1. It’s no secret that a good portion of the country (myself included) has marveled at the eye-popping numbers Marcus Smart has put up this season for Oklahoma State. But Run The Floor’s Michael Rogner offers the other side of Smart’s play and gives a compelling argument as to why he might not be the leading candidate for National Player of the Year honors. Going into Sunday morning and the Cowboys’ rematch with Memphis, Smart had two games where he turned the ball over five times. His line last night: 12 points, 4-of-13 from the field (0-of-5 from three), four assists and five turnovers. Rogner might be on to something here.
2. TCU is having a tough time in its first year-plus in the Big 12, but some of those troubles are out of their control. Stefan Stevenson of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports more injuries for the Horned Frogs in 2013-14. The most recent setback has to do with junior Amric Fields (12.8 PPG, 4.8 RPG), who suffered a broken hand in their loss to Harvard on Saturday and will be out for the next two to six weeks. This was only Fields’ fourth game of the year after missing all but three games last season due to knee surgery. Freshmen Brandon Parrish also suffered a sprained thumb in the Harvard loss and Hudson Price is recovering from a concussion. Both are listed as day-to-day. If Parrish and Price were both available for Thursday’s game vs. Mississippi State, Stevenson says TCU would have just seven scholarship players in uniform. If you’re a believer in a TCU turnaround, you’ll have to come to this realization: It’s hard to get a program off the ground if you don’t have the bodies to do it.
3. Tonight’s Oklahoma-Mercer game is a homecoming of sorts for Mercer head coach Bob Hoffman. Hoffman, an Oklahoma City native, coached at Oklahoma Baptist in Shawnee, Oklahoma, where he accumulated 243 wins over a long tenure there. Then Hoffman headed to Southern Nazarene in Bethany to be the women’s basketball coach, where he won 88 more games. He was also an assistant at Oklahoma for Kelvin Sampson from 2004-06. If you rewind to last season’s conference tournaments, his Mercer team lost in the Atlantic Sun title game and as a result introduced Florida Gulf Coast to the college basketball world. In five-plus seasons, Hoffman has won 104 games at Mercer but might have trouble getting No. 105 against a Sooners team averaging nearly 88 points per game.
4. In the last two seasons, Iowa State has been seen as a solid team that usually got hot late in conference play to surge into NCAA Tournament at-large bids. This season has gone a little differently: they’re hot early. The Cyclones have already scored a home win over then top-10 Michigan and persevered in a tough road environment against BYU. Heading into their Big 12/SEC Challenge match-up vs Auburn, Iowa State has had a week since its last game and Fred Hoiberg has decided to add plays to an already bulky playbook. It must be a nightmare as a Big 12 coach to game plan for a brand new Iowa State team every year, but to also be thrown off balance with the new wrinkles they use. It’s probably a good thing the other nine Big 12 coaches have quite a bit of patience on the sidelines.
5. Former Kansas State and Maryland assistant Dalonte Hill has decided last week to resign from his post on Mark Turgeon’s staff. In October, Hill was charged with his third DUI in five years, dating back to his tenure working under Frank Martin. He took a leave of absence from the Terrapins to “focus on his personal life,” according to Turgeon, and this is probably the best move for Hill. He feels that he must help himself before he can help others again, and who’s to say he can’t? Hill’s only 34 years old and he’ll have plenty of time to jump back  into the coaching ranks whenever he feels like he’s ready to. All the best to him going forward.

1. Washington Post: Huge news out of College Park this week, as Dalonte Hill has resigned from Maryland’s staff. That opened up a spot for Dustin Clark to be promoted and Juan Dixon to be hired as a special assistant (after he completes his degree). According to Dixon, he’s always wanted to be a college coach, so he’s been in Mark Turgeon’s ear about getting onto the staff during the past few months. If Dixon is half the coach as he was a college basketball player, this will be a great move. He should be an invaluable tool in recruiting local guys (although he can’t go on the road).
2. Orlando Sentinel: Ian Miller is a big part of Florida State’s dramatic turnaround. Montay Brandon definitely deserves some credit, but Miller’s offensive prowess and experience make him a key cog in Leonard Hamilton’s machine. Last year Miller was injured and unable to practice, but he dropped 25 pounds and is back to being the exciting player people predicted he would be when he transferred. It’s clear from his comments that his injury caused Miller to rededicate himself to the game.
3. Winston-Salem Journal: This Dan Collins interview with Devin Thomas seems especially prescient considering how closely Wake Forest played Kansas. However, Thomas needs to learn when to walk away, as shown by his two technical fouls over the course of two minutes. Watching the game it was unclear exactly why he got the techs, but he can’t put himself in that position to begin with. Still, after the Demon Deacons played Kansas competitively (even spotting them free throws from three technical fouls while missing boatloads of their own), it’s clear that Wake Forest’s record wasn’t just a fluke.
4. CBS Sports: Jabari Parker is something else. Matt Norlander does a pretty good job putting his uniqueness into words with this ode after Duke’s win over Alabama. There’s still room for improvement (especially on defense), but Parker is a force rarely seen at the college level. He has range, a post game and an unbelievable array of moves all over the court. One concern for Duke has to be Rodney Hood’s no-show on Wednesday night. The Blue Devils need him to be a factor (and to stay out of foul trouble), but another amazing stat is that Parker has scored 20 in every game thus far.
5. Raleigh News & Observer: The News & Observer ran a special section on Dean Smith in honor of his recent Presidential Medal of Freedom award. While you’re reading Andrew Carter’s article, don’t forget to check out the timeline of Smith’s career or his record. Smith’s mentored everyone from Eric Montross to Roy Williams to John Swofford.

1. When Andy Enfield made his statements criticizing Steve Alford and Tim Floyd we figured that he would hear about them. We just never figured it would be in a public place in front of journalists. As Seth Davis detailed, Floyd approached Enfield and began yelling at him in front of Enfield’s wife and a group of onlookers. Assistants for both schools had to step in to separate the two. It’s unfortunate that the two had to air out their differences so publicly, but Enfield had to expect some blowback after his arrogant comments.
2. It appears that the Chane Behanan 2012 Final Four controversy has come to a rather abrupt end. Upon hearing about the auction Behanan’s mother called his grandmother, who he had given the ring to. She said that she had put it in a box in her bedroom, but when she checked she discovered that it was not there. When the family contacted Gray Flannel saying that the ring had been stolen the company promptly returned the ring to Behanan. While it is a plausible story it does seem strange that the company gave the ring to Behanan so quickly if they did any investigation at all into his claims.
3. Floyd and Enfield may have embarrassed themselves with their actions, but they were not the only ones in the college basketball community to embarrass themselves. Craig Neal‘s wife, Jean, has been accused of attacking a school administrator and could be heading to court as a result of it. Former El Dorado High School assistant principal Susana Stanojevic has filed a lawsuit claiming that Janet Neal assaulted her after a high school basketball game in February in which Janet’s son played. Stanojevic is claiming that the school board knew that Janet had a history of such outbursts and did not protect Stanojevic from her. It is worth noting that this is not the first time that Stanojevic has filed a lawsuit against the school board.
4. When Dalonte Hill was arrested for the third time for a DUI we figured it was only a matter of time before he stepped down (or was forced to do so). On Wednesday, after having taken a leave of absence from the team from quite some time, Hill finally officially resigned. Hill’s primary role was to help the team in recruiting in the D.C. metro area, which is something that he did to a degree, but not at the level that was needed to make the Terrapins competitive in the upper echelon of the ACC (and soon to be Big Ten). Although the news is certainly negative for Maryland as they attempt to increase their reach in recruiting, they did get one positive as they announced that Maryland legend Juan Dixon was joining the staff as a special assistant to Mark Turgeon.
5. We have heard a lot of strange excuses for why a player is not eligible, but that of two Egyptian players–Aly Ahmed and Ahmed Hamdy–is a new one. They claim that they were misled by former Rice and FIU assistant Marco Morcos who told them to spend a second year in prep school prior to entering college despite NCAA rules arguing against that. For his part, Morcos denies any influence. Although the schools where the two players are waiting at now (Cal State Bakersfield for Ahmed and Houston for Hamdy) appear to be confident that the NCAA will change their mind based on the report that Morcos misled the two players we tend to agree with John Infante that the two are out of luck because they need to know the rules.

1. The last time anyone saw UCLA’s mammoth center Josh Smith, this equally hilarious but also pathetic GIF was the result. To everyone else, the Airball Layup Incident may have been just another amusing moment during a somewhat meaningless Bruins’ home opener against Indiana State, but to College Basketball Nation it was a spot-on encapsulation of Smith’s disappointing career. In two up-and-down years in Westwood, nobody had denied the 6’10” center’s soft hands and nice touch around the basket — the problem was that, because of his — how should we put this? — excessive weight problem, he simply could not get up and down the floor. In his freshman and sophomore seasons, he hovered around 20 MPG despite logging solid offensive ratings and commanding the offensive glass (top 15 nationally in offensive rebounding percentage both seasons). Shortly after the ALI, Smith decided to transfer to Georgetown, and yesterday the NCAA handed down its decision on his eligibility request to play immediately. Shockingly, despite that fact that Smith played in six UCLA games before his transfer and didn’t move closer to home to care for an ailing family member (he’s from Seattle), the governing body decided to give him two full years, effective immediately, to play for the Hoyas. As Gary Parrish writes in comparing the Smith decision with NCAA precedent, “For now, though, I’ll just sit here baffled.”
2. Speaking of baffling, the narrative coming out of preseason practices and scrimmages is sounding off like a fog horn at this point. The new officiating points of emphasis suggest that hand-checking on the perimeter will be called early and often, and if you believe the buzz around the country, some coaches are downright terrified. ACC microsite writer Brad Jenkins wrote last week that his viewing of the scrimmage during Duke’s Countdown to Craziness was “foul-plagued,” and if this box score from a recent secret scrimmage between Xavier and Ohio U. is any further indication — there were 71 fouls and 91 free throw attempts in that game — they should be. It got so bad that two players were whistled for seven fouls in that contest, while a third was called for six. The process of re-learning how to defend on the perimeter is not something that many players can solve overnight, so although the college basketball product should be more free-flowing and ultimately better in the long run, the first month of this season could have more than a few games where the second units are playing in crunch time.
3. It’s the classic deal with the devil: At what point does a person’s value to an organization no longer outweigh the trouble that he causes? In the case of Maryland assistant coach Dalonte Hill, the answer has until now remained on the positive side of the ledger. After Hill’s third DUI arrest in the last five years (and second while employed under Mark Turgeon at Maryland), the 34-year old who is reportedly the highest-paid assistant coach in the country, is certainly testing the integrity of that question. Since Hill’s Sunday night car crash and arrest, he is taking a leave of absence from the program, but the underlying issue that is surely on the minds of his employer is that he is one of the very best (and connected) recruiters in the sport. His ties to the Washington-area AAU program called DC Assault has allowed the Terps to get involved with local prep products that simply weren’t available to them under Gary Williams. It will certainly be interesting to see how Maryland brass decides to handle this, but there’s absolutely no way that they’ll completely remove him. He’s not quite below the horizontal line just yet.
4. Notre Dame is one of the three new teams joining the ACC this season, and the whole conceptual framework behind it still feels a little unreal. But playing the likes of Duke, North Carolina and Maryland to go along with former Big East foes Syracuse and Pittsburgh will certainly feel real enough to Mike Brey in short order. In this article from Matt Fortuna at ESPN.com, Brey discusses the hoop-jumping and maneuvering that his program had to do to get into the basketball league of his wildest dreams, the ACC. Dreams do come true, apparently, as a rumored possible move to the Big 12 a couple of years ago would have been Brey’s “worst nightmare.” With an experienced and talented backcourt returning for the Irish to go along with Brey’s proven ability to get the most from his players, it wouldn’t surprise anyone to see him challenging those schools near the top of his new league’s pecking order as soon as this winter.
5. To most fans in today’s college basketball environment, a scheduled game three years away between Kentucky and UTEP would be virtually meaningless. But to fans of the sport who know their history and are aware that in 1966 UTEP was called Texas Western, such a potential game raises more than a few eyebrows. Current UTEP head coach Tim Floyd told a tipoff audience on Wednesday that his school and Kentucky are exploring a rematch of the most historic college basketball game of all-time — the Brown vs. Board of Education of college basketball — Texas Western vs. Kentucky, in 2016. The date would signify the 50th anniversary of the first game where an all-black Texas Western starting lineup knocked off favored and all-white Kentucky in the national championship game in College Park, Maryland. If things go right with this idea, they will hold the game on MLK Day in Cole Field House, the exact site of the start of the cultural revolution in college basketball.

1. Miami Herald: The biggest news out of ACC country yesterday was the conclusion of the NCAA’s investigation into Miami. We will have more on that later today, but Michelle Kaufman has an interesting perspective. Rather than looking at the punishments, she asks, “Where are they now?” The answers are damning to say the least: Nevin Shapiro is in prison, two lead NCAA investigators moved on, and Frank Haith and Cecil Hurtt are still in coaching positions. It’s not hard to figure out why the NCAA didn’t hammer the Hurricanes.
2. Wilmington Star News: It’s no secret Roy Williams’s system develops elite college point guards. The Tar Heels have three of the ten Bob Cousy Award trophies on campus. This year Marcus Paige joins fellow ACC floor generals Quinn Cook, Devon Bookert (an interesting choice), Eric Atkins, and Tyler Ennis on the preseason Cousy Award watch list. None are considered the favorites for the award (ahem, Marcus Smart), but all are point guards to watch in ACC play.
3. Raleigh News & Observer: While Mark Turgeon didn’t seem concerned about recruiting to Maryland once he moves to the Big Ten, Mike Brey is. Brey is considering scheduling Georgetown in the future to keep his in with the DMV. On a side note I think Laura Keeley underestimates the difference in media money between Big Ten and ACC schools. It is true that it is only a few million this year, but the ACC just renegotiated its deal. Also Maryland’s athletic department was facing fiscal crisis, which made the money that much more important.
4. Baltimore Sun: Speaking of Maryland, some tough news out of College Park yesterday, as Terrapin assistant Dalonte Hill started a leave of absence following his third DUI charge in the last five years. Hill’s importance to Maryland recruiting cannot be overstated, as he has close ties to the premier AAU team from the area.
5. Syracuse Post-Standard: You want a dark horse rookie of the year candidate? Look no further than Tyler Ennis, who is Jim Boeheim’s only point guard this season. That means Ennis will have a large role for Syracuse this year, potentially a more integral role than Duke’s Jabari Parker who will have his playing time eaten into by a roster chock full of athletic wings.

1. Yesterday, the NCAA released its long-awaited report on its investigation into the alleged violations committed at Miami. While those involving the football program were the primary focus of the national media, in many ways the ones involving the basketball program were more interesting and we don’t just say that because we are a basketball site. The men’s basketball program was hit with a reduction in three scholarships (total) over the next three years, but otherwise escaped harm. If you want to hear our take on reducing scholarships, check out Mike DeCourcy’s column on why the idea is idiotic. In addition, the NCAA also issued assistant coach Jorge Fernandez a two-year show-cause, which basically amounts to a four-year ban since he has been untouchable while in limbo. Of course, the biggest news for us is that Frank Haith was only given a five-game suspension for his role in this. Normally we would use quotation marks to modify the only, but in this case he got very lucky. Gary Parrish did an excellent job describing how ridiculously light Haith’s punishment is in comparison to the three-year show-cause penalty that Bruce Pearl got for lying about hosting a cookout (it is a little more complex than that, but not to the degree that the NCAA made it out to be) and, as Andy Glockner pointed out repeatedly yesterday on Twitter, Todd Bozeman got an eight-year show-cause for doing essentially the same thing Haith did (to the point where we wonder if Glockner’s new job is being Bozeman’s PR guy). At this point, we think all the parties involved will be glad to just put the entire thing behind them.
2. Haith was not the only coach making the wrong kind of headlines yesterday as Maryland assistant Dalonte Hill announced that he will be taking a “leave of absence” after being arrested over the weekend for what is at least his third DUI in the past five years. Hill, who is best known for essentially being an assistant who is essentially a package deal to bring in recruits, has been receiving a seemingly exorbitant $300,000-a-year salary at Maryland, but that is actually a significant drop from the $423,000-a-year he was making at Kansas State for helping bring Michael Beasley to Manhattan. Both Mark Turgeon and Maryland athletic director Kevin Anderson expressed their support for Hill and we would expect that he will be back on the sidelines (or recruiting trail) in the near-future. One more interesting twist on this is that Hill’s pipeline has largely come from the famed D.C. Assault AAU program that came into the national spotlight this August when its founder Curtis Malone was indicted on federal drug charges so we are not sure how that dynamic will affect Hill’s ability to recruit down the road.
3. Villanova fans got an explanation for the mysterious photo that junior forward JayVaughn Pinkston temporarily posted on Instagram of himself on crutches back in August. It turns out that Pinkston had developed a MRSA infection of his right leg that required incision and drainage and eventually what has been described as “emergency surgery” as well as what is likely a prolonged course of antibiotics. By now, you have probably become familiar with MRSA infections due to the news media hyping it up over the past few years or perhaps the recent spate of infections on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. If you are not, essentially it an increasingly common bacteria that does not respond to older antibiotics that were previously used to treat the organism, but can generally be treated fairly easily with antibiotics (even oral forms). With competent medical care, superficial MRSA abscesses like what Pinkston appears to have had respond well to treatment and as expected (although maybe not as Pinkston and his family, coaches, and teammates feared) it appears that he will be ready to play when the season starts.
4. Yesterday, we mentioned how West Virginia was waiting on the NCAA to rule on the eligibility of freshman forward Elijah Macon. Well, it appears that Macon might have other issues affecting his eligibility to play after he was arrested for disorderly conduct during a court hearing involving his sister. According to reports, Macon became upset during the hearing and after leaving the hearing hit something loudly enough for it to be heard in the courtroom. He was asked to leave the building which he did, but continued yelling and was then arrested. We have no idea what triggered Macon’s reaction, but we doubt that Bob Huggins will take too kindly to it.
5. It is really early to start w thinking about Player of the Year awards, but yesterday The Bob Cousy Award committee released its preseason watch list. All of the big names that you would expect–Aaron Craft, Jahii Carson, and Marcus Smart–are on there as well as a handful of the more heralded incoming freshmen–Andrew Harrison, Kasey Hill, and Tyler Ennis. Interestingly, two schools–Harvard and Memphis–have a pair of point guards on the watch list, which seems unusual, but we don’t make a habit of memorizing these lists. We don’t see any particularly glaring omissions although we are sure fans of some schools will be able to muster up sufficient outrage over some perceived slight.

1. ESPN: Not to be outdone by the other ACC schools making recruiting splashes, the Maryland Terrapins have locked down a four-star point guard in Roddy Peters. Peters is a Maryland kid and a very skilled playmaker and scorer who will be able to contribute almost immediately for the Terps. Peters plays for D.C. Assault, the famed AAU team and an outfit that highly paid Maryland assistant Dalonte Hill used to coach, and according to Peters, Hill’s presence played a key role in helping the guard choose Maryland.
2. Baltimore Sun: In more disappointing Terrapin news, this is the week that James Padgett will go to court to deal with charges stemming from a DUI arrest over the summer. Padgett, a senior and the likely starting power forward for the Terrapins, is a favorite in the tempo-free statistics community. Despite relatively mediocre per game rebound totals, Padgett is something of a savant on the offensive glass, posting  possession numbers that surpass every other player in the conference but fellow offensive rebounding wunderkind Miles Plumlee. In any event, Padgett’s court date is this Friday, though he is still expected to participate in today’s Operation Basketball media extravaganza.
3. Greensboro News & Record: Speaking of Operation Basketball, the News & Record has taken the time to go ahead and figure out the preseason rankings for the teams in the conference. Of course, the paper is doing it by counting the Twitter followers for the two player representatives from each school. Duke takes the top spot, largely thanks to the Twitter sensation that is Seth Curry. Curry’s roughly 51,000 followers easily overpowers any other player on the list with North Carolina’s Reggie Bullock coming in a distant second at around 32,500 followers. We’ll have more on Operation Basketball as the day rolls on, but for now, I leave you to pore over these social media numbers. If you want to follow every single basketball player, reporter, and tangential figure in the ACC on Twitter, I would direct you to this rather helpful guide.
4. Chicago Tribune: If you want to talk about meaningful numbers, the number of the day is clearly $9,995. This is the price that a gallon of unopened McJordan Barbecue sauce from 1992 recently sold for on Ebay.  Just when you thought North Carolina couldn’t be more proud of it’s living legend and his accomplishments, a jug of his sauce sells for nearly ten grand and makes you change your whole way of looking at things. The greatness of Michael Jordan is truly unending.
5. Blogger So Dear: On a less silly note, our Wake Forest loving friends at Blogger So Dear have posted some early observations of this year’s Demon Deacons based on what they saw at Black and Gold Madness. There are some good notes on players both incoming and returning here as well as some keen observations on a team with a lot of potential and even more unknowns.

CBS Sports conducted a survey of one hundred high-major coaches, asking them to answer a few questions about how their peers performed on the recruiting trail. While the bulk of the story wasn’t particularly surprising, there were a few tidbits that are of particular interest to ACC fans. Though North Carolina coach Roy Williams was pegged as the third best recruiter in the nation after Kentucky’s John Calipari and Arizona’s Sean Miller, what is more interesting is the list of coaches who are apparently overrated as recruiters. I didn’t expect to see Bill Self and the very good Kansas program pegged as overrated in terms of recruiting and somehow, I was even more surprised to see none other than NC State’s own Mark Gottfried as the third most overrated coach in terms of recruiting.

Gottfried Isn't Impressing His Peers on the Recruiting Trail (Yet)

This is a little stunning considering how excellent a job it seemed that Gottfried was doing in his first year recruiting for the Wolfpack. Do the coaches know something we don’t about the players that Gottfried landed? Or is this just sour grapes; coaches jealous of a guy who was able to burst back on to the scene and make an immediate impact? Whatever it is, it’s fascinating that a coach who, in his first year after taking a break from coaching, made the list. I’d be eager to know why the other coaches think so little of a coach who seems to be doing the right things on the recruiting trail.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. In news so shocking it’s hard to even comprehend, Texas A&M coach Billy Kennedy announced Thursday night that he has Parkinson’s disease. He had taken a leave of absence earlier this month to deal with medical problems, and now we know why. Things are looking up for Kennedy and his family, though. He said he’s already started treatment and expects to continue coaching. In the meantime, associate coach Glynn Cyprien will continue to run the team. It’s impossible to know when Kennedy will come back, but that’s irrelevant at this point. Here’s to successful management and eventual recovery from the disease.
2. Somebody stop the madness: is Missouri joining the SEC or not? Not even the freakin’ league knows, for goodness sake. Last night, the SEC’s website posted a press release welcoming the Tigers — for about ten minutes. It may have been a hoax. Or, perhaps somebody accidentally clicked the wrong button. Either way, it’s a real fiasco for the SEC, and it’s not exactly the best way to interact with the public in this age of mass media.
3. Finally, some basketball news now… although it’s not good news. Kansas forward Thomas Robinson has hyperextended his knee,  which may sideline him temporarily. Coach Bill Self doesn’t sound too worried about the situation, but he can’t afford to lose Robinson for any period of time. He and Tyshawn Taylor are the two known commodities on this team for the most part. It also may be an issue if the injury nags at Robinson during the season. Again, though, this doesn’t sound like too serious of an injury, so that may not be the case at all.
4. We brought you this story yesterday, but it’s important enough to worth mentioning again: A lawsuit by Michael Beasley may implicate Kansas State in recruiting violations. All of this is speculation at this point, but the suit claims Beasley’s mother received improper benefits while in Manhattan. The case is enormous and reaches all sorts of areas besides just Kansas State basketball, but there could still be trouble for the Wildcats. Coach Frank Martin and former assistant Dalonte Hill said they know nothing about the allegations. This story may drag out for awhile, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.
5. Fran Fraschilla‘s got an idea: put Bill Self in the Hall of Fame. Fraschilla said this week that Self, Tom Izzo and Rick Pitino should gain entry to the Hall as active members. He has a point. Self’s resume already stacks up with several of the all-time greats. He has close to 450 wins, he’s got his National Championship and he has countless conference championships to his name. Even if we don’t throw him in the Hall just yet, he’ll get there eventually.

1. Tracking the Terps – Baltimore Sun: Maryland assistant coach Dalonte Hill was named as a third party in a lawsuit by Michael Beasley that could have major ramifications for college basketball. Hill coached Beasley on the AAU circuit with the DC Assault before moving on to an assistant coaching position at Kansas State. While I don’t think the lawsuit will affect Hill directly, it could expose some ugly realities about his role in Beasley’s recruitment (see Dave Telep’s article from two days ago for possibilities). I don’t expect Hill to make any comments on the case, but this is definitely something to keep an eye on.
2. Terrapins Insider – Washington Post: Although Beasley’s lawsuit is bigger news for college basketball, Pe’Shon Howard‘s injury is bigger news for Maryland. Howard broke his foot and is expected to be out for around ten weeks. If it’s much longer than ten weeks, Mark Turgeon will consider redshirting Howard to keep his eligibility intact. But Turgeon also sounds focused on this season, and Howard’s presence would be a big boost for a team that will have major depth issues. While Howard is sidelined, Terrell Stoglin will have to handle the point guard position. This could go either way, but my guess is Stoglin will take some time to adjust to the new role.
3. Boston Herald: Boston College freshman Patrick Heckmann wasn’t surprised with the team’s last place conference selection at Operation Basketball: “It’s kind of understandable. We lost pretty much all of our scoring options from last year […] We should surprise a lot of people how good we can actually play [sic].” My only revision would be to remove the “pretty much” from his first sentence. But the Eagles haven’t given up (and are “scrappy as heck,” according to Steve Donahue), which should serve them well in a conference where a lot of teams are rebuilding or have major flaws.
4. ESPN: Mitch McGary is nearing a decision (ETA next week). He’s trimmed his list to three: Duke, Michigan and Florida (he claims North Carolina is still in the race, but it sounds like a combination of not hearing from them and Brice Johnson’s recent commitment to the Heels has them off the list). Maryland was the other school to get axed. His latest blog post also reminds fans that the recruiting process isn’t all fun and games: “To be honest, it’s been really stressful and, at times, it’s been hard on my family.” As a top power forward in the Class of 2012, McGary would be a huge get for the Blue Devils.
5. Recruiting Insider – Washington Post: The NCAA has finally caught up with the 21st Century and will allow coaches unlimited calls and texts to high school juniors and seniors. Although the summer evaluation period has been tightened up a little, an April evaluation period will be re-opened. One of the less-reported points that seems like a bigger deal is that coaches will now be able to give an on-court evaluation of players during official visits.