Rush The Court presents the inaugural edition of One on One: an Interview Series, which we hope to publish weekly on Friday mornings throughout the year.  If you have any specific interview requests or want us to interview you, shoot us an email at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

As Abdul Gaddy heads into his second season under head coach Lorenzo Romar at the University of Washington, he has a lot to prove. Ranked as the second-best point guard prospect in the class of 2009 (behind the #1 pick in this year’s NBA Draft, John Wall), Gaddy had a disappointing freshman season, averaging just four points and two assists per game despite starting in each of his team’s final 27 games. Romar said that as the season wore on, he noticed that Gaddy’s confidence dipped, and a big question on the minds of many college basketball fans is when will we see that calm, cool and confident Gaddy who earned such lofty appraisals in his high school and AAU days.  Andrew Murawa, a contributor here at Rush The Court as well as our Pac-10 and Mountain West correspondent, talked with Gaddy earlier this week, and we asked him about the recruiting process, his freshman season, and what to expect from the 2010-11 version of the Huskies.

Rush The Court: When you came out of high school you were regarded as the second-best point guard prospect in the country behind John Wall. Did you pay a lot of attention to those recruiting rankings when you were in high school?

Abdul Gaddy: At the beginning, no. But, as I became the second-best point guard and all that, I kind of did pay attention. I thought it was a great honor for me, so I kind of got into it and thought it was pretty fun, just to see all the rankings, so I kind of got into it a little bit.

Gaddy's confidence was low for most of last season, but he recovered late, settled into college life, and his team won 14 of their last 17.

RTC: You played at events like the McDonald’s All-American game and the Jordan Brand Classic and the Boost Mobile Elite 24 at Rucker Park, where you got to play with and against some of those same guys in those recruiting rankings. What was that like?

AG: It was fun to play against those guys, the top-ranked guys in my class. They were all stout competition. They brought out my competitive nature. Having fun, playing the game of basketball against them, just to see how I measured up against them, was great. It was a good measuring stick for myself to see where I was at and how much better I needed to get.

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Backdoor Cuts is a college basketball discussion between RTC correspondents Dave Zeitlin, Steve Moore, and Mike Walsh, whom one of the RTC crew often calls Matt.  This week the guys attempt to come up with college hoops’ answer to outdoor hockey, show their advancing age with references to the early 90s, and somehow get a couple of Jersey Shore references by the editors.

STEVE MOORE: With the illustrious quasi-sorta leader of our Gang of Three sitting in a jury box all week, I’ve been summoned to lead things off. And, as always, I’m going to use this space to make a terrible segue into referencing my alma mater.

Last weekend, I piled on 15 layers of long underwear and a snazzy new hockey jersey to watch my Boston University Terriers face the hated Boston College Eagles at Fenway Park. My seats weren’t that great, and we couldn’t see that much, but it was a blast — especially as the snow started coming down. Anyway, I thought it was a decent tie-in to this week’s topic, which is (drumroll please…), your choice for a non-traditional site for a college hoops game.

With Final Fours played in football stadiums, and even regular-season games taking place beneath 7 million-foot HD plasma screens, there has to be at least one or two athletic directors with this idea. Even pro basketball has gone outside, with the Phoenix Suns playing exhibition games outside at a tennis stadium. Weather will play an issue in any idea like this, which is why — for the sake of a fun argument — we will ignore it in this discussion. Let’s imagine that your proposed game could take place in the middle of the summer. Give me your venue and teams to take part, or even more than two teams if you think a double- or triple-header might be in order. Feel free to think outside the box.

Why not hoops?

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