We mentioned on Tuesday that rising senior and five-star shooting guard Antonio Blakeneyhad backed out of his verbal commitment to Louisville, citing a “quick decision” as his reason for second thoughts, but also leaving the door open for a possible recommitment down the line. Now it seems that Rick Pitino’s program, bemused and bewildered by the young man’s waffling, has decided to take its ball and go home. According to the Courier-Journal‘s Steve Jones, Louisville has no plans to continue recruiting the bouncy Florida shooting guard, preferring instead to focus its resources on adding one more elite piece to its highly-rated 2015 recruiting class. For a composite listing of how the Class of 2015 is shaping up at this early point, take a look at this table of the ESPN, Rivals, Scout and 247 ratings as collated by SBNation.
Michigan‘s Fab Five basketball legacy, even 20 years later, remains a complicated one. Issues of class and race and media coverage and privacy and amateurism and professionalism and a whole slew of other interrelated variables have followed these guys along ever since they collective hit the national consciousness way back in 1991. One thing, however, that isn’t that complicated, was that notorious Wolverines’ booster Ed Martin paid the likes of Chris Webber and several others to matriculate and play for the blue and maize. There’s really no disputing it (Webber himself copped a plea for lying to a grand jury on that very issue in July 2003). Yet Webber has spent the better part of the last decade-plus holding a grudge against his alma mater for what he felt was unfair treatment — some of it arguably meritorious, some not — and refusing to come to terms with the notion that, setting aside all the other indignities, he still is responsible for some of the darkest days in program history along with the sunniest ones. HoopsHype recently interviewed former Fab Fiver and current NBA analyst Jalen Rose, who called out Webber for his simple failure to say “I’m sorry” to the fans of the program who were ultimately let down by those actions. We’ve said it in this space and on social media many times before, but it remains spectacularly impressive that the most thoughtful and mature member of the Fab Five turned out to be Rose — he remains completely on point.
