1. Yes, USC is expensive (almost $50k per year).  Ex-Dookie, ex-Wildcat Taylor King found that out the hard way when he realized just how much his family would need to pay out-of-pocket to transfer to Southern Cal for one more year of eligibility in 2011-12.   Instead, he’ll play at NAIA Concordia in nearby Irvine, perhaps a much nicer locale but not exactly on the standard tour of most NBA scouts.  We wish him well, nevertheless.
2. “All indications are that the [BYU] Cougars will remain in the MWC,” according to the Denver Post.  There has been no formal word yet, and BYU officially has until next week (Sept. 1) to decide whether it’s coming or going in the league, but with the WAC blowing up after the Cougs’ initial inquiry, the decision comes down ultimately to whether the LDS elders think that BYU football can sustain itself as an independent.  It would be a bold move, but not one without some credibility; still, it says here that BYU (for now) sticks with the Mountain West.
3. Matt Snyder has an interesting piece at Fanhouse ripping the John Beilein hire at Michigan after a dismal performance in Belgium (they play basketball there?) that he thinks portends a miserable hoops season in Ann Arbor.  He’s probably right about the dismal upcoming season, but we’re not ready to give up on Beilein as a head coach.  His WVU teams in the later years in Morgantown played a style of basketball that was very difficult to prepare for, but it took him several years to develop such hidden jewels as Kevin Pittsnogle and Mike Gansey in order to get to that point.  Given that Michigan had gone over a decade (!!!) between NCAA Tournaments prior to Beilein’s 2009 second round appearance, we’re willing to let him have more time to build his program.  As for UM fans — we’re not as sure.
4. Morehead State was placed on a two-year probation by the NCAA yesterday, but the sanctions will affect scholarships and not impact postseason play for the school.  This is a good thing, as the Eagles return one of the better mid-major players in America in senior Kenneth Faried, a 6’8 forward who won the Ohio Valley Conference POY and DPOY awards last year while dropping 17/13 per night en route to 25 double-doubles.  If Murray State drops the ball in the OVC, Morehead will likely be there in 2010-11 to pick up the slack, and we hate to see when great players are punished for something they had no involvement in.
5. Yes, even 7 am isn’t too early for the west coasters to roll out of bed on Saturday mornings to check in with College Gameday this coming season.  As our very own Zach Hayes broke down the 2010-11 Gameday slate, it’s good to know that the weekly festivities will begin an hour earlier on ESPNU at 10 am ET before heading over to the big daddy channel (ESPN) at 11 am.  Then, as ZH said, fourteen straight hours of the manna known as winter hoops.  Prepare yourselves: it’s coming sooner than you think.

Zach Hayes is a editor, contributor and bracketologist at Rush the Court.

If you didn’t know, January, February and March mornings in the Northeast are cold. Very cold, often times extremely cold. That’s where 14 consecutive hours of college basketball on Saturday comes in handy. Throw on the coat, make the customary Dunkin Donuts coffee run and plop down on the couch for a full hour of fans shouting and screaming over Hubert Davis defending the eye test to determine NCAA bids. The football version is special in itself, but the hoops edition of College Gameday warms the heart of yours truly on those frigid Saturday mornings. Today, the 2011 slate was announced with the same Gameday crew visiting eight sites, the kickoff featuring a men’s-women’s doubleheader in Knoxville. If anything, these schedules trickling out continue to give us hope that mid-November isn’t all that far off in the distance.

The Gang is Back For Another Season of Gameday

Here’s the Gameday schedule (all times ET):

• January 15- Vanderbilt @ Tennessee (men’s)- 12 PM, Vanderbilt @ Tennessee (women’s)- 8 PM
• January 22- Michigan State @ Purdue- 9 PM
• January 29- Kansas State @ Kansas- 7 PM
• February 5- Kentucky @ Florida- 9 PM
• February 12- Pittsburgh @ Villanova- 9 PM
• February 19- Illinois @ Michigan State- 9 PM
• February 26- Duke @ Virginia Tech- 9 PM
• March 3- Texas @ Baylor- 9 PM

Some quick thoughts on the schedule:

• As they did last season, ESPN did a fantastic job identifying the teams projected to contend for a national championship and featuring their most challenging games on the schedule. In my opinion, Pittsburgh and Villanova will be the top two teams in the Big East. The same applies to Kentucky and Florida in the SEC. Kansas State and their top ten caliber squad visiting Kansas should be their toughest road test. Duke has only a handful of games this season where they have a legitimate chance to lose- the trip to Virginia Tech is one of them. Duke, Michigan State, Purdue, Kansas State, Villanova, Pittsburgh, Baylor, Kentucky and Florida could all be in the preseason top ten. Exciting stuff.
• The best game honor goes to the January 22 contest between Michigan State and Purdue in West Lafayette. This was the most obvious Gameday selection from the moment Robbie Hummel and Kalin Lucas were forced to return for their senior seasons. For the third straight fall, the debate for best team in the Big Ten- Spartans or Boilermakers- is a heated and tight one. Winner of this game gets an early leg up on their stiffest competition.
• The women’s selection is also no surprise given that ESPN opted to visit Storrs for a Connecticut women’s game last year. They threw a bit of a curveball with the men’s/women’s doubleheader, but it’s a creative concept that I’m absolutely in favor of.
• A potential stinker on the slate is Illinois visiting East Lansing to take on Michigan State. Illinois is a talented team led by Demetri McCamey, Mike Davis and Mike Tisdale, but there’s doubt whether the Illini have enough ammo to stick within 10-15 points of a loaded Spartan squad. Would Ohio State have been a better matchup? I think so. The Buckeyes are one team I felt were snubbed.
• One final note that caught my eye was no Pac-10 game featured. They usually throw that conference a bone and I expected Washington to make an appearance in one of their more difficult road games at Arizona or UCLA. Instead, Gameday opted for two contests involving SEC, Big Ten and Big 12 teams. No argument from me.
• I did expect the Gameday crew to make a trip to Hinkle and give Butler a primetime stage following their run to the national title game. The ratings for a team like Detroit, Wright State or Valparaiso at 9 PM on ESPN just wouldn’t have been there, though. A Mountain West duel (BYU at San Diego State), given the strength of that conference, would have been welcomed, but ESPN doesn’t have the TV rights for that conference.
• If you’re wondering why Duke-UNC is nowhere to be found, CBS stole ESPN’s thunder and will broadcast that game in Chapel Hill in primetime.
• The best part? Another year of halfcourt heaves.  And those are always fun.

The past two years have been very good for Mike Krzyzewski. In addition to taking Duke back to the top of the college basketball world last April, he also led Team USA back to the top of the international basketball world (not that there was any doubt as long as we brought the “A team”) in Beijing. An inductee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001, he has won almost every title (four NCAA championships, 12 ACC championships in both the regular season and conference tournament, and an Olympic gold medal) and received almost every award (three Naismith College Cach of the Year Awards, two Basketball Times National Coach of the Year Awards, a NABC National Coach of the Year Award, and five ACC Coach of the Year Awards) that he could be expected to win.

K: Best in the Business

To add to that, earlier today the city of Chicago announced that it would make this September 15th into “Mike Krzyzewski Day” (over/under on misspelled signs and posters: 130) on the same day that he will be inducted into the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame and receive the Ray Meyer College Coach of the Year Award. [Ed. Note: We aren’t expecting Chicago great and Duke-hater Michael Jordan to be in attendance.] Coach K, a native of Chicago, graduated from Archbishop Weber High School before matriculating to the Army where he played under a fairly decent coach named Bob Knight. A solid but unspectacular guard at Army, he served in the Army for three years and coached at a prep school for two years before joining Knight as an assistant at Indiana where he left just before the 1975-76 season (the last undefeated Division I team) to take over as the head coach at Army. Although he compiled a 73-59 record at Army, he went 9-17 in his last season before getting an offer from Duke to become their head coach (a classic case of failing upwards). His first three years at Duke were not much more successful as after a merely mediocre rookie campaign he went a combined 21-34 over his second and third seasons. At that point many critics suspected Krzyzewski’s days in Durham were numbered, but little did they know that the freshman class that season (Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, David Henderson, and Jay Bilas) would wind up being one of the greatest classes in the school’s history. After that group made it to the 2nd round of the NCAA Tournament in their sophomore and junior campaigns they took off as seniors in what is widely considered one of the finest seasons in college basketball history. That group entered the championship game with a 37-2 record against a Denny Crum-led Louisville team before falling by three points to freshman sensation “Never Nervous” Pervis Ellison and the Cardinals.

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One of the first things I did on this website upon debuting two years ago was live blog ESPN’s first 24-hour college hoops marathon from start to finish.  You know how it is. You’re the new guy, you want to impress your co-bloggers, and all that.  I volunteered for the job, thinking I’d earn the respect of my RTC-mates and perhaps bring a few new visitors to the site. I assumed the novelty of it (it wasn’t that novel) would, in the same way that circus-goers stroll by the exhibition of freaks, bring a few people by to check in on the weirdo who was staying up and live blogging the whole thing.  I thought it turned out great, especially for a guy’s first time.  I had been awake for 16 hours before it started, too, so there were a few palpitations and many hallucinations by the time it was over, but I was proud. And as I was doing it, I was convinced that the combination of my astute basketball observations with my razor-sharp pop culture references would make this site a household name and propel us into the very heart of the American consciousness. Which, as we all now know, is precisely what happened.

Last year I did it again, despite the wagging fingers of my internist and a couple of specialists. We had some technical difficulties when the internet connection at the RTC Southern Compound tendered its resignation, but with some help of friends who subbed for me while I changed location, we got it done and I was able to finish strong.

Oh sweet, delicious caffeine -- the Marathon blogger's best friend.

We’re still in secret discussions as to what we’re going to do this year to celebrate the national holiday that is the 24-hour hoops marathon. I might insult my cardiovascular and central nervous systems for a third year in a row, or we might have something better in store this year. But because I’ve done it twice and not yet needed a trip to the ER, I — erroneously, in all likelihood — consider myself the authority on the subject.  To celebrate the release of this season’s Marathon schedule and the fact that it’s — *sigh* — only three short months away, here are my 24 favorite things about watching ESPN’s 24 Hour Hoops Marathon from beginning to end.

24. The fact that it’s actually about 26 hours of basketball, not 24. The last game starts at 11:30 PM ET, if it’s on time. Not only is it an “extra” game, but it’s a good time to summarize what you’ve seen during the day and pat yourself on the back.  Bonus hoops?  I’m not complaining, not even after 24 hours.

23. Seeing whether or not ESPNU’s Lowell Galindo will continue to go with the full Windsor knot in his tie.  Others in the sports media have worn it. Only one man has perfected it.  He’s made some appearances without it during the off-season, and stock markets all over the world plummeted each time.

22. The constant string of games is an instant reminder of those sweet days of Championship Week and the NCAA Tournament.

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This past weekend was a time of celebration for former Duke great Christian Laettner who was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a member of the 1992 Olympic Team (aka “The Dream Team”) even if he took the brunt of the jokes during the weekend’s festivities. Unfortunately for Laettner and his Blue Devil teammate Brian Davis, the festivities appear to be confined to that weekend as their company Blue Devil Ventures (official website is currently down) appears to have hit a prolonged rough patch after some early success. The company has invested significant sums of money in a variety of projects including several in Durham as well as making bids for the Memphis Grizzlies and an MLS team (D.C. United). Last Monday, San Diego Chargers superstar linebacker Shawne Merriman filed an affidavit regarding a suit against Blue Devil Ventures for failure to repay a loan worth $3.64 million he had given the company in 2007.

The Championship Touch Hasn’t Translated to Business (SI/M. Millan)

According to court documents, the loan granted by a advance money app, which was due in March 2009, was not repaid and Merriman states that he is owed the $3.64 million principal that he invested plus 10% annual interest — not a bad return for an investor between 2007 and 2010. Merriman has also asked the judge to award him a 10% interest in Blue Devil Venture projects in Atlanta, Baltimore, and Durham, and if those projects fail he would have the right to convert that interest into other Blue Devil Venture projects. If your head is hurting right now, that’s OK, because based on these reports Merriman is asking for Blue Devil Ventures to give him the following things:

1. His principal of $3.64M plus 10% annual interest
2. A 10% share in three of the company’s projects
3. In the event that any of those projects fail, he gets to convert that 10% share into shares in other (likely more successful) projects

That, my friends, is what we call having your cake and eating it too. Unfortunately it appears that Merriman may be trying to do this with a group of destitute bankers as he is just one of many plaintiffs against the company whose troubles appear to mirror countless others after the collapse of a real estate bubble where people took on more than they could chew.

In addition to currently listed outstanding cases against Blue Devil Ventures, the group also has Chevron on its trial (market cap of slightly over $150 billion), seeking $1.5 million plus interest; and the pair also has several other business ventures (under different names) that have turned sour including one where they were ordered to pay $687,230 plus interest to Bryan Simms. Simms is a former Lehman Brothers senior vice president who left in 2007 (just in time) to join another failed venture of Laettner/Davis in what appears to otherwise be a fairly distinguished career. Based on what we have read about Laettner’s responses to questioning, it seems like the end result of all this is another LLC (not Laettner himself) declaring for bankruptcy, leaving everyone involved unsatisfied.

An interesting question came up among the Twitterati over the weekend when it was learned that Rivals #8 (and rising) recruit in the Class of 2011, Anthony Davis, had formally committed to Kentucky.  Davis’ commitment marks the third top ten recruit in that class to have committed to John Calipari’s Wildcats, and the seventh in the 2009-11 recruiting cycles, a ridiculous feat. 

• John Wall (#2, 2009)
• DeMarcus Cousins (#3 , 2009)
• Brandon Knight (#4, 2010)
• Enes Kanter (#7, 2010)
• Michael Gilchrist (#1, 2011)
• Marquis Teague (#5, 2011)
• Anthony Davis (#8, 2011)

Throw in a few other high-level recruits such as Daniel Orton (#19, 2009), Eric Bledsoe (#52, 2009), Terrence Jones (#11, 2010), Doron Lamb (#26, 2010), and an unnamed superstar or two to be named later (Quincy Miller?  LeBryan Nash?), and suddenly there is a realization that we could be in the midst of the single greatest run of recruiting prowess since the Wizard of Westwood had every blue-chipper from coast to coast lining up to play for him.

Calipari Continues to Rack Up Blue-Chippers (LHL/M. Cornelison)

This is what Calipari was referring to when he infamously said on draft night in June that having five UK players selected was the greatest night in the program’s history.  It’s all marketing.  As Kentucky blog A Sea of Blue notes when referring to Anthony Davis’ quotes about the commitment, Calipari isn’t selling the Wildcat program of all hoops-all the time as much as the dream; the dream, of course, being a fast-track to the League. 

But notice what is not mentioned — Kentucky tradition, the facilities at UK, playing in front of 24,000 every game, being on TV all the time — none of these things are mentioned.  Recruiting has changed.  Calipari has taken the NBA one-and-done rule and used it like the Pied Piper, tempting players to Kentucky not with cash to families or under-the-table deals, but with a short path to all the riches they desire.

Whether you believe the last sentence or not, the truth remains that players are beelining for Lexington, which brings us to the point of this article.  We have to dig pretty deep in our memory banks to remember a recruiting run that even begins to approach this concentration of elite talent.  Granted, there’s a bit of an apples/oranges confounder here — much of the reason that Calipari can load up on talent every single year is because there’s a reasonable expectation that the previous year’s competition for minutes will be gone (see: Wall begets Knight begets Teague, for example).  Still, we’ve come up with one strong comparison in the modern era (we hope you add your own in the comments below): Duke 1997-99.  As a brief aside, UNC from 1990-93, Michigan from 1991-94 and Duke from 1999-2002 were also very strong periods of recruiting at those schools, but over four recruiting cycles rather than three. 

Duke 1997-99 (recruited by Mike Krzyzewski)

• Elton Brand (#1, 1997)
• Chris Burgess (#7, 1997)
• Shane Battier (#8, 1997)
• William Avery (#14, 1997)
• Corey Maggette (#16, 1998)
• Jason Williams (#3, 1999)
• Carlos Boozer (#8, 1999)
• Casey Sanders (#16, 1999)
• Mike Dunleavy, Jr. (#26, 1999)

The recruiting rankings alone are nasty, but when you consider the actual accomplishments of this group, it takes on a whole new meaning.  Six lottery picks, three NPOYs, two title game appearances and a national championship (2001).  In two of the years where they didn’t cut the nets down, (1999 and 2002), Duke was the prohibitive favorite to win the title (finishing #1 in the final AP poll every year from 1999-2002) in large part because they had more talent than anybody else.  They actually won it all in 2001, but we’re still trying to figure out how Jim Calhoun’s vastly underrated (but also undermanned) Huskies were able to slay the Duke dragon in 1999 (oh, right, Trajan Langdon).  It was an amazing run of talent acquisition, and we haven’t seen anything like it for at least a decade.

Duke Had Three NPOYs in Four Seasons (SI)

Therein lies the rub.  With boatloads of talent comes expectations, and winning the press conference is great for tone-setting, but getting to and winning Final Fours is what matters most in Lexington.  Again, the Duke era was different in that with the exception of Corey Maggette in 1999, Coach K did not lose any players as 1-and-dones; but that won’t deter the vultures from ripping Calipari if he continues to sign elite talent without bringing back the accompanying hardware to support it.  The biggest case in point of this thinking is how Michigan’s Fab Five class of 1991 is often considered a failure for merely going to two straight NCAA championship games and losing.  It remains to be seen how this era of Kentucky basketball will play out (so far, one Elite Eight appearance), but we already know that the level of recruiting enjoyed by Calipari in his first three classes there rivals anything experienced in the modern era.  Coach K’s classes from 1997-99 set the bar very high — it’s now up to the individual players — from Knight/Kanter/Jones to Gilchrist/Teague/Davis — to match or exceed their accomplishments.   

It looks like we can put the Anthony Davis/Chicago Sun-Times fiasco behind us now and get to the normal recruiting news.

• The big news of the week was clearly Davis officially announcing that he had committed to Kentucky, which almost everybody knew he would for over a week.
• In a somewhat refreshing decision, Isaiah Austin, one of the top recruits in the class of 2012, has decided to cut the suspense short when he announced last Monday that he had committed to Baylor over a long list of recruiting powers including Kentucky. Is this the first coveted recruit John Calipari has failed to land while he has been in Lexington? He might be slipping.
• Speaking of Calipari (the man is everywhere during the recruiting season) he had another top recruit (Chane Behanan) visit Lexington on Wednesday. One of the interesting things about this is that Behanan, the top recruit in Kentucky and top 25 nationally who has been making a name for himself this summer, is still waiting for an offer from Kentucky. In the past this might have created an uproar in the Bluegrass State if Calipari had not been getting the best players from all over the nation.
• On the other end of the spectrum, Fran McCaffery extended a scholarship offer from Iowa to Perry Ellis, a small forward ranked in the top 25 of the class of 2012 (he’s not the fashion designer). We know that McCaffery is obliged to do this, but when some of the other schools who have extended Ellis offers include Kentucky, Kansas (his home state), Kansas State (ditto), Memphis, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, and Wake Forest, we think McCaffery is essentially like this kid proposing to Megan Fox. Having said that, if any female supermodels would like to date a college basketball blogger, e-mail me at rushthecourt@gmail.com (recruiting tips are also welcome).
• One of the more interesting pieces of news to come out this week was the possibility that Andre Drummond, rated as the top player in next year’s class, might be entering college a year early like Andre Dawkins did last year at Duke. His high school coach, however, says that no decision has been made at this point and he would talk it over with Drummond’s mother.
• Josiah Turner, one of the top guards in this year’s class, has announced his recruiting visit list, but we would be remiss if we didn’t note his mother’s defense of Isiah Thomas.

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Jeff Goodman reported today that former-Duke, current-Villanova forward Taylor King is transferring yet again, this time making his way from the cooker known as the East Coast to the balmier weather and lifestyle of Southern California.   And when we say Southern California, we mean it literally.  King will enroll at USC this fall and, after sitting out a second transfer season in 2010-11, he will be eligible to play his senior year in his home area, a little less than an hour’s drive from where he grew up in Huntington Beach.  The 6’6 forward was a key contributor at Villanova last season, averaging 7/5 per game in bench duty, but he’s shown flashes of offensive skill with eight double-figure games in points and a solid three-point stroke (career: 37%).

Right. It's the Academics.

King has had some family issues and after spending a few weeks at home this summer decided that giving up the 3,000-mile commute back to the Main Line was in his best interests.  He considered a couple of local NAIA schools, but ultimately found that sitting out the additional transfer season to play at USC was the best option.  However, it was a quote from King buried at the end of Goodman’s report that really caught our eye.  When asked about his decision-making process:

King said while he would like to continue his playing career beyond college, academics and connections at USC played a role in his decision.  “The education is off the charts at SC. No offense to Duke or Villanova, but they don’t compare.”

All snickering aside, most people reading this site may not be aware that USC is a very strong academic school despite its iconic status relating to babes and football (wonder why they’d ever have that perception?).  The latest US News & World Report ranks Southern Cal as the 26th best national university, holding a 24% acceptance rate and SAT scores that it claims are greater than crosstown rival UCLA’s (by and large considered the more academically-minded school).  But Duke?  A perennially top-10 school by any measure?  Villanova?  The top Masters University in the Northeast for more than a decade?  Questionable.

We figured that the denizens of the two dissed schools would come running to their defense, and it didn’t take long.  Villanova fans seemed to find great hilarity in the comment, while the Duke people hardly even gave his comment much consideration due to its absurdity.  Of course we realize that King is only trying to justify his decision to himself when he made that comment, but it would be fourteen kinds of awesome if USC managed to find itself in a road game at Duke or Villanova two seasons from now.  We’re fairly certain that the lesser-academically-inclined students at those places would find clever ways to make him feel welcome.  Hey, we can always hope, right?

1. Oklahoma State senior Nick Sidorakis was recently named team captain, and he immediately set an example of the selflessness asked by such leaders when he gave up his scholarship for the betterment of his Cowboy squad.  He has not been a key contributor for the OSU program in terms of points or minutes (topping out at 12.9 MPG last season), but head coach Travis Ford must be pleased that his new captain is putting his money where his mouth is from the beginning of the school year.
2. Jeff Goodman reports that WVU head coach Bob Huggins is back to work and feeling much better after his fall that broke seven ribs a couple of weeks ago in Las Vegas.  This is definitely good news — all we can hope is that Huggins, who has had a propensity for dangerous falls in the last few years, takes care of himself and stays on his feet going forward.
3. Oregon State received some good news when they found out that UTEP transfer Eric Moreland will be eligible to play for the Beavers immediately due to “special circumstances.”  What those circumstances are, we’re not exactly sure, but Tim Floyd apparently had no use for the athletic, 6’9 forward, so Craig Robinson’s team will be the beneficiary.
4. Is Isiah Thomas’ new consulting job with the New York Knicks a conflict of interest?  Adam Zagoria reports that college heavyweights such as Jim Boeheim and Coach K both believe that it is.  They have a fair point here, but since when did Isiah ever do anything without controversy?
5. Hoop Scoop has the, um, scoop on Team USA Select’s Tuesday scrimmage against NBA players in NYC.  According to Ryan Feldman, Duke stars Kyle Singler and Nolan Smith as well as UConn guard Kemba Walker seemed the most comfortable playing against Team USA as they prep for the World Championships later this month.

1. A couple of years ago we posted an article about teams taking advantage of a bylaw allowing them to start their season early by playing overseas once every four years. Coming into this season Oregon had planned to go to Europe to get ready for this season, but after the firing of Ernie Kent and a rash of other departures the Ducks are considering cancelling their trip to Europe.
2. For the past few years the NC ProAm has been one of the feature summer events for college players in particular incoming freshman with the best example being John Wall famously dunking on Jerry Stackhouse last summer. We’ve heard plenty of chatter coming out of the tournament this year about the performance of such notable incoming freshmen as Kyrie Irving and Harrison Barnes, but it was a pair of Duke players (Andre Dawkins and Ryan Kelly) that came away with the title as they scored 18 and 16 points respectively in the championship game. It probably didn’t hurt that they had a few chumps (Raymond Felton, Josh Powell, and tournament MVP Marcus Fisher) rounding out the starting line-up.
3. Speaking of Blue Devils, Nolan Smith appears to have been stepping up this summer, showing a new explosiveness that we haven’t seen thus far in his college career (at least not to this degree).  He poured in 41 points in a recent NC ProAm game, even drawing praise from former Tar Heel Jawad Williams. Our favorite part of the article is Jawad throwing “praise” at Mason Plumlee saying “Plumlee is very skilled for a guy with his height. He could be a Josh McRoberts-type player.” Uh, thanks. I’m sure every Duke fan just felt like throwing up.
4. When Tom Izzo announced that Chris Allen would no longer be a part of the Michigan State basketball program, the first thought on many people’s mind was where he would end up. According to his mother “the phones have been blowin’ up” as she cites Notre Dame, UConn, Iowa State, Memphis, and South Florida as some of the many schools that have been actively courting her son. For their part, the UConn staff has denied making any such contact. So now the question is Ms. Allen trying to pull a Drew Rosenhaus on us or is UConn being less than honest about their recruiting again?
5. Are we tired of talking about Anthony Davis and the alleged $200,000 yet?  As you know, over the weekend Davis’ father told anyone who would listen that the family was planning on suing the Chicago Sun-Times over its allegation that his son was for sale to the highest bidder on the open market.  Echoing our take on the matter (that this is much ado about nothing), Gary Parrish came correct with a witty piece describing how great the theater would be if people like John Calipari and Oliver Purnell were forced to give sworn testimony on the record.  Which is, of course, why there’s a greater chance of this computer turning into Amy Adams and flitting around the RTC offices like a winsome handmaid.