Virginia Tech announced today that it was denying transfer Allan Chaney medical clearance due to ongoing medical issues related to his diagnosis of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart) in April 2010. Chaney, who was a 4-star recruit coming out of high school in Connecticut, appeared in 23 games as a freshman at Florida where he averaged 3 points and 2.1 rebounds per game in limited action as he played just 9.8 minutes per game in a season that was marred by injuries and a season-ending suspension, which eventually led to his decision to leave Gainesville. After sitting out the 2009-10 season as a transfer at Virginia Tech expectations were high for Chaney as Hokie fans expected him to help Malcolm Delaney and Jeff Allen get the team back to the NCAA Tournament after a prolonged absence. However, that all changed when Chaney collapsed during an April 2010 workout, which at the time was thought to be due to dehydration, and was later diagnosed as myocarditis.

Complications from myocarditis kept Chaney from wearing a Hokie jersey

While Chaney recovered from the viral myocarditis the resulting scarring around his heart, which reduced his exercise capacity, was concerning enough for team physicians that he was forced to sit out the 2010-11 season and underwent an undisclosed cardiac procedure in May at the University of Pennsylvania. Still, many Hokie fans expected (or hoped) that Chaney would be available to return for the 2011-12 season. In the end, it appears that Chaney was not able to regain enough functional capacity (or there was enough concern for a potentially fatal arrhythmia) for the team doctors to clear him to play “due to persistent complications from myocarditis”. In a statement, coach Seth Greenberg said, “Allan Chaney has been through a great deal in the last year and a half. Everyone involved in our basketball program feels for him. Unfortunately, this rare condition will prevent him from continuing his career here at Virginia Tech. We will do everything in our power to assist Allan as he goes through his next procedure and support him in every way possible.”

1. John Pelphrey’s doing fine, thanks, and he appreciates your asking. The firing from Arkansas still stings a little, but he’s back at Florida as an assistant under Billy Donovan, a position he’s held before to considerable acclaim. While he seems happy to be back in a familiar place doing a job he loves, being a head coach again at a “network conference” school is something he won’t (and shouldn’t) allow to fall off his radar. We like following the career arcs of coaches in situations similar to the one Pelphrey’s in right now, to see how and where they bounce back.
2. Last week, SI.com’s Luke Winn stepped up with yet another tour de force, this time an in-depth examination of the “commitment behaviors” of players listed as top-100 recruits in the recruiting rankings. Winn and his staff put some serious time into this investigation, so we don’t want to give away all of his findings, but his data revealed — and this is just one interesting factoid among many in the article — that kids who transferred high schools were almost twice as likely to eventually back out of a college commitment. Fascinating stuff here in the midst of these days of extreme college basketball “fickleness,” as Winn describes it.
3. It’s only a matter of time until those rudimentary free markets and the walls at, say, People’s Basketball Collective #17 are awash with Duke merchandise and photos of the inestimable Mike Krzyzewski, if they aren’t already. We hope they’ve packed their guidebooks and downloaded those vocal translator apps, because the Blue Devils are off to China next weekend with a little side jaunt to Dubai thrown in there, too. Not only will the 13-day trip help Coach K see how his five new incoming frosh fit in with his returning charges, but, as Krzyzewski says, it also helps forward their “initiative to become a global entity.” Wait, you mean…they weren’t one?
4. Last month, Notre Dame incoming freshman Eric Katenda was in Washington DC playing a pick-up game. He went up for a rebound, came down, and an opposing player went for the ball, but hit Katenda in the left eye…severing his optic nerve. While there’s plenty of research out there aimed at regenerating optic nerve tissue after it’s been cut, medical science isn’t far enough along right now to help Katenda regain his vision in that eye, so his college basketball career is already in question and he hasn’t even fully enrolled yet. We hate hearing things like this and we can’t imagine the disappointment Eric is feeling, but we were happy to read that Notre Dame still plans to honor the young man’s scholarship, whatever happens.
5. Herb Magee has amassed 922 wins in his coaching career, ALL at Philadelphia University, and as of 48 hours ago he assumed his rightful place in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. We’re sure you’ve already heard of Coach Magee and his coaching excellence, and how he’s known as The Shot Doctor. But that’s not just because he’s good at helping others with their form from distance. In his day, Magee could — actually, he still can — make it rain. He scored 2,235 points in his career (that’s 24.0 PPG) and was known as Baby Jesus, a nickname you don’t earn in Philly unless you deserve it. If he’d have had the three-point line, his numbers would have been even more impressive. The Philadelphia Inquirer did a great piece on Magee and his shooting prowess a day ahead of his HOF induction, and we recommend it highly. We love how Magee’s friends rib him about how his #4 jersey that hangs in the gym’s rafters isn’t so much his jersey number as it is his career assist total. Outstanding.

If you are interested in participating in our ATB2 feature, send in your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com. We will add to this post throughout the day as the submissions come in so keep on sending them.

General News

• 2011-12 Florida Basketball Non-Conference Schedule Includes Ohio State, Arizona, Syracuse: “Billy Donovan’s Florida basketball team won’t be dining on the typical buffet of cupcakes in the 2011-12 non-conference schedule. Instead, these Gators will follow up their Elite Eight run in the 2011 NCAA Tournament by playing one of the toughest non-conference schedules in college basketball this coming season.” (Alligator Army)
  
• St. John’s and Arizona to square off in Coaches vs. Cancer Classic: “The 2K Sports Classic revealed Wednesday that the Arizona Wildcats will face the St. John’s Red Storm in the second semifinal game of the Coaches vs. Cancer tournament on Nov. 17 at Madison Square Garden in New York.” (Arizona Desert Swarm)
  
• 2011 Puerto Rico Tip-Off Bracket Released: “We’ve known the field for the Puerto Rico Tip-Off – Maryland basketball’s preseason tournament this year – for months now, but we had no idea who the Terrapins were going to play. The full bracket was released earlier this morning, and that question has been answered: the Terps will play Alabama in the first round on November 17 at 5:00pm.” (Testudo Times)
• Wichita State to play Colorado in Puerto Rico Tip-Off: “The brackets have been released, and Wichita State opens the tournament against former assistant coach, Tad Boyle and his Colorado Buffaloes at 6:30 Central, on November 17th.” (Shocker Hoops)
• Garrett Green takes final visit to Wichita State: “The recruitment process is coming to a close for Garrett Green, who announced he would leave Louisiana State to play his final season elsewhere on July 18. In the 16 days since that announcement it’s been a whirlwind for Green, who is now on his fourth visit in a little over two weeks. The 6-foot-11 center, who averaged 6.3 points and 5.1 rebounds in 18 minutes per game last year at LSU, confirmed this morning via Twitter that his current trip to Wichita State will be his final visit.” (Inside the Hall)
• Rick Pitino press conference notes: Take-home points from Pitino’s 40-minute press conference. (Card Chronicle)

1. The match-ups for several early season tournaments were released yesterday. Looking through the match-ups we have to say we are kind of underwhelmed. By far the best bracket released yesterday was from the 2K Sports Classic, which features Texas A&M against Mississippi State and St. John’s against Arizona. With four intriguing teams we would be interested in all four of the games played there including the consolation game. Outside of that the only interesting match-ups are the opening round match-up between Iona and Purdue in the Puerto Rico Tip-Off and a potential match-up between Vanderbilt and Texas in the Legends Classic. Of course, our perception of what is deemed a quality early season tournament might be skewed by the upcoming Maui Invitational.
2. On Tuesday we pointed out how weak Connecticut‘s non-conference schedule was. We won’t be doing the same with Florida‘s non-conference schedule where they are scheduled to play against six teams that made the NCAA Tournament last season. The most daunting games are trips to Ohio State and Syracuse (both of which should be ranked in the top 5 in the preseason rankings). Outside of that the Gators will play against Arizona, Florida State, and UAB in Gainesville and a neutral site game against Texas A&M. That has to be one of the most brutal non-conference schedules in the country and if Billy Donovan has any questions about his team they should be answered relatively early in the year.
3. Yesterday there was a lot of buzz on Twitter about an article in The Wall Street Journal about Jerron Love, a 15-year old basketball player, and his father Jerry, who runs his own recruiting site. The basic premise of the article is that Jerron is a “phenom” who some are calling the country’s top eighth-grade basketball player. The catch? The person calling him that is his father. We didn’t have a chance to follow every comment on Twitter about this story, but it seemed like everybody thought the entire story was ridiculous (here’s our tweet about it). The more amusing thing was how they were interviewing people who were raving about Jerron based on the ranking and did not even realize that it was his father doing the ranking.
4. For years sports fans have made jokes about Boise State‘s blue football field. Now, thanks to Northwestern, we may have the college basketball version. The school is designing the court at Welsh-Ryan Arena and has offered it fans (and curious onlookers) four options from which they can reportedly choose the new court. We aren’t sure how much impact the fan voting (done here), but we would like to direct your attention to option 3. We are hoping that option 3 is a joke or we might have to make another post similar to the one we did for Oregon‘s court.
5. The NCAA granted Toledo transfer Hayden Humes a waiver to play next season at the University of Illinois-Chicago after Toledo’s program lost three scholarships due to low APR scores. As a freshman Humes averaged 5.7 PPG and 5.1 RPG and he will be expected to contribute to a team that finished last in the Horizon League (7-24 overall, 2-16 in conference) and graduated its top three rebounders from last season. While Toledo will miss his production on the court they might miss his 3.43 GPA as a freshman even more as it may have been more helpful to the program in the long run.

1. The Dominican Republic’s national basketball team arrived in Kentucky yesterday before they start their training camp on Sunday. The team from the Dominican Republic is training in Lexington per request of their coach, John Calipari. While most of the college basketball world’s interest in the Kentucky Legends team that is being assembled and will feature many recent NBA stars who recently played for the Wildcats, we are more interested in the Dominican Republic team that has Al Horford (Florida) and Edgar Sosa (Louisville) on it staying in Lexington for at least 2 weeks (the game against the UK Legends is on August 15th) with the, um, crazed Wildcat fans around them. If ESPN or any network decided to follow this team while they were in Lexington we would definitely tune in.
2. UNLV‘s hiring of Dave Rice was widely praised as a sign that the program was headed in the right direction, but don’t count Runnin’ Rebel legend Larry Johnson in that group. The 1991 National Player of the Year has come out recently and been very critical of the program and the direction it has taken under an administration that is headed by Jim Livengood, who came from Arizona, which has led Johnson to say, “It’s not UNLV Runnin’ Rebels no more, it’s UNLV Wildcats right now.” Johnson concedes that former coach Lon Kruger had made some attempts to bring some of the former UNLV players back into the program. When Kruger left Johnson put his name in for consideration, but was reportedly not even contacted by the current administration. While Johnson does not have any coaching experience that we are aware of and his name probably doesn’t carry a lot of weight with players who are entering college or younger, it is pretty clear that the UNLV administration made a mistake here by not even reaching out to Johnson even if it was only for show. Given UNLV’s recent efforts to land local recruits having someone of Johnson’s reputation on their side would be a major pull even if it was only the AAU and high school coaches who knew how good “Grandmama” used to be.
3. After arriving at Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon talked openly about installing a 4-guard offense. That task and creation of a rotation to make the feasible became harder earlier this week when rising sophomore Haukur Palsson announced that he was heading back to Europe to play professionally. Normally the loss of a player who averaged 2.8 points and 2.1 rebounds per game would be relatively minor, but with Palsson’s ability to play inside and outside he would have been an ideal player to use in the rotation as a guard who could also battle underneath for rebounds. With Palsson gone the Terrapins only have eight scholarship players and fitting them into an unconventional offense could be a big challenge for the new head coach.
4. When we first saw the headline mentioning that Jabari Parker, one of the stars of the class of 2013, was seriously considering BYU we brushed it off as just more ridiculous Internet speculation until we remembered that Parker is a member of the LDS Church. While BYU has had its share of star players they very rarely land a major recruit (Danny Ainge is the only even close to Parker’s level that I can think of). The hype on Parker is already getting to ridiculous levels (Mike Krzyzewski has compared him to Kobe Bryant and Grant Hill and Seth Davis has already written a feature story on him for Sports Illustrated), but don’t think that just because Parker is a member of the LDS Church he will be a guaranteed commit to BYU. Our older members will remember that when 1997 Sporting News National Player of the Year Chris Burgess turned down BYU then head coach Roger Reid told him that he was letting “the other 9 million members of the LDS Church down” (before he let millions of Duke fans down with his play during his two years there).
5. When former Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl was fired in March there was plenty of speculation about where he would head next. While the logical choice seemed like a TV studio or announcing booth, it looks like Pearl wants to get back into coaching. With a NCAA show-cause penalty imminent Pearl would have to head to the NBA (former Oklahoma coach Kelvin Sampson’s hiring is a pretty clear indication that the NBA doesn’t care about breaking NCAA rules). It appears that the Texas Legends, the NBDL franchise for the Dallas Mavericks, are interested in hiring Pearl as a head coach. Pearl will meet with the team on Thursday in Dallas and reportedly has the job locked up if he wants it. Even though we will miss Pearl’s antics and his excellent coaching we have a feeling that this may be a sign that we won’t be seeing Pearl around college basketball any time soon.

With the completion of the NBA Draft and the annual coaching and transfer carousels nearing their ends, RTC is rolling out a new series, RTC Summer Updates, to give you a crash course on each Division I conference during the summer months. Our latest update comes courtesy of our SEC correspondent, Gerald Smith.  This season he will be covering the NCAA Basketball with zeal, nerd-culture references and a fistful of silliness at halftimeadjustment.com. You can also follow him on Twitter (@fakegimel).

Reader’s Take

Summer Storylines

• One Big, Mostly-Happy Conference: After several years of divisional lopsidedness in conference scheduling and tournament seeding – to the dismay of programs like Alabama — the SEC has merged the West and East divisions for basketball. A 16-game conference schedule, consisting of the same pairings within and across old divisions, remains for the 2011-12 season. Starting with this year’s SEC Tournament, teams will be seeded and awarded first-round byes by their overall conference record. The most vocal dissenter against peace, conference unity and love was Mississippi State coach Rick Stansbury. He argued unsuccessfully that divisional championships create excitement for the fans. MSU athletics must have sold some awesome merchandise for Coach Stansbury’s six SEC West Division championships.
• Too Much of a Good Thing? – Stansbury also argued that a united 12-team conference won’t produce a true champion unless each team plays a full 22-game home and away conference schedule. In July’s coaches’ conference call, some SEC coaches (South Carolina’s Darrin Horn & LSU’s Trent Johnson) agreed, but wonder if such a schedule is feasible. Other coaches (Kentucky’s John Calipari & Alabama’s Anthony Grant) believe that teams should worry more about strengthening their non-conference scheduling and RPI ratings. Increasing the schedule to at least 18 games would placate athletic directors and the SEC’s broadcast partners, but would add further scheduling imbalance and hysteria. In meetings, the decision to increase the number of conference games was postponed until after the 2011-12 season. The SEC coaches will meet again later in August to debate their options.
• Missouri Newbies – Two coaches previously employed in the Show-Me State join the SEC during this period of conference remodeling. As an assistant under former Arkansas coach Nolan Richardson, new Arkansas coach Mike Anderson became very familiar with the “40 Minutes of Hell” system (and Coach Richardson’s snakeskin boot collection). After stops with UAB and Missouri, Anderson returned to Fayetteville to replace John Pelphrey.
• Caught lying to cover-up his impermissible BBQ — mmmm… impermissible BBQ… *gurgle noise* — Tennessee was forced to fire Bruce Pearl. Missouri State’s Cuonzo Martin was hired to fill Pearl’s vacated orange blazer. With his athletic director resigning and additional NCAA penalties applied to his program, Martin may long for his past days in Springfield.

A major growth spurt led to a similar shoot up the 2011 high school rankings for Kentucky's Anthony Davis. (Sam Forencich/USA Basketball)

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1. “My account was hacked!” goes the common cry of players and sometimes even coaches who tweet something they soon end up regretting, right? Well, you wont hear anything like that coming from any of the University of New Mexico’s players. In fact, you won’t hear anything at all in the way of tweets from them, because Steve Alford has mandated a Twitter gag order for everyone on his squad. As of this writing, Facebook is still allowed. So, what do you think? Overprotective, or sound judgment by Coach Alford?
2. And now, your daily Salinas: most of the talk in this area on Wednesday centered around the NCAA investigation into the matter. As in…does one exist? First, the revered Andy Katz stepped up with an article announcing that the NCAA had no intention of investigating the possibility of what would amount to a player-for-investment money scam (not to mention the simultaneous alleged Ponzi scheme being examined by the Feds). The only problem is that for the rest of the day people came forward with evidence that such an investigation had already begun. Was Katz lied to or did the NCAA change their mind extremely quickly on the matter? Or is this the difference between a formal vs. informal probe?
3. Louisville will not be getting lei’d in 2012. They’ve pulled out of the Maui Invitational that year and will be replaced by Marquette. But don’t put the floral shirts, sunscreen and swimming trunks away just yet, Cardinal fans. Instead of Maui that year, you’ll have to settle for the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas. Card Chronicle has a pretty persuasive list of reasons as to why this is a better move for the team, not the least of which is that the Bahamas is emerging as fertile ground for basketball talent.
4. There was a Sweet 16 ten years ago, but in the last 40 years that’s all that Penn State basketball has had to get happy about as far as NCAA Tournament achievements. We had to stop and consider that before immediately writing off the notion that, as Black Shoe Diaries asserts, the best days ever for Penn State basketball are now underway with the hiring of Pat Chambers. Obviously we’ll have to wait and see if they’re proven correct, but after reading the piece and the comments section we’ll at least give everyone involved full marks for how they’ve used Chambers’ arrival as an opportunity to renew their emotional investment.
5. Andy Staples sure knows how to get your attention. Sports Illustrated is doing a series called “The Best Team I Ever Covered” in which it asks each of its writers over several sports about…well, you get it. For his submission, Staples chose the 2005-06 Florida Gators and included the words “Miss Sweden” in the title. We didn’t consider ourselves suckered, however, since his story was a nice insight into his coverage of that squad and the odd yet enjoyable journey it must have been. For the few of you who weren’t aware, Joakim Noah’s mother was a Miss Sweden. Yes, that Joakim Noah.

If you are interested in participating in our ATB2 feature, send in your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com. We will add to this post throughout the day as the submissions come in so keep on sending them.

General News

• Former Kentucky Student Assistant To Play For Turkey National Squad: “Forever a former Wildcat in our hearts, Enes Kanter was listed among 18 players set to play for the Turkish National Team on their finalized roster. Kanter mentioned a handful of times that he would like to play for Turkey in the event of a lockout, so seeing this made official doesn’t come as much of a shock. Kanter will be joined by a few other NBA players including Hedo Turkoglu and a few other players you aren’t familiar with.” (Kentucky Sports Radio)
• FIBA U19 World Championship — USA Defeats Australia For Fifth Place: Team US was unable to win gold, but knocked off the Aussie in the 5th place game. (Villanova by the Numbers)
• Erik Murphy Receives Deferred Prosecution: “Remember the incident at a St. Augustine bar in April that produced arrests for Florida basketball players Erik Murphy and Cody Larson? Murphy’s taking deferred prosecution for his part, according to the Orlando Sentinel, an arrangement that should keep him from doing time and in the Florida program.” (Alligator Army)

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On Thursday, the University of Kentucky issued a statement claiming that it was in error in celebrating John Calipari’s 500th win on February 26 after beating Florida, and that in future media guides and any published material it would depict Calipari’s career win total with the vacated wins from his time at Memphis and Massachusetts subtracted.

Behold, the Statistic In Dispute, From Kentucky's 2010-11 Factbook

Here’s what happened. At the beginning of the 2010-11 season, Kentucky considered Calipari to have logged 480 wins (vacated wins not removed), while the NCAA officially listed him with 438 (42 wins removed). The NCAA evidently considered it to be a slap in the face when Kentucky had its small post-game display to mark what UK considered Cal’s 500th win on February 26, as well as the fact that its media guides and website ignored the NCAA’s removal of the wins from Calipari’s record. It asked UK to change it and alert the media that the celebration of Calipari’s 500th was erroneous. Kentucky’s compliance office responded to the NCAA, but they were unmoved and sent another missive, again  pressing for the change. And the reason the NCAA knew about this and went down this road was…a tip from a fan of a rival program.

[Ed. Note: You can read the correspondence between the NCAA and Kentucky here. It’s pretty interesting. And we’re not sure how Lexington Herald-Leader sportswriter Jerry Tipton could ever comfortably show his face in Lexington again.]

This was the right move by Kentucky. It wouldn’t make any sense for the program to go out of its way to position itself on the NCAA’s bad side, and 42 wins is simply too small a prize to justify the continued poking of that bear. At some point John Calipari will move on and either coach somewhere else or retire. Kentucky won’t care how many wins John Calipari has then, but we guarantee the NCAA would remember it if Kentucky decided to openly defy them. As we all know, the NCAA is still judge, jury and executioner in this biz, and if anything should come up in the future, you’d rather they have a more favorable opinion of you. Kentucky noted the error, didn’t apologize — one really wasn’t warranted, though it sounds like that’s what the NCAA wanted — but promised to make the adjustment the NCAA asked for. And let’s be honest — if those are the rules everyone has to play by, then justice really was done here.

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Who’s Got Next? is a bi-weekly column by Josh Paunil, the RTC recruiting guru. We encourage you to check out his website dedicated solely to college basketball recruiting, National Recruiting Spotlight, for more detailed recruiting information. Twice a week he will bring you an overview of what’s going on in the complex world of recruiting, from who is signing where among the seniors to who the hot prospects are in the lower levels of the sport. If you have any suggestions as to areas we’re missing, please let us know at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

Introduction

Freshmen and sophomores dominated in Colorado Springs last week during the USA U-16 developmental team training camp while the best point guard in the Class of 2011 hit a buzzer beater to win a fiercely competitive interstate all-star game. A few top ten stars in the Class of 2012 also announced new lists, new visits and new favorites as Jim Calhoun and the Connecticut Huskies continued their dominance on the recruiting trail. An article on the fastest rising junior in the country was another must-read as we take you into this edition of Who’s Got Next?

What They’re Saying

Kaleb Tarczewski (#6) spoke about his Kansas visit. (NY2LA Sports)

• Junior Kaleb Tarczewski (#6) on his Kansas visit: “It was really good, I really like it there. This trip was really for my mom. She hadn’t been there yet and I wanted her to see it.”
• Sophomore standout Allerik Freeman on some schools on his list: “Florida is a great program with a great staff. NC State is on the right tracking trying to get back to the national spotlight. Georgetown has a rich tradition, and great staff with a nice offense. Tennessee is a place where my game fits in great.”
• Omar Calhoun, Sr., on his son, junior Omar Calhoun, Jr., committing to Connecticut: “After spending time with [head] coach [Jim] Calhoun and the rest of the coaching staff, we felt it was a place we needed to be. He believes he fits well… coach Calhoun has had a tremendous amount of success with NYC guards.”
• Junior Ricardo Ledo (#9) on what’s factoring in on his decision: “I want to go somewhere I can win. Playing time is also important.”
• Junior Rodney Purvis (#7) on his Missouri visit: “It was great and fun. The visit was not what I expected!”
• Junior Archie Goodwin (#19) on Kentucky head coach John Calipari: “He’s just a great person. He helps people excel and fulfill their dreams.”
• Junior Jordan Price on his commitment to Auburn: “I just felt like it was the best fit for me and my family. It’s not too far away from my home so family and friends can come watch.”
• Class of 2012 center Landen Lucas on his Kansas visit: “Loved it! [Assistant] coach [Danny] Manning stood out because of how well he develops bigs and gets them to the next level.”
• Don Showalter on players who stood out at the USA U-16 Developmental Team tryouts: “[Class of 2013 Watch List power forwards Jabari] Parker and [Aaron] Gordon really stood out, they are really, really good players. They are going to be the best players in the tournament, no question. We started there and built around them.”
• Senior Norvel Pelle on why he committed to St. John’s: “I wanted to get the best of both worlds. It’s a perfect opportunity with their new class of freshman and being in New York. I have a good relationship with the whole coaching staff and we try to connect on a daily basis. They’re all down to earth and chill.”

What We Learned

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