(h/t ESPN Page 2)

This Greg Paulus football story has gotten a lot of play in the national media the past few weeks as the former HS all-american quarterback has jetted around the nation working out with the Green Bay Packers, Michigan, Syracuse and Nebraska.  The guys at Page 2 (remember when that was cool?) have come up with a t-shirt to commemmorate Greg’s spring/summer world tour.  Good stuff.

Ray Floriani of College Chalktalk is the RTC correspondent for the NEC and MAAC conferences.  He also officiates youth league basketball in his spare time. 

WEST ORANGE, NJ –  Chalk it up under the ‘you never know who you will meet’ department. This past weekend called for officiating assignments at an AAU tournament here at West Orange High School. Both days called for three games and an appreciable supply of water as the local mercury rose. On Saturday, after finishing two girls and a boys game, I ran into coach and New Jersey Senator Richard Codey whose team played on the adjoining court. “No column today,” I joked. He got a laugh and told me about the highly touted recruit (6’8 Ferrakohn Hall)  Seton Hall just signed.   

On Sunday the schedule called for three games beginning at 8:30 a.m. Not the easiest time to begin boys 17 and under games but definitely advantageous to beat the expected 90 degree heat. As it turns out I have Codey’s 17 and under West Orange team. There are two games that go on simultaneously. I am chatting with my partner Sue Lisanti and the officials from the next court Leslie Porschen (an excellent player in her day at FDU) and Mary Ann Conboy. Codey interjects and jokingly challenges political correctness by saying “the women are taking over.” Leslie notes that our Board 33 chapter is actually low on women’s officiating numbers and could use more members. “I mean we have had a lot of women working this tournament,’ he said in a joking manner. After a little more small talk it’s toss the ball up and get to work.

West Orange is playing a team from Ocean County, New Jersey, the Wolfpack. Early on it’s a good competitive game. Codey’s team is running some nice flex offense in half court sets. It’s obvious he is not an AAU coach that ‘rolls out the basketballs’ but teaches offensive and defensive structure. If he is looking for a call he usually implores my name but overall he spends a greater deal of effort on his team’s execution.  On one play his guard got the wind knocked out of him. We stop play and summon Codey on the floor. “He’s getting hit harder than the Germans in World War II,” Codey says as he smiles and winks. “I like that one coach,” was my reply. We move on and at the half it’s still close.

“My center is getting more hits than Susan Boyle on YouTube,” Codey says at the scorers table so tournament co-director Mary Alice Zavocki can hear. He is laughing as he says this and asks if I saw Boyle on You Tube over the weekend. More small talk in good fun.

Second half, West Orange has a ten point lead then proceeds to lose all but one point of it. We have a transition play coming to me on the lead position. The Wolfpack player executes a jump stop that looks funny. In a split second the information is processed in my mind. Years of Edgar Cartotto’s officiating camp drilled into us his philosophy, “if you not sure it’s a walk don’t call it. I’d rather you blow a walk call than screw (Edgar’s verbiage is colorful) a kid who didn’t walk by calling it.” I’m not sure, I let it go. The player scores and out of the corner of my eye I can see Codey jumping and making a walk jesture while saying, “ohh Ray.”  My thoughts are of Bobby Gonzalez who has made similar moves on the Hall bench. During a time out, Mary Alice, keeping the clock, said it was a nice no call. I just told her my view and Edgar’s philosophy.

Codey’s team never lost the lead, regrouped and earned a nice 68-60 victory.  Post game, I tell both teams nice effort and both coaches it was a pleasure to work their game. As it turned out a noticeably tall assistant joined Codey’s bench during the game. It was the Hall’s John Garcia. I introduced myself, spoke about the writing and covering his games and commended his Hall club on working hard and doing a nice job this season. Garcia refers to Hall and says, “wait till you see us next year, we are going to surprise people.”

Codey heads out, I say good game again and jokingly note today we had no cheerleaders today (the above is provided from a Seton Hall game earlier this year). He got a laugh out of that one.

From the he-better-get-used-to-this department, we came across this story of Tyler Hansbrough making an arse of himself at a recent barnstorming exhibition game against something called the Crossfire Ministries in Asheville, NC, Sunday night.  From the Asheville Citizen-Times:

Fans who attended Sunday’s exhibition game at the Asheville Civic Center between the ACC All-Stars and Crossfire Ministries noticed that North Carolina All-American Tyler Hansbrough made a hasty exit.  Crossfire’s Richie Stevens was fouled on an impressive move toward the basket and made two free throws for a 101-100 lead late in the game.  With the All-Stars trying to maneuver for a potential game-winning shot, Hansbrough was whistled for traveling in the final seconds. Apparently annoyed — and you know poor Tyler never gets a call from the refs — Hansbrough left the court, followed by some other members of the team, before the final horn sounded.  To be fair, an announcement had been made that there would be no postgame autograph session like the one that was held after Saturday night’s game because the players had a commitment and had to get on the road.  More than one fan has mentioned that they were a bit surprised by Hansbrough’s reaction.

This comes on the heels of a story last week of Psycho-T acting the spoiled jerk in a previous exhibition game against a bunch of high schoolers from Hickory, NC, by woofing at the players on the court and clamming up in the autograph session afterwards.

The good news is that Hansbrough already appears to have this NBA prima donna thing down.

Methinks someone is getting a liiiiiittle too specific with their social networking policy (such a thing exists?).

Indeed.  The University of Oklahoma, still smarting from probation based on impermissible phone calls by Kelvin Sampson and a pay-for-play scandal involving bogus jobs (not to mention former Sooner Josh Jarboe’s profane riffs on existentialism), has released records of its new social networking policy, which endeavors to outline exactly the kinds of news feed updates, photo montages and tweets that, as student-athletes, are not in the best interests of the Sooner Nation.  Specifically, from the AP:

[A]thletes are warned that their postings must comply with a code of conduct and can be punishable with education, counseling, suspension or expulsion and with the reduction or cancellation of financial aid. It warns athletes not to post pictures that would portray them negatively nor post contact information that agents or their runners could use to put the athletes’ eligibility in jeopardy.  “‘Partying,’ ‘drinking,’ and ‘getting wasted’ do not qualify as real hobbies or interests,” the policy warns.

We’ve yet to see the entire document of prohibitions, but hopefully the OU compliance folks managed to capture some of the other necessary guidelines to avoid the ignominy of NCAA gumshoes once again sniffing around Norman:

• do not wear a dress ten sizes too small (Blake Griffin)
• do not publicly refer to the NCAA as the National Communists Against Athletes (Brian Bosworth)
• do not shoot teammates, rob the coach’s house, distribute controlled substances to the FBI or gang-rape coeds (Switzer’s crew)
• do not pick up the phone if a coach is indiscriminately calling you whenever he damn well pleases (Kelvin Sampson)

That should do it.  There are undoubtedly more, but these will get the Sooner Nation started.

Man, this guy just continues to be a bloggerati goldmine.  From last night’s Volscars…

After four years as the recipient of regular teabagging (memo to neocons haters of federal government expansion who were curiously silent until Jan. 20, 2009: we’re not talking about your tea party nonsense), Duke’s Greg Paulus has readied himself for the next level.  Pro Football Talk reported yesterday that Paulus, a former Gatorade national HS player of the year on the gridiron, worked out for the Green Bay Packers over the weekend. 

There are a million great jokes that we could roll out here, but we’d be hard-pressed to overcome the job that Chris Mottram at the Sporting Blog has already done for us.   Pure brilliance.  (h/t Sporting Blog)

Paulus immediately drew three roughing the passer calls before running into the endzone, slapping the grass twice and then having this happen to him:

Somebody call MJ.  We may have found him a gambling buddy.

Tar Heel point guard Ty Lawson’s Big Toe may have arrived in Detroit Wednesday, but within hours of arrival, he’d already made his way down to the Greektown Casino and won himself $250 at the craps tables. From the AP report:

“We got in last night, and Coach (Roy Williams) gave us a curfew of 1:30,” Lawson said when asked if he had visited any casinos. “I went over to Greektown and won about $250. So I already had my time there. It’s probably the last time I go there before the games start.”  Lawson said he played only craps and earned his winnings in about an hour.  “The only time I lost was in Reno; that’s when everybody on the team lost,” he said. “It’s the only place I lost. The other five or six times I did gamble, I won at least $500.”  Team spokesman Steve Kirschner said the 21-year-old is legally of age to visit a casino.

Far be it from us to disparage a guy who clearly has this gambling thing figured out already.  The important part is that he’s a winner, and a winner always wins, no matter how far down you get.  Right, Mr. Mahowny Lawson?

One of the very best things about college sports other than the cheerleaders and the dance teams are the mascots.  And while you’ll never, ever see a cute blonde pixie getting in the face of a competitor, it’s fairly common for mascots to get involved in tomfoolery and hijinks.  Case in point: last night at the WAC Tournament with seven seconds left in a one-pt game, Utah St.’s “Big Blue” confronted New Mexico St.’s “Pistol Pete” and ripped off his mustache, leading to a row during a timeout in the middle of the court.  From the AP report:

During a timeout with 7 seconds left and New Mexico State leading 70-69, Utah State’s mascot, “Big Blue” the bull, confronted New Mexico State’s “Pistol Pete” cowboy mascot and ripped off his fake mustache. The cowboy then chased the bull to halfcourt, jumped on his back and tried unsuccessfully to pull him to the floor. “Pistol Pete” then started to try to choke his rival before retreating to his end of the court. Several newspaper photographers covering the game said they heard a man in a Nevada shirt offer the Utah State mascot $100 to go grab the mustache. The man confirmed to The Associated Press that was true and that he paid the mascot the $100, but declined to provide his name. He said he did not expect New Mexico State’s “Pistol Pete” to respond the way he did.

This is phenomenal.  Who is this nefarious Nevada fan peeling off hundies like he was PacMan over at Solid Platinum?  And how perfect was his timing in that situation – can you imagine if Big Blue had gotten his team – down one point at the time – a tech for his aggression?  Stew Morrill probably would have gored Big Blue with his own horns.

If anyone finds a video of this, send it along and we’ll put it up.

Yep, it wouldn’t be mid-March unless we had a new Coach K commercial…  this time it’s Nike, and no, it’s not that funny.

Cue the unfair recruiting advantage hysteria.

Some interesting RTC stories from the last couple of nights.  RTC stories – as in actual “rushing the court” stories, as opposed to the normal tripe that we throw on here every day.

First, let’s re-visit the amazing Penn St. comeback win over Illinois Thursday night (let’s also forget about today’s result in Iowa City).  We mentioned in our ATB that night that PSU’s RTC was “quick.  No hesitation.  Straight to the middle of the floor.  Immediate bedlam.”  It was an awesome scene, as shown below.

But apparently admidst all the chaos, Penn St. star Talor Battle, he of the game-winning floater, got taken out, as in knocked to the floor, by the throng of people rushing onto the court.  Someone snapped a photo immediately prior to the student immersion of the court into a maelstrom of sweaty whiteness, and they captured this guy grabbing Battle as the bedlam began.

Very soon thereafter, Battle was knocked on his back, and the author of this PSU hoops blog, Crispin and Cream, starting taking some heat for representng the closest visual evidence of assault/battery while Battle was still standing.  Andy Katz even mentioned the scene on his blog on Friday. So last night, he responded with a Zapruder-esque recount of his steps throughout the RTC process, including detailed exculpatory evidence as to how he could not have possibly been the reason that Battle fell down.   Read on:

I’m asking you all to watch the ESPN evidence for yourself in super slow motion if you can and make your own analysis. Don’t watch Battle or me, watch everyone else. As soon as our scene occurs, while Battle’s falling, you’ll see another black guy in a black jacket to Battle’s right rising up. He was getting up from his fall, but he wasn’t the one who started it all. The real culprit has yet to make his appearance.

OJ?  Hey, we couldn’t tell a damn thing from that video, but there’s one quote that keeps ringing in our heads here.  Methinks thou doth protest too much.  Or the Shaggy song, whichever.

There was actually one other RTC-related story, and this one comes from the Ivy League of all places!  An RTC when Cornell clinched its second consecutive NCAA bid last night led to a computer getting smashed and a scoring error that resulted in the final score getting changed well after the fact.  Take it easy out there, RTCers!