Posted by nvr1983 on July 18th, 2014
- We have heard of package deals before (we even wrote about it in the early days of the site), but the decision by Memphis to hire Keelon Lawson as an assistant is unique even by those standards. Now Lawson is not just some random guy off the street as he played college basketball and led a Tennessee high school team to a state title so you could make the case that he was a legitimate hire albeit a rather unusual one as his credentials are not particularly noteworthy. The thing about him that is noteworthy is that he is the father of four elite recruits. The oldest of those recruits is K. J., a top-50 recruit in the class of 2015, who has already committed to play at Memphis. The others are reportedly even better with Dedric (class of 2016) being a top-10 player and two much younger ones–Chandler (class of 2019) and Jonathan (a sixth-grader)–being considered even better. The fact that the official Memphis release linked above does not mention any of them (even K. J., who already committed) is amusing to say the least. It will be quite a bit of time before Chandler much less Jonathan is making official college visits to it will be interesting to see how this relationship between Keelon and Josh Pastner evolves.
- The announcement that John Adams, the NCAA supervisor of officials, will be retiring after the 2015 Final Four might not strike some as particularly noteworthy, but it is to us. Outside of issues regarding when players can enter the NBA Draft and those regarding amateurism we things have been more hotly debated than recent rule changes. Adams is not directly responsible for creating these new rules, but his job is to make sure that they are uniformly enforced throughout college basketball and works with conferences, who are then in touch with their officials, to try to improve on certain areas where enforcement is less than ideal. Adams has caught a lot of heat over the years for the way that certain rules are enforced, but overall we think he has done a good job and whomever is selected to follow him has big shoes to fill.
- Yesterday, attorneys in Rhode Island announced that they will not be pressing charges in the sexual assault case at Providence that led to the dismissal of Brandon Austin and Rodney Bullock after a grand jury determined their was insufficient evidence to move forward in the case. The case stemmed from a report of sexual assault in November 2013 in which a female student accused the two players of sexually assaulting her. Austin as you might remember transferred to Oregon where he was involved in another sexual assault case that led to his dismissal there. He is now enrolled at a community college in Kansas. Bullock stayed at Providence and is expected to play for the team this season.
- On Wednesday, Maryland announced its 2014 Hall of Fame class, which was headlined by Len Bias. While all the others that were honored are very accomplished (ok, we have never heard of anybody else on that list), Bias stands out for several reasons. The most obvious of which is the way that he died. Some people like John Feinstein feel that the way that Bias died should mean that he is excluded from the Hall of Fame. While this leaves a somber note on Bias’ legacy, that alone should not keep him out. Obviously people will have their own views on morality and drug use, but excluding Bias keeps out a significant part of the history of Maryland basketball, which seems myopic. How the school decides to handle Bias’ legacy is another issue, but one that the school should address and not try to sweep under the rug.
- One of the nice things about the offseason is that it allows people to work on stuff that they otherwise wouldn’t have time to get to. For some people that means non-basketball things. For Ken Pomeroy, it means even more in-depth situation analysis. His latest task is dissecting the decision on whether a team should foul when tied late in a game. This installment is just an initial look at the data with Pomeroy promising to get more complex in his analysis in the next installment. This probably won’t catch on as much as the “foul up 3” debate, but it is still an interesting one.
| morning 5, Regular Features
| Tagged: brandon austin, john adams, keelon lawson, len bias, rodney bullock
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