1. Boom.  That explosion you just heard coming from South Beach and nearby environs had nothing to do with Texas A&M, Mike Slive or Mark Emmert.  No, it was Yahoo Sports’ Tuesday release of a penetrating and ultimately damning piece exposing a long-term, sustained pattern of NCAA lawlessness, “some of it with the knowledge or direct participation of at least seven coaches from the Miami football and basketball programs.”  While the majority of the allegations and claims made by currently imprisoned Ponzi schemer Nevin Shapiro involves the football program, former Hurricane head coach Frank Haith, former assistants Jorge Fernandez and Jake Martin, and current senior basketball player, DeQuan Jones, were all named as having benefited or been involved in some capacity (click the links on their names to see the specific allegations and evidence against them).  Notwithstanding the mess that new Miami coach Jim Larranaga has now stepped into down in Coral Gables, all three of Missouri (Haith), Western Kentucky (Morton), and Marshall (Fernandez) must all be wondering what kind of damage control they’re going to need to employ in order to keep the NCAA from roosting on their doorsteps.  Haith has already denied any allegations relating to Shapiro, for whatever that’s worth.  Certainly the NCAA is already on its way to south Florida, and depending on what else they uncover, Hurricane basketball could be in serious trouble (although not nearly to the extent of the football team).
2. From the last-thing-on-anyone’s-mind department at the U, there was also a Tuesday announcement that DePaul freshman guard Shane Larkin, the son of former Cincinnati Reds baseball star Barry Larkin, is transferring to Miami to be closer to home (Orlando) because of an unnamed medical condition.  Since he already took part in summer coursework and preseason practices at DePaul before the Blue Demon team went to France this month, he’ll either have to sit out the 2011-12 season in Coral Gables or apply for and receive a medical waiver from the NCAA to play this year.  Larkin is already taking some heat from those who believe his “condition” is a mere smokescreen so he can get out of Chicago without penalty, but given what’s going on at Miami right now, he may want to reconsider.  Undoubtedly new head coach Jim Larranaga, whose program cannot help but feel some of the heat and fallout from this scandal, would be happy to have him on the court this coming season.
3. We alluded yesterday to the fact that the vast majority of the top players in the Class of 2012 remain uncommitted.  Jeff Goodman points out that this is an anomaly in an environment where kids have usually been locked and loaded to a specific school for quite a bit of time at this point.  Whatever the reason for this year’s weirdness (15 of last year’s top 25 were committed at the same point), Goodman is correct in noting that the coming months of September and October will be an all-out war among schools trying to impress the top prospects with on-campus visits in the hopes of getting a verbal and, subsequently, a John Hancock during the November 11-17 signing period.
4. Horrible story from down south this week involving a Sun Belt and Southland Conference referee who apparently committed suicide after learning that his wife had been murdered at their home in Houston.  Troy Raymond, a long-time NBA and college basketball official with a good reputation for his on-court skill set, was found in a hotel room in New Orleans on Friday only a few hours after his wife’s strangled body was discovered a few hours west.  There appears to be much more to this story, though, as CBSSports.com reported that his wife had recently asked him for a divorce and that at least one conference had recently informed him that he would not be brought back to officiate next season.  You hate to speculate as to what might have happened because two lives are already gone and assuredly countless others impacted, but let’s cross our fingers and hope against hope that it wasn’t the unthinkable.
5. Last week we thought that Swiperboy, a/k/a Tennessee forward Renaldo Woolridge, had decided to hang up his microphone for good, but according to his blog in a post called “You really thought I was done?”, he now claims he was misinterpreted.  The new story is that his upcoming mixtape, Zazzzle, will in fact be his last; but, he has no plans to give up rapping and he expects his first studio album “Crossover” to drop in stores next spring.  Say what you like about Swiperboy, but he’s already got down the dramatic essence of becoming a hip-hop superstar — always leave them wanting more.  He also seems to enjoy rapping about his environment, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, although what America (and RTC) really wants to hear is a “Hit ’em Up” missive on his former coach, Bruce Pearl.  For now, we’ll have to settle on his new single, “Teach Me How to Dooley,” a song dedicated to Derek Dooley, UT’s head football coach [ed note: is that pool located at Pearl’s house currently for sale?].

1. Texas A&M‘s rather public flirtation with the SEC continued on Monday with the news that school president R. Bowen Loftin had received authority from the school’s board of regents to take whatever action he deems necessary to act in the long-term best interests of the university.  Whether this ultimately means that the school will make a formal overture to join the SEC remains to be seen, but it’s notable that the Texas House committee that had scheduled a meeting today to discuss this matter has postponed it indefinitely.  Right now it seems as if things are in a state of flux, but you’d better believe that whatever backroom political deals that need to resolved before A&M can move forward are in the process of being resolved.
2. We’ve been rather vocal in our opinion that the NCAA had better get out in front of these conference realignment issues driven by football dollars before they lose control of the whole enchilada.  To that point, we were encouraged to read that the NCAA president, Mark Emmert, has started making calls at the behest of some of the conference commissioners in an attempt to smooth over some rankled egos and facilitate any conference realignment in a collegial way.  Regardless of what happens with Texas A&M in coming days or weeks, this is an important move for Emmert.  He is still in his first year on the job, and even though his authority only reaches so far on issues such as these, his reputation as a fair-minded and collaborative leader could be established (or ruined) based on how he handles this situation.
3. We hope to have more on this up later today, but along with the imminent end of summer comes Scout’s new post-camp player ratings for the Class of 2012.  Wing player Shabazz Mohammed remains the top overall player in the class, followed by beefy centers Andre Drummond and Mitch McGary.  In fact, nine of the top 12 players in this class are big men (PFs or Cs), an amazing development considering the vanishing of the American big man over the last two decades.  Only five of the top 25 players are currently committed, which as always will make for an exciting fall on the recruiting trail as players head into their senior seasons.
4. There’s never been a formal announcement one way or another, but does anyone on the planet actually believe that Connecticut head coach Jim Calhoun won’t be back stalking the sidelines again in Storrs next season?  Former Husky great Ray Allen doesn’t believe it either, as he told a throng of assembled media at his charity golf tournament in Cromwell, Connecticut, on Monday.  He didn’t go so far as to say he believes his former coach will be back, but he did say that he feels Calhoun is “rejuvenated” and has two players in Shabazz Napier and Jeremy Lamb who have “experience” well beyond their years.  Unless Calhoun has plans to pull a Dean Smith and retire just before the start of the practice so that his longtime assistant, George Blaney, would get an opportunity to steer the ship, we expect that his relative silence this offseason only means that he’ll be back stronger than ever in the 2011-12 season.
5. Basketball in August?  Our SEC correspondent, Gerald Smith, attended Monday night’s Kentucky Pros vs. John Calipari’s Dominican Republic team, featuring  John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Tayshaun Prince, et al, going up against a Gator-chomping Al Horford and former Louisville stars Francisco Garcia and Edgar Sosa, among others.  Here’s his brief report.  On Monday a seminar on economics was held inside Rupp Arena. An exhibition brought to life by Dominican Republic/Kentucky Coach John Calipari was a logistical scramble that yielded widespread success: Over 23,000 spent an August evening watching Calipari’s Dominicans defeat (mostly) Calipari’s Pros sponsored by Calipari’s corporate partners, 106-88. T-shirt vendors and other Lexington businesses can thank Calipari for a bonus game day full of sales.   Incredible ticket demand prompted a second Pros vs. DR game  which will be held in Louisville’s Yum! Center tonight.  Even minor setbacks in exhibition planning were rewarded with national press exposure for the Kentucky basketball program and the exhibition. Calipari’s incredible talent for synergy separates him from nearly every other NCAA coach. (It helps that Big Blue Nation will invest heavily into most any product associated with the coach.) Instead of an NBA team owner knocking down the coach’s door, perhaps Kentucky fans should be worried that none other than Ben Bernanke will steal Calipari away from the Bluegrass State.

It’s an ancient debate in college basketball — which would you rather have: experience or talent?  Most coaches will quickly answer, “both,” but in today’s 1-and-done era of hoops, building a stacked team of juniors and seniors is not as possible as it once was.  John Wooden once famously said, “I’d rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent,” and although he usually had bushels of both on hand at UCLA, his sentiment has come to define the attitude of most modern-day coaches.  John Calipari at Kentucky is the poster boy for recruiting grade A talent that he knows is likely to only spend a single season in Lexington, taking the stance echoed by Wooden that if he has enough ballers at his disposal, he can push them over the top to a Final Four and (presumably) a national championship.  On the other hand, a history of the 1-and-done era has shown that even though teams with Kevin Loves, Derrick Roses and Brandon Knights occasionally break through to the final weekend, they don’t win national championships.  Experience, rather than pure talent, seems to carry more weight in early April.

Did Wooden Have It Right on Experience vs. Talent?

So which is preferable, and which has more actual, on-court value to elite teams?  Our friends over at Burnt Orange Nation recently took a stab at answering this question, and while several of the findings generally support common basketball sense, there was one item that stood out upon our review of BON’s well-considered post.  First, the findings that support what we all fundamentally know:

1. BON found that there is a correlation between SRS (Simple Rating System, a metric of success showing how far above the scoring margin mean a team plays) of elite teams and the percentage of the available minutes played by a top 30 RSCI recruit.  In other words, having better talent playing on the roster generally makes teams better.
2. Interestingly, BON found that there was no correlation between the SRS of elite teams and the percentage of the available minutes played by RSCI recruits rated from #31-#100.  Therfore, at the elite level of basketball, it is only the elite recruits who tend to impact teams’ success.
3. BON also showed there is a correlation between the SRS of elite teams and total minutes of experience.  Put simply, the more returning minutes a team has, the better it should be.

But it was the following finding by BON that provided something completely new and interesting: A rough way to quantify the relationship between talent and experience among elite teams:

In a typical college basketball season, a starter earns about 1100 minutes played, and plays about 15% of the total minutes for his team.  Using our regression model, getting a player with a top 30 RSCI ranking into the starting lineup has a slightly lower, but similar effect on predicted SRS as does returning one player who has started for two seasons, or two players who have each started for one season.  Adding an additional top 30 recruit to the starting lineup improves the predicted SRS by about 2 points.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Amidst reports that the University of Connecticut was working on a buyout of embattled athletic director Jeff Hathaway, the school’s new president, Susan Herbst, confirmed that she has initiated a comprehensive evaluation of the school’s athletic department.  The evaluation, performed by an outside consulting firm, is clearly meant to provide cover for the ouster of Hathaway, or even better, just cause for an outright firing.  But as Hartford Courant columnist Jeff Jacobs writes in a scathing piece about the politics behind this situation, Hathaway never had a chance to survive at UConn with Jim Calhoun remaining “bitter Hathaway didn’t defend him vigorously enough in the Nate Miles case” with the NCAA.  According to Jacobs, the three-time national championship coach felt he did nothing wrong (even though the NCAA found him guilty of failure to monitor his program).  Interesting stuff, but assuming Hathaway is done at UConn, what is the back-up plan for the 2012 NCAA Selection Committee chair?
2. We did this in  yesterday’s M5, right?  From Connecticut to Tennessee again with the release Monday of UT’s 190-page response to the NCAA’s notice of allegations on various violations including the infamous cookout photograph of Bruce Pearl at his home with Aaron Craft.  If you’re a fan of legalese and you have a couple hours to kill, feel free to read the entire thing, but if not, the key takeaway from our view of the world is that the Vol program is kidding itself if it believes that its remedial measures of firing the coaching staff responsible will somehow insulate the program from future restrictions.  There’s simply too much to account for here.
3. Summer is high time for prep basketball camps around the country, with events like the adidas Super 64 in Las Vegas this week becoming the epicenter of elite high school talent for college coaches to do their one-stop shopping for the stars of tomorrow.  But today’s desert hoops, or the LeBron James Skills Academy, or the Peach Jam, weren’t always the shining stars of the summer circuit.  For much of the 1990s and 2000s, it was instead a tiny gymnasium on the campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, New Jersey, and the Newark Star-Ledger over the weekend took a look back at those halcyon days.  The ABCD Camp, founded and run by the inimitable Sonny Vaccaro, had a certain panache that the others to this date still haven’t been able to live up to.  It was a place where the top stars from all around the country played against each other, and where reputations were made.  From Tracy McGrady exploding onto the scene in 1996 to LeBron James’ destruction of Lenny Cooke’s psyche in 2001, it all happened there.  Great stroll down memory lane.
4. Regardless of  where the elite players play during the summer, people will watch and report on it.  Mike DeCourcy checked in with an interesting story about one of the most intriguing players in Las Vegas this week.  Andre Drummond might be listed as a member of the Class of 2012, but the 6’11” center in the mold of Dwight Howard, has several options after the summer circuit ends which makes his situation particularly compelling.  Since his high school class graduated this year, he could potentially spend next season at prep school for a year, head off to college at the last minute, or even consider offers to play in Europe as he awaits the NBA’s lockout decision over the winter (to determine if he’ll be eligible to decleare in the summer of 2012 or 2013).  Personally, we’re rooting for him to just show up on a random campus on the first day of classes and walk into the head coach’s office with a declaration, “I’m ready to play.”
5. We’ve been waiting to link this, but now that Basketball Prospectus‘ Drew Cannon has finished his list of the Top 100 returning players in college basketball, it’s ready for prime time.  Believe it or not, the SEC ended up with four players in the top nine of the list, and the only team with two guys in the top ten was none other than Vanderbilt.  And we’re betting dollars to doughnuts that you’ll be surprised at the Commodores player chosen who is not named John Jenkins.  An added bonus to this list: all-conference teams for each of the six major leagues and a preseason POY the top mid-major conferences.  Great stuff.

1. Perhaps never in the history of modern college basketball has such an inconsequential player (to this point of his career) caused so much message board speculation over where he might ultimately land (Makhtar Ndiaye?).  Former Wake Forest center Tony Woods, he of the misdemeanor assault plea for pushing and kicking his girlfriend last year, will finally re-surface at Oregon after months of rumors and endless chatter that he would end up at Louisville, then Kentucky, then Texas.  The situation took a turn in favor of Dana Altman’s Duck program when it was discovered that Woods could be eligible to play in Eugene immediately because UO utilizes a quarter system, whereas the other schools are on a semester calendar.  This quirk will allow Woods to finish up his associate’s degree coursework prior to school beginning in September, making it so that he can begin practicing with the team in October and suit up for games again in early November.  Oregon certainly has the need, as last year’s best interior player, Joevon Catron, was a senior and has moved on.  If Woods can tap into some of the promise that made him a Top 50 recruit in the class of 2008, Oregon may move more quickly up the Pac-12 standings than expected next season.
2. Speaking of the topic of eligibility, it appears that St. John’s recruit Maurice Harkless will in fact be eligible to play for Steve Lavin next season.  Late last week the NCAA cleared Harkless to play for the Johnnies as a result of an investigation to determine if he had played for current SJU director of basketball operations, Moe Hicks, during his prep AAU career.  Call it the package deal rule, but the NCAA has a regulation to avoid situations where schools hire AAU coaches to get to their elite players (see: Michael Beasley), and since Harkless had played for the New York Gauchos a couple of times, there was some question as to whether his association with Hicks (an administrator with the Gauchos) violated that rule.  The NCAA ultimately ruled that Hicks never actually coached Harkless, a fine-line distinction no doubt making Lavin a very happy man over the weekend.  Harkless is the type of elite recruit based in the NYC area that St. John’s must attract in order to get back to upper echelon of the Big East conference on an annual basis.
3. Act One of the Bruce Pearl aftermath came to light on Friday in Knoxville, as the News-Sentinel reported that Tennessee has imposed a two-year probation on itself as a result of NCAA wrongdoing under Pearl’s (and former football coach, Lane Kiffin’s) direction.  Here’s the key statement: UT believes that “the penalties imposed during the course of its investigation, coupled with its corrective measures, adequately address the violations that occurred.”  As such, the school’s “probation” levies only a very minor restriction on new head coach Cuonzo Martin’s program, removing an ability to feed players occasionally through off-campus meals.  Arguing that all of the principal bad actors have since been removed from the program, the school clearly believes that it has suffered enough as a result of the Pearl fiasco.  Of course, the NCAA Committee on Infractions has the final ruling on this, and we have to believe that UT basketball will lose more than the occasional pizza party when the ruling finally comes to pass in the next several weeks.
4. Well, this is certainly interesting.  Over the weekend, Connecticut confirmed (and then denied) that it is in the process of negotiating a deal to oust current athletic director Jeff Hathaway from his position.  Normally, we may not have much of an interest in this administrative decision or non-decision, but according to UConn insiders, the departure of Hathaway may be just the thing to inspire three-time national champion Jim Calhoun to give another year (or two, or three) a shot.  The other intriguing angle to this power play against someone who presided over the basketball team’s latest national title and the football team’s bid to the Orange Bowl is that the Hathaway is scheduled to take over as the Selection Committee’s chairman next season.  This of course begs the question as to whether he might remain in that role if he is no longer affiliated with a Division I school.  Keep an eye on the UConn Blog for the latest on this story.
5. It’s not very often that the mother of the nation’s top-rated recruit openly questions why a school she likes isn’t recruiting her son, and even less so when that school is a rather pedestrian mid-major, but that appears to be the case with respect to Class of 2012 superstar Shabazz Mohammed and his mom’s alma mater, Long Beach State.  Faye Mohammed starred in track and basketball at LBSU in the mid-1980s, but to hear her tell it, she “would have liked to see [head coach Dan Monson] come in and get involved and see what happened with that.”  Admittedly, the former Gonzaga and Minnesota coach would likely have faced a losing battle going up against schools like Arizona, Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, Memphis, Texas, Texas A&M, UCLA and UNLV (his official list), but don’t you at least make a few calls and hope for a hail mary?  After all, other than that school over in Westwood, Long Beach is the only other local school.

1. How about a smidge of conference realignment in your summertime news feed?  The WAC is expected to add Texas-Arlington as its tenth school later this week, compensating for its recent loss of Boise State and its pending loss of Nevada.  Well, maybe compensating is a bit of an overstatement given the power of those two programs, especially the Broncos on the gridiron, but UTA has one thing that the schools located in Boise and Reno do not — an insanely deep and talented local recruiting pool.  The football and basketball talent in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area dwarfs the entire states of Idaho and Nevada in a given year, so the WAC is clearly hoping that Arlington is a sleeping giant for the next decade.  [ed. note: didn’t mean to imply that UTA has a football program currently, because they don’t; but that’s clearly something the WAC and UTA are considering with this invitation]
2. The NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Selection Committee will have a new chairman, Xavier athletic director Mike Bobinski.  He will not take over for current chairman, UConn AD Jeff Hathaway, until next summer, whereupon he’ll take control of the committee for the 2012-13 season.  As we’re all aware, the chairman’s biggest role is to step in front of the television cameras minutes after the release of the NCAA Tournament field and defend his committee’s selections.  Some have performed well in this role, while others, including last year’s chairman, Ohio State AD Gene Smith, failed miserably in clearly explaining the differences between teams chosen versus those who were left out.
3. Yesterday we mentioned the LeBron James Skills Academy when referring to Darius Johnson-Odom’s team defeating the camp namesake’s team twice over the course of the week.  DJO wasn’t the only collegian to have made waves last week, though, as  Connecticut’s Shabazz Napier,  Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger, Kentucky’s Anthony Davis, Kansas’ Thomas Robinson and many others were evaluated by NBADraft.net during the event.  Also of interest was some of the discussion involving high school superstars in the next two years of classes, particularly Jabari Parker, a rising junior who many believe is a future #1 overall pick in the mold of Carmelo Anthony.
4. News that Michigan recruit Austin Hatch — the high schooler in the Class of 2013 who lost his father and stepmother in a plane crash on June 24 — is recovering from said accident is music to our ears.  According to a blog post by his extended family, Hatch is “healing with the loving care of medical experts!  Austin even has his blue “Kobe” shoes on (size 15) and looks ready to work.”  We’ll certainly forgive the Kobe footwear so long as he makes a full recovery, and that would without question be one of the best stories of this entire offseason.  Queue up the most inspiring player award for next year’s ESPYs.  Speaking of which…
5. This is getting ridiculous.  One day after we noted that everybody’s favorite Mormon, Jimmer Fredette, had a horse named after him, the consensus 2010-11 NPOY walked out with an ESPY for the Best Male College Athlete of the year.  Connecticut’s Kemba Walker, Auburn’s Cam Newton, Miami (OH)’s Andy Miele (hockey), and Cornell’s Rob Pannell (lacrosse) were the other nominees.  Of course, we’re just teasing… we loved The Jimmer as much as anyone else throughout his prolific career.  The only other college basketball-related winner was in the Upset category, where the VCU Rams took home the ESPY for their unforgettable five-game run to the Final Four last season.

1. Consider this a cautionary tale in terms of trusting online entities claiming to have primary source information, especially when it comes to recruiting.  Meet Jonathan Paige, the recruiting guru who wasn’t.   In just two short months, Paige, a pseudonym for someone claiming to follow “AAU basketball all summer every summer,” gathered over 500 Twitter followers, was cited on numerous reputable blogs and team message boards, and generally became an up-and-coming “name” within the sometimes-shady scouting and recruiting information industry.  In his words, all he did to develop his growing profile was to tweet and re-tweet confirmed information from other sources, mine the major message boards for rumors, tailor his posts to specific fanbases, and make up the rest.  There’s no telling how much further he could have taken this should he have chosen to do so, but we should all learn from “Troll’s” deception — not in the sense of thumbing our nose at the guy, but rather to remind ourselves that anything read or viewed online needs to served correspondingly with a healthy dose of skepticism.
2. It’s been a tough several days for San Diego State head coach Steve Fisher.  Last week, several establishments including RTC noted that Fisher’s 400th career victory, achieved on January 12 against UNLV last season, was not in fact a milestone win given the NCAA’s new “Calipari Doctrine.”  Over the weekend, former SDSU transfer commitment Kevin Young announced that he would instead attend Kansas for his final two seasons of eligibility.  As a result, Fisher vented to the San Diego Union-Tribune that he was angered that Kansas (and by proxy, Bill Self) had recruited someone  he says had “made an eight-month commitment” to the Aztec program but had been swayed in recent months to view Kansas as an alternative.  Self, to his credit, claims that Young had already “de-committed” from SDSU before KU got involved, but the fact remains that Fisher will enter 2011-12 not only a few years away from that elusive NCAA-verified 400th win, but also without a roster (including Young) prepared to re-build from the loss of his top four players.
3. When we read something like this article outlining the mammoth salaries that the six BCS conference commissioners make as CEOs of their leagues, we really start wondering just how much longer the NCAA as we know it will continue to exist.  From Jim Delany’s $1.6M Big Ten salary (2009) to John Marinotti’s $366K prorated pay (half of 2009), it’s easy to forget that these organizations supposedly looking out for the best interests of their student-athletes are 501(c) non-profits.  As anyone who knows anything about the world of non-profits, when they are run like profit-making entities, the clients that they purport to serve are usually the first ones left by the wayside.
4. The long Fayetteville nightmare is over, as Arkansas guard Rotnei Clarkewas finally given his release by the school to transfer wherever he likes.  As reported by several outlets over the weekend, Clarke had asked for his release several times but new head coach Mike Anderson appeared to be stonewalling his best returning player in an attempt to keep him around for his senior year.  The 6’0 all-SEC second team guard is originally from Verdigris, Oklahoma, a town just outside of Tulsa, which makes us wonder if Travis Ford, Lon Kruger and Doug Wojcik already have the prolific scorer on their speed dials.
5. We missed this over the weekend, but June 19 wasn’t just Father’s Day it was also the 25th anniversary of former Maryland forward Len Bias‘ tragic death in 1986.  Bias is on a short list of players whose mythology over the intervening years has probably outgrown his proven abilities, but make no mistake, the guy was a stud in college and could have become an NBA superstar in the right situation.  His shocking death, a mere two days after he had been drafted by the then-NBA Champion Boston Celtics, carried repercussions beyond sports that are still felt to this very day in America’s criminal justice system.  As Salon’s Jonathan Easley outlines in an interview with the House counsel that helped write the shameful 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, a law that Congress passed that summer that would ultimately result in an explosion of America’s prison population for drug-related crimes and utilizing an arbitrary and racially-tinged “logic” behind making the distribution of crack cocaine more “criminal” than that of powder cocaine.  The death of Len Bias, a seemingly innocent and well-spoken young man by all accounts, helped to drive this legislation in the Nancy Reagan-led Just Say No era.  It’s a very interesting read, and one you probably won’t hear when watching sentimental testimonials to Bias such as this one from ESPN’s John Saunders last week.

We’ve known for some time that former Gonzaga guard Demetri “Meech” Goodson was giving up basketball to return to his home state of Texas and pursue college football with the remainder of his amateur eligibility.  We learned today through The Spokesman-Review (via Fox 26 Houston) that Goodson will end up at Baylor for his two seasons on the gridiron.  Presuming that Bears head coach Art Briles is aware that he’s adding a tremendously athletic 6’0, 175-pounder with a ridiculous first step and quick hands to his roster, Goodson told the television station that he will be enrolled in the Waco school and ready to work out very soon.

Goodson Could Provide Spot Defensive and Leadership Minutes at Baylor

Just get my transcript from Gonzaga shipped over to Baylor.  I shipped it out (Saturday). Once they get all that stuff done, I’ll be there. It’s a great feeling.  I’m excited. A bit nervous because I haven’t played (football) in a while. Once I go and start hitting the weights and learning their system, I’ll be all right.  I could probably go overseas and make some money.  But professionally, football will be a better move for me just because of the number of basketball players who make it and the number of football players. That was basically why I did it.

Considering that there isn’t much of an NBA market for undersized point guards who average five points per game and have trouble shooting the ball from distance (career 20% three-point shooter), this is a fairly enlightened move on Goodson’s part.  With the transfer, not only does he give himself two seasons to fully re-adjust to playing football — the last time he suited up on the field was in 2006, during his sophomore year in high school — but he also joins a Baylor team coming off a 7-6 (4-4 Big 12) season where the depth chart shows only one returning starter at his favored cornerback position.  An opportunity to prove himself against the light-em-up offenses of the conference would enable Goodson a pretty good opportunity to eventually become a future NFL defensive back.  Incidentally, his older brother, Mike Goodson, a considerably bulkier player at 210 lbs., is currently a running back with the Carolina Panthers (see video of a TD last season here).

The intriguing part to this transfer saga between sports is what, if any, effect this might have on Baylor basketball.  The Bears are already settled in the point guard slot for the 2011-12 season with incumbent junior AJ Walton manning the spot and JuCo transfer Pierre Jackson coming in to provide relief.  But what if something goes wrong with one of those two players prior to the 2012-13 season (which, coincidentally, is when Goodson would be eligible to play his fourth and final season of hoops)?  Or, what if Goodson’s foray into football doesn’t go as well as planned (injury, rustiness, etc.)?  Is Scott Drew really going to sit idly by and not accidentally “bump” into Goodson at the athletic training facilities or cafeteria when there’s a proven winner on the hardwood walking around his campus?  Would he not want a seasoned veteran like Goodson in his locker room to provide backup minutes as an athletic defender to close out games? 

Drew has made major waves in his ability to recruit nationally at a school with virtually no basketball tradition, earning commitments from top players such as Perry Jones, III (Duncanville, TX), Deuce Bello (Greensboro, NC), and Quincy Miller (Winston-Salem, NC) in recent years.  Are we really supposed to believe that he doesn’t have the power of persuasion needed to entice Goodson for a final run in the gym?  Only time will tell, but it wouldn’t shock us in the least if we see Goodson suiting up for the Bears in both the primary fall and winter sports two seasons from now. 

1. Despite the international breaking news that dominated headlines worldwide late Sunday night, there actually was some college basketball news over the weekend too.  Before we get to that, we threw a bunch 0f our favorite pics and vids from a number of celebratory throngs on college campuses throughout this great nation into our new Tumblr account last night — much love to @notthefakeSVP for encouraging and soliciting these throughout the night.  
2. George Mason may have lost a coach to the ACC last week, but they turned around and hired one from the ACC over the weekend.  Paul Hewitt, formerly of Georgia Tech and prior to that, Siena, has signed on to become the new head coach of the Patriots.  As John Feinstein writes in the Washington Post, the expectation will not be to build Mason into something it cannot be, it will be to re-create what Hewitt was able to do at Siena and sustain what Jim Larranaga began.  Sometimes certain jobs are simply poor fits, and maybe this is a case where Hewitt will thrive in Fairfax where he was simply unable to do so at the high-major level.  We know this much — he inherits a team that will have great expectations on it to win the CAA and advance in the NCAA Tournament in his first season — $7.2M buyout or not, he’ll have to perform next year to win over the GMU faithful.
3. In the wake of the tornado destruction that ravaged parts of Alabama last week, Crimson Tide head coach Anthony Grant and his wife, Chris, have set up the Sweet Home Fund, a relief organization intended to help families who have lost their homes or otherwise suffered major damage as a result of the storms.  This news will get buried this week amidst all the OBL coverage, but over 300 lives were lost last week in several states and many more families are very much in need.
4. This is a fascinating story about Bobby Ray Parks, Jr., a member of the Class of 2011 from Memphis who verbally committed to Georgia Tech, but appears to already be playing college basketball in Manila, Philippines (where his father was once a superstar at the professional level).  Luke Winn calls him the “lost boy” of the class, and although he ranks #117 in the final Rivals 150, there’s a high degree of uncertainty whether the “mini-LeBron” as he’s known overseas will come back to play in the USA anytime soon.  A number of schools are still interested, but he would need to sit out the requisite one year as a transfer if he decides to return. 
5. From the if-it-appears-to-good-to-be-true-it-probably-is category, the NYT over the weekend outlined some serious allegations involving a player handler/runner known as Kenneth Caldwell, whom the paper reports delivered several elite recruits to Central Florida this year — Kevin Ware, Michael Chandler, and DeMarcus Smith (football) .  Caldwell, of course, denies any foul play other than “telling someone about a place [UCF],” but the story reads as many others have over the years — all you need to do is to change the name of the runner, his felonies and/or underworld connections, and the players involved.  We really hate these stories. 

1. Dear unnamed ACC coaches who are more interested in their own selfish interests than the well-being of their players: go eff yourselves.  You got what you wanted in that the NCAA approved yet another change to its NBA Draft withdrawal deadline, making it virtually impossible for players to work out and solicit good advice on their draft status in 2012 and beyond before making a final decision.  The May 8 withdrawal deadline this year is already too short, allowing players merely two weeks to get full information that will help them make a life-changing decision; next year’s deadline will be a ridiculously-early April 12, only ten days after some lucky team will cut the nets down in New Orleans.  The ostensible reason behind this change is that coaches want to know what their rosters will look like going into the spring signing period (which begins at approximately the same time as the new deadline), but it rings extremely hollow when they’re claiming to care about their players first while banking millions of dollars themselves.  The coaches driving this legislation, every one of whom is a millionaire, has the luxury of wealth and privilege to fall back on if they make a hasty mistake, while their players get… what, exactly?  A couple of phone calls, a rumor or two, and a pat on the back?  It’s embarrassing and it’s shameful, and if anyone believes that this change will frighten players who are not draftable to stay in school, they’re dreaming.  Successful people generally believe things will work out for them, no matter the decision — it’s just that now they’ll be making their decisions without proper information on which to rely.  Congratulations, fellas.
2. Ok, on to the players in this year’s draft who still have another ten days to make a final decision.  The NBA released its official list on Thursday and the biggest surprise name on it was Minnesota’s Ralph Sampson, III.  DraftExpress’ Jonathan Givony makes the call on every one of this year’s early entries, including analysis that shows several players — Tennessee’s Tobias Harris, Michigan’s Darius Morris, and Xavier’s Tu Holloway, to name a few — have difficult decisions ahead of them next week.
3. Georgia’s Mark Fox received a nice raise as a result of his guiding the Bulldogs to its first legitimate NCAA Tournament appearance in nine seasons last year (the Dawgs’ 2008 appearance with a 17-17 team was a fluke in part caused by the Atlanta tornado).  His contract was extended by one year to 2016 and his salary was increased by $400,000 annually for a total package worth $1.7M per year.  Not bad for a football school, eh?  Fox will lose stars Trey Thompkins and Travis Leslie to the NBA Draft this offseason, so his ultimate worth will be determined by how he does the next four years with his own players.  Still, he’ll have plenty of dollars put away to carry him for a while if things don’t go as well as last season did for his program.
4. Hey, we can’t say that we did or did not write a couple of letters in a similar vein to this back in the day, but what we can say is that Ethan Peikes’ letter to Georgia Tech AD Dan Radakovich applying for the open head coaching position this spring was probably more logical, likely more witty, and definitely better written.  This is a great story from Mike DeCourcy about how a 15-year old kid from Stamford, Connecticut, made a name for himself by simply, well, making a name for himself.  Nice resume booster.
5. Jerry Seinfeld on Thursday made headlines when he said that the bombastic businessman-turned-politician Donald Trump was “God’s gift to comedy.”  Little did he know that another God’s Gift would be making his way to the Big Apple, and this one doesn’t involve a weird comb-over and a penchant for egomania.  As far as we know, at least.  God’s Gift Achiuwa, a 6’9 sophomore forward from Erie Community College picked St. John’s over Washington and Cincinnati for his services in the post next year.  Steve Lavin calls him “Gift,” and he represents exactly that to his packed recruiting class that comes in long on talent but not particularly sizable.  The Johnnies will be extremely young next season but should remain fun to watch for a number of reasons, not least of which will be enjoying various announcers handle Achiuwa’s God-Given name.