented duo will make any higher seed nervous on Selection Sunday.

Projected Seed: #10

Something to Remember: VCU wasn’t a good road team this year, going 7-6 compared to 11-3 two years ago when the Rams last made the Dance, but they were 2-1 against the RPI top fifty (an 11-pt loss against Oklahoma).

This is Why We Love Championship Week (photo credit: AP/Steve Helber)

#7 – Chattanooga (18-16, 11-9) – This is exactly why conferences are moving away from penalizing high seeds from playing on opponents’ home floors in conference tournaments – instead of having a Davidson in the NCAAs with a chance to win a game or two, the SoCon will send Chattanooga to become cannon fodder for a #1 seed.  Chattanooga came into the SoCon Tourney three days ago as a team with a losing record – tonight they left it with more than a winning record; they also got a ticket to the Big Dance by virtue of their 80-69 win over College of Charleston (who may have still been feeling the effects of knocking out Davidson yesterday).  The Mocs used a 20-0 run bridging the half to build a commanding lead that left CofC shellshocked.

Projected Seed: #16

Something to Remember: Chattanooga started the season 2-8, and has one of the worst defensive efficiency ratings in the nation (#296).  Take the over.

#8 – Gonzaga (26-5, 14-0) – The Zags made quick work of a St. Mary’s team that still looks a little lost while Patty Mills tries to return to form from his wrist injury, defeating the Gaels 83-58.  Six players reached double figures for the Zags, led by Josh Heytvelt’s 17/6.  Gonzaga won its nineteenth in twenty tries, with the only defeat coming at the hands of a red-hot Memphis team in February.  It’s definitely difficult to ascertain whether the ‘potential Zags’ have crossed over into actualization, but if things are clicking and they continue to play strong defense (#5 nationally), the Zags are a darkhorse for the Final Four.

Projected Seed: #4

Something to Remember: The Zags are the #1 team in America in 2-pt defense (38.9%), but when the Zags struggle (and lose), they also have a tendency for poor shooting – Memphis, Arizona, Utah and Portland St. all held them under 43% shooting from the field.

#9 – Siena (26-7, 16-2) – Siena was the best team in the MAAC, and after what the Saints did to Vandy in last year’s first round of the NCAAs, nobody is going to want to see Fran McCaffery’s team in their pod.  Tonight they held off a good Niagara team that had given them one of their two conference losses behind Kenny Hasbrouck, who shook off a 1-10 first half to score 17 second-half points on his way to 19/6/3 stls.  This is a dangerous team – they return the bulk of last year’s squad, and they were competitive early in the season in losses at Kansas, Tennessee and Pittsburgh.

Projected Seed: #9

Something to Remember: Siena is an offensively balanced team, with six players averaging between 8-15 ppg, and all six of those players having at least one game of 20+ this year. Who do you stop?

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QnD Conf Tourney Update.

The Big East, MAC, MEAC and WAC begin their tourneys tomorrow, but there are three more auto-bids in store.

• Horizon League Championship – Butler vs. Cleveland St. RTC Live will be there.
• Summit League Championship – North Dakota St. vs. Oakland. Here’s hoping Ben Woodside makes the Dance.
• Sun Belt Championship – Western Kentucky vs. South Alabama.  WKU goes for its second straight trip to the dance against the upstarts from S. Alabama.

It’s the last chance saloon for Georgetown, Notre Dame and possibly Cincinnati beginning tomorrow.  Who wants to keep playing?

Ryan Kish of George Mason Basketball is the RTC correspondent for the CAA.  He will be reporting from the CAA Tournament this weekend in Richmond, Va.

Having the privilege of attending this weekend’s CAA conference tournament, I’d like to share the fact that it’s probably going to be one of the most exciting in the country.  Starting this Saturday I will be liveblogging the most intriguing game from the sidelines for the CAA faithful (see RTC Live sidebar).  Choosing which game will be very difficult as almost any match-up will be worthy.  This weekend you will get an in-depth hands-on look into the tournament and some insight on what to expect.

Favorite:  VCU

The term “favorite” is kind of a loose term this season in the CAA, and even though VCU was picked by the coaches and media to be where they are now, any CAA fan will tell you that #1 seed won’t guarantee a championship visit.  The Rams have ridden the success of Eric Maynor as he guided his young squad through the CAA schedule but not without their share of bumps and bruises.  Nearly every team in the top of the conference has lost a game or two to the bottom dwellers and much can be said about the fact that VCU only had to face George Mason and Northeastern once each.  But despite that the Rams have shown more consistency in an unstable CAA and they have the tools to run the table in Richmond.  Head coach Anthony Grant has been here before and Eric Maynor is continuing to make his teammates better even with scoring 25+ a night. Forward Larry Sanders has been having a sensational season to date, on both ends of the court.  His play in the front court will be huge for the Rams.  VCU plays an aggressive, rough, in-your-face kind of game and that’s exactly the kind of squad I’d like to avoid in a single elimination tournament.  At times this season that same aggressiveness has led to trouble but if they can keep it under control and they will be the most dangerous team this weekend.

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Wow, maybe Damon Evans, the AD at Georgia, read our missive on SEC schools wising up after Mark Gottfried was let go on Monday.  From today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

“I was hoping that we’d build upon the success that we had in the SEC tournament,” said Evans, referring to the Bulldogs’ tornado-interrupted championship run last March in Atlanta. “That’s what all the Georgia fans wanted; that’s what we wanted; that’s what Dennis wanted. We thought it would be a momentum-builder for us. To be where we are today is disappointing.”

Better Times for Felton and Georgia

Obviously, the final straw was Georgia’s 83-57 rape at the hands of Florida in Gainesville last night, as it was the Dawgs’ seventh loss in a row.  A meeting was set up between Evans and Felton this morning, where the coach was given the news.  Pete Herrmann, an associate coach, will take over the reins on an interim basis through the rest of the season.  Georgia plays Alabama on Saturday, which sets up a once-in-a-lifetime scenario where two teams will play a midseason head-to-head game in the same week where both head coaches were canned.  Call it the Pink Slip Bowl. 

Is Gary Williams Next?

By way of a post-mortem for Felton, he showed a lot of promise at Western Kentucky, winning three consecutive Sun Belt titles from 2001-03, but at Georgia, he never could seem to get over the wanton destruction that previous coach Jim Harrick had left in his wake.  With Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee in the SEC East Division, Felton was usually guaranteed six losses per year, and there was a seemingly constant influx of players moving into and out of his program.  It just never appeared that things got settled there.  Felton’s record at Georgia – two NIT appearances, 1 incredibly unlikely NCAA appearance and SEC Tourney title (the “Tornado Tourney“), and five+ years of general malaise in Athens (84-91 overall, 26-59 SEC).

Soon VCU’s Anthony Grant will be able to name his price with all these SEC schools calling. 

Lot of good links today with many of them follow-ups of stories we have reported on in the past.

• Apparently the Miami coaches were onto something when they suspended Eddie Rios indefinitely earlier this month because he was arrested yesterday afternoon on charges of burglary and grant theft.
• I’m sure you remember Aubrey Coleman‘s “curbing” of Chase Budinger‘s face from this weekend and his subsequent 1-game suspension. Well, things have gotten messy as apparently Coleman and Houston’s athletic department have been getting threatening e-mails filled with racial slurs and the FBI has been called in. Side note: I like how Houston coach Tom Penders is blaming ESPN for its editing of the video claiming that it is the cause of the backlash against Coleman.
• Tubby Smith is not leaving Minnesota (at least not for Alabama). Anthony Grant can continue to sit next to his phone.
• Interesting article by Luke Winn about Wake Forest’s James Johnson‘s fighting background. All I know is that if there is a “Malice at the Palace” moment with Wake this year, I’m taking the Demon Deacons in that one.
• Speaking of Wake, Dino Gaudio appears to be a big fan of the Pomeroy Ratings and other voodoo mathematics.
• Michael Rothstein of The Journal Gazette surveyed 50 media members for their picks for the National Player of the Year at this point in the season. Like Michael, I haven’t seen much stuff done on this yet. Look for a running column similar to this out of Rush the Court in the near future.
• Kelvin Sampson is still complaining about the NCAA’s penalty even though he is in the NBA now. Let it go, Kelvin. Let it go. . .
• A fairly long piece talking about the effect of moving the 3-point line back a foot. Summary: It has decreased the number of 3-point shots only marginally (18.42 per game from 19.07 last year) and decreased 3-point percentage slightly (34.32% from 35.23% last year).
• Vegas Watch with an interesting piece on the impact of seeding in the NCAA tournament.
• Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt offers his thoughts on the prep-to-pro issue. While I agree with him on some stuff I am not sure how you could legally differentiate a Lebron James from a Kwame Brown or worse yet a kid who entered the draft, but was not selected.
• Seth Davis plays “Jigsaw Man” looking at a dozen top 25 teams, identifying their weakness, and picking out a player who does not play on that team that could eliminate the weakness. Interestingly theoretical exercise, but I’m not that sure what to do with it. Example: NJIT. Weakness = Talent/Inability to win (more than 1 game in a row). Missing piece: UNC’s or UConn’s players.
• Speaking of SI writers, where is Grant Wahl’s annual “Magic 8”? I hope rtmsf’s “deconstruction” of last year’s Magic 8 (and subsequent e-mail conversation about the Magic 8, life, and haircare products) did not convince Wahl to give up on writing about college basketball.
• File this one under “Jokes that I would really like to make, but can’t. . .” Jin Soo Kim, the first Korean to earn a D1 basketball scholarship, has been ruled academically ineligible at Maryland.
• Patrick Stevens of The Washington Times with an interesting list of the D1 coaches with the longest tenure. Perhaps it should not be that surprising that only 3 of the coaches in the top 10 come from major programs with all the trouble Gary Williams has been having.

There’s news coming out of Tuscaloosa tonight that doesn’t involve Nick Saban (although Utah’s demolition of the Tide a month ago may have led to this unrelated breaking news).  No, the crimsontided stepchild of Alabama’s athletics program is the one driving the needle tonight – Mark Gottfried’s Philip Pearson’s basketball program.  Er, formerly Mark Gottfried’s basketball program.

Photo Credit: Flickr.com

Today Alabama announced that Mark Gottfried, arguably the second most successful coach in Bama history (behind the irascible Wimp Sanderson), resigned amidst criticism over the state of his program in light of Ronald Steele’s decision to leave the school last week.  (although if you believe in msg board chatter,  using the word “resignation” is irresponsible; Gary Parrish concurs…)  From the AP report:

Gottfried, who played at Alabama, said he quit during a meeting with athletic director Mal Moore.  “It has been a wonderful decade for me and my family, and I love the University of Alabama, but I feel that it is in the best interests of everyone involved,” Gottfried said in a statement released by the university.  Gottfried’s teams have missed the NCAA tournament the last two years, and the coach was criticized over the recent departure of point guard Ronald Steele, a preseason first-team AP All-American pick two years ago, who later was hit by injuries. The school blamed Steele’s departure on a recent injury, but Steele said there was more to his decision than that.

There’s absolutely more to it than this.  A generation ago, a coach in the SEC with the success of Mark Gottfried could have stayed for thirty years and eventually had a practice facility named after him (Dale Brown comes to mind).  No longer.  Today in the era of million-dollar salaries and what-have-you-done-for-me-lately performance evaluations, even in the football-centric SEC (minus Vandy, Kentucky and Arkansas), “good enough” is no longer good enough.  Just last year, LSU canned John Brady, an Xs & Os charlatan who two years prior had parlayed a couple of great recruits into a very unlikely Final Four run.  They replaced him with a well-respected rising star in coaching, Trent Johnson (at $1.2M per, reportedly, of course).  At South Carolina, Dave Odom was invited to retire after he had taken the Gamecocks to two NIT titles and an NCAA Tournament in the last five years.  Darrin Horn already has matched the win total (14) of Odom’s last season with virtually the same roster.   Over in Athens at Georgia, Dennis Felton is currently walking the Bataan death march with his 310th most efficient offense and is expected to be replaced at the end of this season even after his unprecedented run in the SEC Tournament last year.

This Used to be Good Enough at Bama

A sea change in philosophy is moving through the SEC in basketball.  Mark Gottfried is a competent head coach.  He recruits fairly well, his players generally stay out of trouble and graduate, and he occasionally had a good enough team to make a little noise in March, but nobody would ever have confused him for Hank Iba.  That used to be good enough for a football school like Alabama.  Or LSU.  Or South Carolina.  But times are changing, and those schools have seen how all-inclusive athletic prowess can build a national “brand” such as at Florida, Ohio St. and Texas that benefits the entire athletic program (and school at-large).  Basketball is a key component of that equation, and therefore it doesn’t surprise us in the least that Gottfried is now gone (before he got a chance to make a late-season run and “save” his job).

Memo to VCU’s Anthony Grant, you might want to answer any calls that come from The 205 this spring.

Gotta say, we’re a little shocked by this one. 

It had to be the money.  Otherwise, why would Trent Johnson, a west coast guy who had rebuilt Stanford basketball into a top program in the west take a job in the south at a football school with only lukewarm support for roundball?

Johnson May Find Things a Little Different in Baton Rouge

And what about LSU – they were reportedly looking at Anthony Grant or Travis Ford, two of the hotter young program-builders around.  Hiring Trent Johnson seems to come a little out of left field, but it undoubtedly will be the ship upon which new AD Joe Alleva will raise his sail.

As for Stanford, can Monty get out of his contract with Cal this quickly?  Will they now target someone such as Grant or Ford?  Do they look internally?   

Again these are thoughts that are bouncing around in our head but are too shallow to merit a full posting…

• Wake Forest Coaching Search.  We’re not hearing anything out of The Dash that may indicate which way Ron Wellman is leaning at this point.  Anyone who knows anything is tightlipped.  We have to believe that if his plan is to elevate assistant Dino Gaudio or Jeff Battle to the head coaching position, then it would happen this week.  No need to prolong things.  If Wake doesn’t have a new coach by Friday, however, then that indicates to us that Wellman is putting feelers out to other coaches such as Anthony Grant, Mike Montgomery and Brad Brownell to gauge their interest.  Stay tuned…
• Chamin-awed.  We thought this was a neat find (from a neat site).  Lion in Oil reports that Chaminade University, longtime giant-killer and host of the annual Maui Invitational, is sponsoring a contest to produce a new logo for its sports teams, the Silverswords.  Might we suggest a caricature of 6’2 Chaminade guard Tim Dunham dunking in Ralph Sampson’s face as the defining moment for that school?
• Football Players Think Bloggers are Lame.  You may have caught a recent cnnsi.com poll where they asked college football players the following question:
  •  Do you read message boards or blogs where fans discuss your team? 
  • 39.5% yes
  • 60.5% no
• We doubt college hoopsters are any more or less savvy than their football counterparts, so we’ll assume the percentages are roughly equal for both sports.  Which is fine.  We wouldn’t want some of the guys we rip (cough, McBob) to come after us anyway.   Not because we’re afraid of him, mind you – rather, we just don’t want his unadulterated douchiness getting that close to us. 
• Barry Bonds.   Now that the Greatest American Hero is set to spend the next week grounding out as he endeavors to assault the MLB record books one last time, we always wondered what could have been.  BB was regarded as the best all-around athlete at Junipero Serra HS in San Mateo, CA, a school with no shortage of athletes over the years (Jim Fregosi, Lynn Swann, Tom Brady).  According to his biographer Jeff Pearlman:

“Barry started as a small forward on the freshman basketball team [at Junipero Serra] that winter – a quick slasher with decent court vision, a mediocre outside shot, and no right hand to speak of.  But the athleticism was otherworldly.  Whereas many of his peers struggled to touch rim, Barry dunked and swatted shots off the backboard.  He was unlike anyone Serra had seen in years.  And this was his second best sport.” 

• So there you have it.  Bonds was a sick athlete for a high school freshman, but unlike say, Dave Winfield or David Justice, he likely wasn’t skilled enough to ultimately become a great hoops player.  We should all be thankful for that.