Dear NCAA,
We promise that we have not had any contact with recruits outside the parameters set forth by your upstanding institution.

Sincerely,
Rush the Court

• Obviously the big news this past week has been the punishment of Bruce Pearl and the effect it would have on Tennessee‘s ability to recruit. It looks like some players including RTC favorite Adonis Thomas are beginning to express some reservations about going to a school that is sure to be closely followed by the NCAA.
• The big actual recruiting news is that Arizona landed Josiah Turner, the #3 ranked point guard in this year’s class. Now Sean Miller faces an interesting dilemma — how to fit all his scholarship players onto a roster in light of the NCAA sanctions against them stemming from the Lute Olson era. One of the recruits that many expect the Wildcats to be in contention for is LeBryan Nash, but it appears like the talented small forward is leaning towards Oklahoma State over Arizona, Kansas, and Baylor.
  

  Sean Miller will be counting on Turner to turn the Wildcats around

• Speaking of point guards. . . Austin Rivers, the de facto #1 point guard in the country and possibly the top player in the country, has narrowed his list down to three schools — Duke, UNC, and Kansas — after eliminating Florida from consideration. Some are speculating that Duke, which many consider to be the leader in the Rivers sweepstakes, could land both Rivers and Quinn Cook. [Ed. Note: Is Coach K cool with his star player and a potential recruit hanging out with Michael Beasley, a player of questionable character?]
• Ohio State received a commitment from Sam Thompson, one of the top small forwards in this year’s class, with a little help from Evan Turner, who apparently has been texting Thompson to convince him to go to Columbus [Ed. Note: Is this allowed by the NCAA?].
• With all of these top recruits committing it is interesting and somewhat refreshing to see Norvel Pelle, the #2 center in this year’s senior class, just beginning to take home visits.

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Now that we’re done with the ridiculous LeBron ego-fest the sports media can get back on people who actually care about sport rather than just making themselves into even bigger celebrities.

1. The CBE Classic (not Tournament) has announced that Duke, Kansas State, Gonzaga, and Marquette will host the regional games against Princeton and Miami (OH); James Madison and Presbyterian; Bucknell and Wisconsin-Green Bay; and IUPUI and San Diego State, respectively. The hosts will automatically advance to the semifinals in Kansas City regardless of whether they win or lose the regional games.
2. The US National Team announced the practice squad of college players that will scrimmage against the NBA players prior to the lead-up to the World Championships later this summer. While the National Team won’t be that loaded this summer don’t expect these college players to beat the National Team in any of these scrimmages like the 1992 team did against “The Dream Team” in the first scrimmage (where Michael Jordan only played 3 minutes).
3. Some sad news about the health of Dean Smith during his retirement. Although we could speculate about the causes and prognosis much like we could have with the recently departed John Wooden we won’t out of respect to both the coach and his family and instead wish them the best in what is undoubtedly a difficult situation.
4. And more sad news out, but this time out of Lexington as we noted  former Kentucky All-American Mel Turpin committed suicide at his home yesterday. A dominant player in college (scroll down), Turpin was less successful in the NBA where he was drafted #6 in the 1984 NBA Draft where his teammate Sam Bowie was drafted 2nd above some guy named Jordan. Still Turpin seemed to keep things in perspective once telling Sports Illustrated, “In my day, they thought the big man was supposed to be thin. They didn’t know too much. It was medieval.”
5. ESPN and the ACC have reached a 12-year TV deal worth $1.86 billion for both basketball and football. We can only hope this means that ESPN will broadcast more games during the season instead of all of their non-entertaining entertainment shows that they have filled air time with in recent years.