National Hoops Report

WE'VE MOVED

2011-04-15T19:41:00.001-07:00

The National Hoops Report is back. However, we've moved homes. You can find the new site by clicking on the link below.

12 @ 12: Weekend randomness

2009-11-23T08:59:00.000-08:00

1. National Hoops Report college player of the week: Wesley Johnson, Syracuse. If you saw him against North Carolina, you know why he is here. The Texas native was amazing against the Tar Heels.

2. National Hoops Report freshman of the week: Rodney Williams, Minnesota. Surprised? I get it. He’s not the sexiest of picks and sure, he was great against a couple of cupcakes last week. But understand this – Minnesota started the season with major question marks and distractions off the court. The bouncy Minnesota native scored 31 points in two games and was Tubby Smith’s best player in the two wins. The true test awaits him this week with games against Butler and Miami.

3. National Hoops Report win of the week: Boston over Indiana, Syracuse over North Carolina, VCU over Oklahoma. Take your pick. Boston’s win is important for a program that is lead by a great, young head coach in Pat Chambers. Think that’ll help with recruits? Syracuse’s win over UNC has been hashed over a million times since it happened last week. You should know what it is a big win by now. Finally, how about Shaka Smart, the latest Boy Wonder to take over the Rams, beating former VCU head man Jeff Capel in Richmond? The Rams still have the punch against the big boys.

4. You hear coaches say this all the time: “Pre-season polls don’t mean anything.” Boy, are they right. The preseason top 25 poll is a hot mess. Here is my attempt at nailing down a Top 15 after the first full week of hoops.

1. Kansas
2. Texas
3. Kentucky
4. Syracuse
5. Michigan State
6. Purdue
7. Villanova
8. Tennessee
9. Washington
10. West Virginia
11. Duke
12. North Carolina
13. Butler
14. Michigan
15. Clemson

5. N.C. State doesn’t have Lorenzo Brown on its roster this year because of academic issues. Brown is now spending a season at Hargrave in Virginia and quickly becoming one of the most talked about players in the nation. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to see the former Roswell (Ga.) Centennial crack into the top 10 of the high school player rankings in the class of 2010. He and Ryan Harrow will be one of the top backcourts in the ACC next year despite the fact the two are freshman. Sidney Lowe needs that, too.

6. Keep an eye on these two international freshman: Gonzaga’s Elias Harris and St. Mary’s Matthew Dellavedova. The two rookies have caught the West Coast by surprise and by storm. Harris, a 6-7 20-year-old German, is Gonzaga’s top rebounder and third best scorer. Dellavedova, a 6-4 Aussie, is his team’s top scorer and the most impressive two guard on the West Coast so far this season.

7. When my wife perks up and says something during a basketball game, I tend to listen. You see, she’s not a big fan of the game. Maybe because it consumes my time. Whatever, the case, she’ll watch on occasion. This week she said “Why are all of these games empty? No one is going to games.” She is right. No one is going to games early this season. Hardly anyone was in Puerto Rico. No surprise there, really. No one really attended games during the 24 hour marathon. Few were at the Coaches Vs. Cancer event at Madison Square Garden. Hawaii will certainly be packed. But the gym is smaller than my office. I saw a Duke game against UNC Greensboro and there were plenty of seats available on the rackety bleachers at Cameron Indoor. Remember the Final Four in Detroit? Michigan’s paradise was empty this year. Hopefully things will change and the gyms will have more spectators. The game needs it.

8. Oh boy, the Pac-10 is horrible. I heard that a lot this weekend. But is the conference really that bad? As a conference, the Pac-10 is 23-10.

UCLA isn’t up to UCLA’s standards. Stanford is a mixed bag. But is Cal as bad as everyone thinks? They lost to Syracuse and Ohio State without Theo Robertson. Oregon State is that bad, however. Little to debate about that. Oregon lost to a very good Portland team that is well coached by Eric Reveno, who could eventually be the next head coach in the Pac-10. I digress.

But Washington is very good. Arizona State is much better than what people think. Washington State is still a question mark early in the season. Arizona has talent and a good, young, aggressive coach in Sean Miller.

By comparison, the SEC is a combined 33-10 with some of those losses coming to Wofford, Rider, Cornell, Missouri State, Central Florida and UAB.

The Big Ten is a combined 28-9 with some of those losses coming to UT-San Antonio, Duquesne, UNC Wilmington, Tulane, Boston and George Mason.

9. So what now? With the early signing period now over, the dominoes have tipped and some decisions have been made easier for some prospects and harder for others. Tobias Harris picked Tennessee on the final day of the early period. His decision caused Jayvauhn Pinkston’s decision to be put on hold. On the public forum, there are those that say Tennessee is still very strong with the New Yorker. But my belief is Villanova will still be the winner.

When Harrison Barnes picked North Carolina, Duke immediately turned it’s attention to Roscoe Smith.

Everyone turned to C.J. Leslie despite the commitment. He’s one of the few uncommitted guy that is truly leaning in one particular direction.

Terrence Jones of Portland will be the most coveted player on the West Coast.

And what domino will Doron Lamb push over? His recruitment may be the toughest one to truly figure out.

10. Linkage: Andy Katz's Weekly Watch...Allow me to play Santa for a moment (save "Well, J, your gut is certainly big enough" jokes). Face it. Men are tough to shop for, right? Admit it. We are. If your wife or girlfriend or mother or someone that needs a buy a gift for an un-shoppable male, take heed. Try the Tony Ingle book "I Don't Mind Hitting Bottom, I Just Hate Dragging" or the ESPN Encyclopedia of College Basketball...Dave Telep spent the weekend in New Haven, Connecticut for the National Prep Showcase. Here is his coverage (sub required): Day 1, Day 2, Day 3...Eric Bossi was also in New Haven…CBS Sports' Gary Parrish released his top 26 teams in the country...Jeff Goodman of Fox released his top 25.

11. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

12. Here are my 12 football thoughts from the weekend:

A. Dear Santa, I’d like a watch and some common sense for Christmas. Thanks, Les Miles.

B. Dear Santa, I’d like an offensive coordinator’s position in the NFL. Thanks, Charlie Wies.

C. Was it me or did a lot of teams both in college and the NFL go for it on 4th downs on Saturday? Trickle down effect?

D. The BCS computers are on the brink of blowing up Y2K style. Six teams remain undefeated. At least five will remain undefeated by Sunday.

E. What an effort from Oregon quarterback Jeremiah Masoli in Tucson on Saturday night. The double overtime thriller was all about the 5-11 junior from San Francisco. He ran for three touchdowns and passed for three touchdowns. I’m surprised the effort wasn’t fawned all over by national analysts like Tim Tebow. It was a 2008 Tim Tebow-like effort.

F. Speaking of Oregon, it is time for Kellen Clemens, a former Duck, to take over the Jets offense. Mark Sanchez hasn’t just hit the wall. He’s stuck under the rubble of bricks.

G. After starting 6-0, Denver will probably finish 9-7. If the NFL Playoffs were like the NCAA tournament, the Broncos would certainly be on the last four out list.

H. So the Browns and the Lions played in the best game of the year on Sunday, huh? The NFL is the best sports product on the planet. You never, ever know who or what will happen.

I. Ricky Williams should be the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year award winner this season. If you saw him on Thursday night (and few of you did), Williams looked like the old Ricky Williams en route to his three touchdowns for the Dolphins.

J. I’ll be playing defensive tackle, tight end, full back, linebacker, long snapper, coach and pain inflictor on Thanksgiving morning at Lassiter High School in Marietta, Georgia. Feel free to join the world’s greatest Turkey Bowl. Bring some ice and band-aids.

K. Who is the Heisman leader right now? I am full steam ahead for Stanford’s Toby Gerhart. He’s a man amongst boys as a runner and has a very mediocre team playing well above their expectations this season.

L. Who is the NFL MVP leader right now? You can make a strong case for Brett Favre this year. He’s having one of his best years in his 87-year career. The Vikings are playing on another plain compared to the rest of the league because of his energy. Favre moved up to my second place spot behind Peyton Manning.

Time to watch, time to focus

2009-11-17T16:53:00.000-08:00

I learned a good lesson today. Live-blogging is vastly over-rated. Time to put this idea to bed. Forever.

I'll have much more on the rest of today's games on the site tomorrow.

Live: Charlotte at Duke

2009-11-17T16:12:00.000-08:00

7:40 p.m. Time to put this game to bed. It is 85-50 in favor of Duke. Hard to watch.

7:35 p.m. Tennessee is up 39-6 over UNC Asheville. The blowouts continue.

7:30 p.m. Andre Dawkins won't be a major player for Duke this year but he'll be the team's top scorer as a junior or senior. He's a star player in waiting.

7:23 p.m. Jimmy Dykes is nailing it with Nolan Smith. Is he an elite level guard in the ACC? If the answer is "yes" than the Blue Devils are a major contender. If he's a little better than he was last year, it is middle of the pack.

7:12 p.m. Turning on the tube and seeing the Duke 68, Charlotte 32 score I'm not surprised a bit. That's been the story of the day in this 24 hours of basketball. One team winning big or two teams missing shot after shot after shot. Nolan Smith has 20. Think the Blue Devils can use him this year? He'll be much better off the ball.

Live: Temple at Georgetown

2009-11-17T13:02:00.000-08:00

5:36 p.m. The live blog is on an hour (or longer) pause. Duty calls. Can you hear my one-year-old screaming?

4:49 p.m. Temple is 5-27 from the floor in the first half and 1-10 from three.

4:47 p.m. Halftime score: Georgetown 19, Temple 13. This is, by far, the toughest first half of all of the games today. Thirty-two total points in this match-up. No wonder kids are going to Europe to play basketball.

4:39 p.m. Temple just hit the 10 point mark. Oh, at 3:40 left in the first.

4:36 p.m. I've always wondered about Greg Monroe's value at the NBA level. I wonder if he will ever really blossom into the player that so many think he can be.

4:33 p.m. Lavoy Allen is an impressive rebounder. Always has been. History has proven that if you can rebound in high school, you'll be successful in college as a rebounder.

4:28 p.m. Nothing like a friend setting you straight. Just had a conversation that went as follows:

Friend: "Just saw on your twitter that you've been live blogging all day today on this basketball stuff."
Me: "Yeah, I'm pathetic."
Friend: "What does your wife think?"
Me: "Haven't asked her."
Friend: "I'll clue you in. She's at my house with my wife. They are mocking you."

4:24 p.m. Looks like the scoring drought/bad shot selection continues. Total of nine points in nine minutes played in this game.

4:23 p.m. I'm still stunned by the year that Georgetown had last season. How does a team with that much talent go nearly .500?

4:09 p.m. The Lavoy Allen (Temple) vs. Greg Monroe (Georgetown) match-up should be the best of the day so far. Allen is one of the most under-appreciated players on the East Coast.

4:02 p.m. Welcome to the 16th hour of this very ho-hum 24 hour marathon of college basketball games. Temple travels to Georgetown for what should be a good out of conference game. We have Mike Patrick and Len Elmore calling the game. We have two good coaches in John Thompson III and Fran Dunphy. We have some star power (see Greg Monroe). Hopefully we have a good game.

Live: Arkansas-Little Rock at Tulsa

2009-11-17T11:06:00.000-08:00

4:01 p.m. Just woke up from a power nap and apparently the game is over. I think Tulsa won. Not sure if it really matters.

3:25 p.m. Finally, some excitement. Donte Medder of Tulsa has shown me enough to keep me intrigued for anything longer than 30 seconds.

3:23 p.m. Charlie Coles' press conference is now on YouTube. Best post-game dialogue this year. Go ahead and end that contest.

3:22 p.m. I'm tempted to go to the DMV right. That has to be more exciting than this one. Okay, I promise. That's my last complaint about this game. I swear.

3:18 p.m. Evan Daniels is reporting that West Virginia signed 7-footer David Nyarsuk this week. (Told you this game was slow.)

3:09 p.m. Ben Uzoh of Tulsa is now 2-10 from the floor. And he's the most talented player from a skills standpoint on the floor.

3:08 p.m. If this were an AAU tournament, I would have left by now and found a local eatery Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives style for an hour break away from hoops.

2:51 p.m. Jason Williams just brutalized UCLA's roster during this halftime break. Gottlieb does his homework and just bailed out his teammate.

2:48 p.m. Ugh. Another sluggish 1st half of basketball in the books.

2:41 p.m. Little-Rock has no answer for Jordan's size inside. Too big to handle.

2:23 p.m. ebosshoops "Is anybody going to mention that for the most part it's been 24 hours of bad basketball ? That 6am tip on the East Coast was brutal."

2:20 p.m. Looks like we are in store for another giant offensive game today. Points are just coming a mile a minute. (Those two sentences were scribed in a new font called sarcasm.)

2:13 p.m. Where will Doug Wojick coach next season? He'll be a hot name come March.

2:11 p.m. Is there a tornado watch in Tulsa? No one is at this game.

2:09 p.m. Talking about Tulsa being the Conference USA favorite this year. Would agree with that as we start the season. Would like to see how Memphis can grow as the season under Josh Pastner.

2:08 p.m. Love the Ron Franklin-Fran Fraschilla combo. We need more Franklin on television.

2:06 p.m. And we are off in Tulsa. Breaking news: Jerome Jordan is huge.

Live: Northeastern at Siena

2009-11-17T09:38:00.001-08:00

Getting back to the television for a little bit and prior to the tip, I was actually quite excited about the Siena-Northeastern game. Then I saw the score and the time on the Internet. I quickly debated even watching the game. 20-10 at 5:38 left in the first half. Nevertheless…let’s pick it up from there.

12:35 p.m. Goodness gracious. Can anyone play well today?

12:36 p.m. Siena students take school much more serious than Liberty. Smaller crowd at Siena. Liberty was pretty full.

12:37 p.m. Edwin Ubiles vs. Northeastern right now.

12:40 p.m. Get the feeling in the short time I've been watching that Siena is about to come out with a big second half and the win. Ubiles is doing all he can do and is proving he's one of the elite mid-major players. Maybe even the best mid-major player in the country.

12:45 p.m . Bill Raferty nailed it with Ubiles when he said he knows where he fits. Had a similar conversation with Ubiles when he was in high school. Kids that understand their value and pick a school that allows them to shine always have success. Self-awareness is the cornerstone to success as a player.

12:47 p.m. A lot of my fellow basketball scribes like Matt Janning of Northeastern as the CAA Preseason Player of the Year. He's good, no doubt about it. But I don't think he's the guy for that. First team all-conference, no doubt. But he's not the MVP of the conference.

12:50 p.m. ESPN noted that the first points in the Saint Peters-Monmouth game was scored by a kid named Bacon. If there was a kid with the last name of Benedict, Bill Raferty would have most certainly called him "Eggs."

12:51 p.m. Northeastern up 26-20 at the half thanks to a Janning shot to end the half.

1:18 p.m. The laptop secretly compensated by my wife for the last 20 minutes. We are now new owners of an over-sized Christmas wreath.

1:52 p.m. Wanted to find a good time to write this but never really found the moment. Now seems good. Northeastern head coach Bill Coen is one of the best talent evaluators in the business. He was the magic behind the Boston College steals (Craig Smith, Jared Dudley, Tyrese Rice, etc.) and now he’s finding players and developing them into producers at the mid-level. He’s the king of the follow-up. If he ever received a tip on a player, he immediately chased the lead, did his homework and went hard after a player if he was sold.

1:58 p.m. This has nothing to do with this game but certainly worth space on this site. A good friend of mine called the 24 hour marathon “basketball Viagra."

Live: Clemson at Liberty 2nd half

2009-11-17T08:07:00.000-08:00

11:48 a.m. Time to be the only dad at pre-school picking up his child. Always awkward. Clemson will clearly win out. Up next is Siena vs. Northeastern. Guarantee you we will have several mentions of the 4th & 2 in this game.

11:46 a.m. In response to whether or not the DVR was one of the top five inventions this century, I received this Tweet from Michael_Rudolph "Easily. It goes like this 1. Internet 2. George Foreman Grill 3. Coors Light 4. DVR 5. The Slap Chop."

11:41 a.m. Talking fantasy football with Telep (that's what you do when the game is 68-31) and I just shot myself in the foot. Telep: "I need to pick up a player in our league." Me: "You should get Jason Snelling of the Falcons. With Michael Turner out, Snelling will get 80 yards and a touchdown when he starts." Telep: "Why don't you get him?" Me: "Um." Waiver wire order Telep 1, Me 4. I need a RB. Whoops.

11:39 a.m. Have had the game on mute for the last 15 minutes. Best 15 minutes of the morning.

11:31 a.m. Somewhere Scot Pollard is thinking "I really like the mutton chops with the fo-hawk," with regards to Carter McMasters.

11:27 a.m. Always enjoy an impromptu call from my good friend Dave Telep.

11:21 a.m. I'll be honest when Noel Johnson signed with Southern Cal, I always had the feeling that he'd go pro or transfer back to East Coast after a year in L.A. He told me he doesn't even like tacos. There is a killer taco stand right down the street from the Galen Center.

11:19 a.m. ESPNAndyKatz "So far only dozed for 15 minutes on the floor at ESPN from the second half 16-minute to the 8-minute mark of Hawaii-Northern Colorado."

11:15 a.m. Trevor Booker just hit a three and then a fade away jumper. I might take my first break of a day. Adrian Branch is gushing.

11:13 a.m. Tanner Smith with the drive and score. He's gotten better and better and better. Guys like Mike Maynard did a great job with his skill development in high school.

11:12 a.m. Fact - I never saw Demontez Stitt in high school or AAU. That's a rarity.

11:07 a.m. Getting ready to dive into the second half.

Two quick thoughts - really respected Jason Williams as a player. One of the best guards in college basketball this decade. But he struggles as an analyst and color commentator. Wish him well as an assistant coach. Let's be honest, that's what he'll be in two or three years.

Second thought - didn't respect Doug Gottlieb as a player in college. Played against him one summer. Cheap shot artist on screens. But so was I. Maybe we are one in the same. Love his views on college hoops and the second best guy at ESPN behind Jay Bilas. Great insight. Understands how important recruiting is. Shoots it straight and honest. Really respect him and his views.

Live: Clemson at Liberty 1st half

2009-11-17T07:15:00.000-08:00

10:16 a.m. "You are looking live at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia..." Sorry, Brent Musberger, I've always wanted to say that.

10:17 a.m. Game went live with the one-liner of "You gotta love a train" by the analyst. This will be fun.

10:19 a.m. 11-1 Clemson start. Can Bobo Baciu get in the game now?

10:20 a.m. "David Potter is a poor man's Allan Houston." Who is doing the color analyst?

10:21 a.m. Crap, Potter just hit another three (that's three). I mean, this guy is a poor man's Allan Houston!

10:22 a.m. Seth Davis already with the Tweet of the Morning. "I got 10 bucks that says @ESPNAndyKatz is asleep on his couch right now in a snuggie."

10:24 a.m. 22-5 Clemson. Potter is a poor man's Rotnei Clarke right now.

10:27 a.m. Just realized that this game has a lot of firsts for me in this game. Happy to say I was the first national writer to scribe about Clemson's Trevor Booker, Andre Young, Tanner Smith, David Potter, Noel Johnson, Milton Jennings, Liberty's Carter McMasters and Jesse Sanders. Someone give me a cookie. Or a gold star.

10:28 a.m. Cool story on Liberty's Sanders - he played for a home school team in Houston. My man Jim Hicks of the Recruiter's Cheat Sheet swore up and down to me that he was a player. He'll be a big player this year at Liberty.

10:30 a.m. Evan Gordon, Eric's little brother, is at the foul line. I'll be honest, never knew this is where little Gordon ended up.

10:31 a.m. Full warning - if you text me or call me today, good chance I'll use it in the live blog. You've been given fair warning and I hope you bring it today.

10:36 a.m. Right on cue, got a commitment call. Santoine Butler to Gardner-Webb. Blog on pause.

10:53 a.m. Back. Butler to Gardner-Webb. I love DVR. Let's catch up, shall we?

10:58 a.m. I love watching Clemson’s point guard Andre Young. He is one of my favorite players I’ve covered in Georgia. He is one of the top competitors I’ve ever covered and a guy that defied all of the small player odds that were stacked against him. He played at a very small school in Albany (Deerfield Christian) and won, won, won there. He and current Georgia starting point guard Dustin Ware faced each other time and time again for the championships and developed into one of the best rivalries in Georgia’s storied history for high school hoops.

11:01 a.m. Trevor Booker is a monster rebounder. Sheesh.

11:02 a.m. All of the games are promoting the new ESPN encyclopedia and more times than not, I’ll probably be my usual ornery self and make a smart-alecky statement about the promotion but the book is amazing. Truly amazing. If you are a hardcore hoops fan, add this book to your Christmas list. The book is full of gold.

11:04 a.m. Adrian Branch is doing some recruiting for Liberty. Talking about out of conference schedule, the A.D. baking cookies, intimate atmosphere in Lynchburg. This is disturbing.

11:06 a.m. Caught up on the DVR. Which brings me to this question - is DVR one of the top 5 greatest inventions this century? Clemson 42, Liberty 19.

24 Hours of Hoop

2009-11-17T07:09:00.001-08:00

Okay, let’s try this again.

I wanted to go all 24 hours here on the National Hoops Report. But by 12:06 a.m., I was dead asleep on the world’s greatest coach, a place I like to call “Where Amazing Happens.”

The 24 hours of blogging was a wrap before it ever began.

The 6 a.m. wake-up call came, turned on the tube, saw the Saint Peter’s-Monmouth game on television and promptly decided that the marathon would wait a little longer to get started at NHR headquarters.

At 7:54 a.m. I checked the score and saw Rotnei Clarke, er, Saint Peters beat Monmouth 58-34.

Hello Drexel-Niagara. Watched for a couple of minutes, went to the kitchen to grab some Special K only to return to see PBS Kids on the television. My four-year-old was propped up with her one-year-old sister on “Where Amazing Happens” and I had my third loss of the young day.

The time came to take my four-year-old to pre-school (the best three hours of the day), put the one-year-old down for an early nap, reclaimed the remote, the “WAH” and settled in for a long day of basketball.

The first image I get is Bruiser Flint ripping into his team about playing defense with 1:17 to play in the second half.

Niagara will win this game.

Clemson at Liberty is next. I’ll be there for it. Join me, won’t you? Join me all day here at the National Hoops Report.

12@12: Weekend randomness

2009-11-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

1. National Hoops Report college player of the week: The opening week schedule didn’t have a lot of games on tap (disappointing, isn’t it?) but there was a clear cut leader in the POW award in week one. Ohio State’s Evan Turner was amazing. The first game of the year, he messed around and got a triple-double. The next game, he racks up 17 boards and scored 24 points.

Chad Ford says a few NBA scouts have called Turner a Brandon Roy type of player. Sure, it has only been two games into the year, but believe it. Don't look at Turner's scoring. Look at his rebounding and passing. He's a high-level pro with that kind of size.

2. National Hoops Report freshman of the week: Xavier Henry, SG, Kansas. How about 27 points in 24 minutes in his college debut. And Hofstra isn’t exactly a cupcake. Henry can flat out score. We all knew that after watching him torch the prep ranks for four years. He obviously won’t keep up that pace on a team like Kansas. It will be fun to watch him play against Memphis (the team he was committed to at one point) on Tuesday night.

3. National Hoops Report win of the week: Rider over Mississippi State in Starkville. Huge confidence booster for the MAAC school. Huge confidence destroyer for the SEC school.

4. Harrison Barnes The nation’s top high school basketball player is going to North Carolina.

Barnes announced his decision at an elaborate press conference in a standing room only ceremony at Ames (Iowa) High School. Over 13,000 people watched the press conference online. ESPNU carried it on their Recruiting Insider show.

Roy Williams watched it via Skype.

His commitment via online teleconference with Roy Williams was a look into the world of recruiting like never before seen. That part was unique. Those that are addicted to college recruiting never get to see that moment where the player commits to the coach. It is a fun thing to witness. With his use of modern technology, Barnes opened a window into the world of high stakes recruiting.

And in high stakes recruiting, oftentimes real, genuine emotion is not there. It is all positional movement amongst one millionaire against another with a teenager caught in the middle of it all. When Barnes brought Roy Williams onto the big screen, there was a genuine excitement there. You don’t see that very often anymore, not even from good ‘ole Roy.

5. After Barnes announced he’d be a Tar Heel and not a Duke Blue Devil (like I thought he’d be), the question was immediately asked: “What does this mean for Duke?” Part of me wonders if Duke jumped the shark with the loss of Barnes to North Carolina.

Coach K doesn’t lose players. The last one he really, truly lost was Jared Jeffries, a Bloomington, Ind., to Indiana.

Clearly, Duke needs to land Quincy Miller and/or Austin Rivers in 2011. I’ll go out on a limb and even say J.P. Tokoto, a 2012 stud, will be a Blue Devil. Or can I? In the past, you just knew who was going to Duke. It took all of two seconds to know who commits to Duke.

Not anymore. Barnes proved that.

6. Lost in the shuffle of National Signing Day is an amazing story of a player that is expected to help a NCAA tournament team. It shouldn't have been lost at all. In fact, the story should have been a national one, especially with the the first day of the signing period coming on Veteran's Day. Meet Bernard James. Here is his story.

7. With the signing period coming to a close on Wednesday at 11:59 p.m., college staffs will hit a collective reset button and re-examine the current pool of unsigned prospects. But understand this: more times than not, a player’s value is oftentimes is misconstrued in the spring period. The value of a late addition particularly for a high-major big man is tough to gauge. No disrespect to him, but see Frank Ben-Eze for example.

8. I was told there was a signing announcement/press conference/county fair/whatever you want to call these things these days that lasted one hour and 45 minutes last week. That is 105 minutes, folks. Whoa. Where there clowns making balloons, faces being painted and turkey legs being handed out for refreshments? That’s a long time to celebrate a college decision. I wonder if the valedictorian gets two hours.

Of course, I’m not a big fan of any high school player holding a press conference. I suppose I’m just a curmudgeon.

9. Sure, it has only been one game. Sure, John Wall didn't play. But Eric Bledsoe is much better than his No. 52 composite ranking coming out high school. Rivals had him ranked 23 overall coming out of high school, the highest of the services. Prep Stars had him at 69, the lowest of the rankers. Bledsoe was brilliant in his college debut.

10. Did Isiah Thomas even look at the talent at FIU before taking that job? He’s bound to blow up if the losses, the bad losses, pile up like they are starting to.

11. One NBA sources of mine says: “Nastiest dunk by a guard in the post-Jordan era.” Truth.

12. Here are my 12 football thoughts from the weekend:

A. Brian Kelly, uber-successful coach at Cincinnati, I’ll save you the trouble. Here is the MLS search page
for South Bend.

B. Dexter McCluster touched the ball more for Ole Miss. Just like I asked. He ran for 282 yards and four touchdowns against Tennessee. And Texas remains the most consistent top tier team in the country. Call me Nostradamus.

C. USC’s defense isn’t the same this year, particularly with the linebackers. With Clay Matthews and Brian Cushing, last year’s backers for the Trojans, not only starting but amongst the top 12 linebackers in the NFL this season, it’s easy to see why there is little fight with USC’s defense this year.

D. The Pac-10 is the best conference in America right now in college football. Why the SEC keeps getting pumped as the nation’s best league is mind-boggling. The ACC might even be better.

E. Bill Belichick. Where do we begin? Start and end with his arrogance. Two major things come to mind in the ripple effect. 1. New England’s defense doesn’t have a leader in its own locker room after the head coach showed zero faith in his team. 2. Belichick said without saying that Peyton Manning scares him to death.

F. As bonehead of a move that was the 4th and two play, credit needs to go to Manning. Indianapolis was down by 17 points in the fourth quarter. The Colts scored three touchdowns in the fourth quarter. Manning was an amazing 9-11 passing for 119 yards, two touchdowns and an interception. Joseph Addai scored a four yard run thanks to a great drive by Manning. The Colts had 15 plays in less than six minutes to collect those scores.

G. How about the poll NBC conducted with the 20 living NFL Hall of Fame quarterbacks about which quarterback they’d want leading their team – Tom Brady or Peyton Manning. The results were as follows: 13.5 to 2.5 in favor of Manning.

H. Denver is the Iowa of the NFL.

I. Cincinnati beat Pittsburgh twice this year. Say that out loud. No, really, it’s true.

J. Tennessee’s Chris Johnson has 1,091 rushing yards thru nine games. That is the most since Shaun Alexander rushed for 1,114 yards in 2005 in that span.

M. Who is the Heisman leader right now? Stanford’s Toby Gerhart has rumbled through every defense that has lined up across from the Cardinal this year. After watching him for two full games (against Oregon and Stanford), I’m ready to call him my Heisman favorite.

N. Who is the NFL MVP leader right now? Clearly, it is Peyton Manning. Still need a reason after last night’s game?

Live from Ames, Iowa

2009-11-13T12:01:00.000-08:00

Harrison Barnes, the nation's top high school basketball player, will announce his decision today at 4 p.m. EST live from Ames High School.

You can watch the press conference here.

Barnes will select between Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, Oklahoma, UCLA and Iowa State.

Where will it be?

Bold prediction: Today is National Signing Day

2009-11-11T07:15:00.000-08:00

Today is National Signing Day. But you probably knew that. Teenagers will sign what is essentially a contract that binds them to the college or university of their choice. (Where is the student-athlete's benefit in that? Nevermind, that's another column for another day.)

With that being said, there are still a number of players that are waiting to make their decisions. They have a week to sign, ending at 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 18.

I'll be posting my predictions on where the top 150 players (according to Scout, Rivals, Prep Stars and ESPN) go. I would attempt all 750 players on the new HoopScoop rankings. But I remembered that ranking 750 kids is pointless. So is predicting all of them.

Click HERE for my Twitter page.

Feel free to post your questions in the comments section below or via Twitter. Consider this a National Signing Day Mailbag.

12 @ 12: Weekend randomness

2009-11-09T09:00:00.000-08:00

1. Pete Thamel, one of the best writers in the nation that covers high school sports, traveled to Israel to see how Jeremy Tyler is doing in his quest to becoming a decorated professional basketball player.

To no one’s surprise, Tyler is struggling in a foreign land and on his own.

Tyler left sunny San Diego to play at Maccabi Haifa for a $140,000 two-year deal. The end result, in Tyler’s eyes, is being drafted in 2011. His play was to follow in the footsteps of Brandon Jennings, who is having a surprisingly successful start to his NBA career.

The difference between Tyler and Jennings was this: Jennings was always good and a producer. Tyler, however, was not. One game he’d be a dominant force and clearly the best player to step foot onto the court. The next game, he’d complain, throw his arms up in frustration and immediately point fingers as to why his teenage world was rocked. Jennings never did that.

The other difference was work ethic. Jennings is a gym rat. When Tyler left the 2008 Pangos All-American camp after one night of action, Jennings, then out of high school, was constantly on the court and inside the gym.

Both are incredibly arrogant. Tyler’s is/was unjustified. Jennings, like him or not, was an arrogance that was competitive and it gave him an edge. Clearly, the trip to Italy was a life reality that your world is not the only world. Humility is life’s great reset button.

Perhaps a giant slice of humility is what Tyler, who would be graduating high school in May of 2010, needs.

2. The college basketball season officially starts today and the hoops world will be watching Isiah Thomas’s college coaching debut at North Carolina. And, sure, that’s a big time storyline to watch. But the game won’t be fun to watch. In fact, it will probably be a 25-point blowout.

3. But the game that is the most intriguing game on Monday’s slate is the Albany-Syracuse tilt. It is no secret that Syracuse lost to Le Moyne, Division II school, in a preseason exhibition. The Orange are sitting back on their heels at the moment while a team like Albany, certainly talented enough in the starting line up with Will Harris and Tim Ambrose. While Syracuse is much more talented, Albany will give the Big East team a run for their money to start the year.

4. High-major freshman that was ranked outside the top 25 that will have the biggest year: Noel Johnson of Clemson.

5. High-major freshman that won’t live up to his top 25 billing: Milton Jennings of Clemson.

6. Mid-major freshman that will have a huge rookie season: Keith Clanton of Central Florida.

7. Seth Davis of Sports Illustrated nailed it. College hoops needs an opening day or an opening weekend.

8. I know I pump them every week but if you love college hoops, Rush the Court should be one of the first five websites you check everyday. Here is one of the reasons why.

9. Where will Harrison Barnes be going to school? I’ve seen that sentence via text, twitter and email more than any other question this year. My answer? Duke. That’s my guess. Take it for what it is worth.

10. I spent the weekend counting the number of blogs that the University of Kentucky men’s basketball has “covering” the team. Unofficially, the count was 1,685,095.

11. If this guy would have gone to one of these fake schools that boast "national prep players", he would have gotten away with his plan of playing high school basketball.

12. Here are my 12 football thoughts from the weekend:

A. Well, thanks Oregon. Right when everyone believed in you, Stanford outsmarts you with your own game. The Cardinal just ran all over the Ducks to the tune of 254 rushing yards on 52 attempts. Ball control, clock management and power football.

B. Iowa, it was only a matter of time. Really, it was.

C. Who are you Boise State? Seriously. Are you as good as your record? Or was the Oregon win a matter of emotion at home and on national television? Or are you just that good?

D. Texas is the most consistent of all of the top tier programs this season. The closest game the Longhorns have had was a three-point win over Oklahoma at a neutral site. Florida and Alabama have been up and down all season.

E. However, Alabama’s win over LSU was one to help lock their position into the top two positions. The Tide would be my No. 2 team in the country (if my voice meant anything). Texas would be No. 1 while Florida checks in at No. 3.

F. Cal's Jahvid Best's touchdown dive against Oregon State was one of the scariest airborne accidents I've seen in quite some time. That was a terrifying leap for six points.

G. Twitter note number one that amazed me over the weekend: ESPN’s Joe Schad wrote “Jimmy Clausen Heisman? ESPN Research says 6 TD, 0 INT when trailing in 4th Quarter.”

H. Twitter note number two that amazed me over the weekend: ESPN’s Adam Schefter wrote “On third down, where Dallas won the game, Tony Romo was nine-of-11 for 140 yards, one touchdown and that quarterback rating of 149.1.”

I. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again and again. I’d play for Atlanta head coach Mike Smith a million times over. His antics against DeAngelo Hall (the worst role model in any professional American sport) were outstanding. Hall wanted to take on the entire Atlanta Falcons sidelines after a cheap shot on Matt Ryan by Laron Landry. The Falcons gladly obliged to take on the world’s biggest moron. And out of nowhere Smith, who is in his 50s, plowed through the pile and got right in the grill of the helmeted Hall. That’s leadership I’ll get behind any day.

J. The top two wide receivers for the Dallas Cowboys played at Northwestern Oklahoma State (Patrick Crayton) and Monmouth (Miles Austin). And the two play in a billion dollar stadium. Jackpot!

K. Stat that caught my eye this week: Peyton Manning threw the ball 40 times in the first half against Houston. 40 times! Only five quarterbacks threw over 40 times in the entire game this week. Manning finished with 50 attempts in a lucky win against Houston.

L. Who is the Heisman leader right now? Finally, a weekend for separation for some players. Let’s throw Stanford’s Toby Gerhart and Clemson’s C.J. Spiller onto the ballot. But Colt McCoy then Jimmy Clausen are my one and number two picks right now.

M. Who is the early NFL MVP leader right now? It is still a two-horse race between Manning and Drew Brees. And a million other guys chasing after the top spot.

National Hoops Report Preseason Players of the Year

2009-11-09T03:40:00.000-08:00

ACC
America East
Atlantic Sun
Atlantic 10
Big East
Big Sky
Big South
Big Ten
Big West
Big 12
CAA
Conference USA
Great West
Horizon
Ivy League
Metro Atlantic
MEAC
Mid-American
Missouri Valley
Mountain West
Northeast
Ohio Valley
Pac-10
Patriot
SEC
SoCon
Southland
Summit
Sun Belt
SWAC
WAC
West Coast Conference

WCC Preseason Player of the Year: Dior Lowhorn

2009-11-09T03:39:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report West Coast Preseason Player of the Year
Dior Lowhorn, PF, Senior, San Francisco

After playing for Bob Knight one year at Texas Tech, the 6-7, 230-pound power forward could make a case for top dog on the West Coast alongside Luke Babbitt of Nevada. Lowhorn has recorded back-to-back 20 point per game seasons. Another year like his sophomore and junior years, Lowhorn could go down as one of the greatest players in West Coast Conference history.

As a recruit, the bruising Bay Area native was the No. 67ranked player in the class of 2005 and in retrospect that is too low for the class.

Gonzaga has traditionally been the team from the West Coast Conference that the rest of the college hoops world knows about. However, San Francisco could be primed for their turn in the national spotlight because of guys like Lowhorn.

WAC Preseason Player of the Year: Luke Babbitt

2009-11-08T18:48:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report WAC Preseason Player of the Year

Luke Babbitt, PF, Sophomore, Nevada

Babbitt was one of the top scoring freshmen in the country last year at 16.9 per clip. The big man also grabbed 7.4 rebounds a game while shooting 42 percent from three. He can burn you inside, outside and every where in between.

Not only is Babbitt the best player in the WAC, he is the best player on the West Coast right now.

Babbitt originally committed to Ohio State as a junior but the Reno native thought against his original feelings and switched his pledge later to Nevada, the local school. Babbitt was the No. 31 ranked player in the class of 2008, according to Rivals.com. Scout.com and Prep Stars listed him as the No. 24 ranked player in the class. He’s lived up to the hype in a very real way and by the time it is all said and done, Babbitt could be the most decorated player in Nevada history.

SWAC Preseason Player of the Year: Grant Maxey

2009-11-08T17:26:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report SWAC Preseason Player of the Year

Grant Maxey, PF, Senior, Jackson State

Meet the toughest player to defend in the Deep South’s low-major conference. The 6-7, 210-pound can score (16.7 points a game) and, moreover, defend the low blocks. He’s one of the best in the conference when his team doesn’t have the ball.

Maxey can rebound (6.7 a game), work the passing lanes and front the post (1.6 steals a game) and block shots (nearly one a game).

Maxey was a non-factor as a recruit coming out of Toledo, Ohio. His .com résumé is non-existent. Not that those kinds of things matter. Clearly.

Sun Belt Preseason Player of the Year: A.J. Slaughter

2009-11-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report Sun Belt Preseason Player of the Year
A.J. Slaughter, SG, Junior, Western Kentucky

Slaughter really came into his own last year as a junior. The homegrown product put up impressive numbers (16 points, 3.6 assists, 3.1 rebounds and 1.3 steals a game) last year and his a much bigger role this season now that Orlando Mendez-Valdez has graduated.

The Hilltoppers have become a constant in the postseason and with guys like Slaughter in the backcourt, WKU should, once again, be traveling quite a bit in late March.

Slaughter played AAU basketball alongside O.J. Mayo and Bill Walker on the D1 Greyhounds. Scout.com listed Slaughter as a three-star prospect coming out of high school.

Summit Preseason Player of the Year: Keith Benson

2009-11-07T07:13:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report Summit Preseason Player of the Year
Keith Benson, C, Junior, Oakland

On what is the most talented low-major team in the country (and perhaps the very best low-major team in the country), Benson is one of the several players on Oakland’s roster that could be considered a preseason player of the year in the Summit.

Benson, a towering 6-11 center, is a shot-blocking machine (2.4 a game) and a player that continues to improve as a scorer (14.3 a game) and a rebounder (7.8 a game). Benson is also one of the premiere low post scorers in the country, ranking fourth in the nation in field goal percentage.

Coming out of the talent-ladened Detroit Country Day school, Benson didn’t jump off the pages as a prospect. In fact, he was strongly considered a role player, at best, for a low-major after averaging a humble 6.9 points and 4.5 rebounds as a senior. Benson took a redshirt year his first year in college and is now a guy that NBA teams are watching.

Southland Preseason Player of the Year: Marquez Haynes

2009-11-07T06:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report Southland League Preseason Player of the Year
Marquez Haynes, SG, Senior, UT-Arlington

It could be argued that Haynes is the best college player in the Dallas-Fort Worth area right now.

After two years at Boston College, the 6-3 guard returned home and find a place where he could not only shine but also turn the program around. Haynes averaged 16.1 points, 5.1 rebounds and 3.4 assists a game as a junior.

As a prospect, Haynes was the No. 150 ranked player, according to Rivals.com, coming out of high school.

SoCon Preseason Player of the Year: Andrew Goudelock

2009-11-07T05:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report SoCon League Preseason Player of the Year
Andrew Goudelock, SG, Junior, College of Charleston

Bobby Cremins has a court named after him in downtown Atlanta at Georgia Tech and every player that is a player has played on that court. The Cremins name holds a lot of weight with kids from Atlanta and College of Charleston has been selling that since Cremins took over the program.

One of the first players to buy into that was Goudelock. And you can call him the piped piper. He’s led the charge of Atlanta area kids that have pledged to Cremins.

For starters, he’s a tremendous scorer. Goudelock is one of the best shooters in the country, hitting 44 percent from behind the three-point line. He led the Cougars in scoring at 16.7 points a game last year. This year, he’s the best shooter in a conference that has produced some deadly perimeter assassins of late.

Goudelock shined at my Georgia Hoops Fall Showcase as a sophomore shooter and kept climbing the improvement ladder until he finished his career at Stone Mountain High School. Cremins encouraged the 6-1 shooter to "just do your thing" and that's exactly what he's done in the SoCon.

SEC Preseason Player of the Year: John Wall

2009-11-06T15:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report Patriot League Preseason Player of the Year
John Wall, PG, Freshman, Kentucky

Move over Derrick Rose. John Wall is here.

The charismatic point guard from North Carolina is a hoops prodigy that only seems to be getting better and better every time he steps onto the floor.

Sorry, SEC. Sucks for you.

The rookie has the tools and, more importantly, the talent and coach that can help elevate him to this level so early in his young career. Some even believe Wall is the best player in the country in college basketball.

He could be. For now, however, we’ll just dub him the best player in the SEC.

The first time I watched Wall play was at the first Rbk U camp in Philadelphia. He was amazing throughout and you could see the confidence immediately take over.

I wrote: “Put the name John Wall on the high-major list for the class of 2009. The 6-foot-3 has sprinter speed and great body control when he changes of direction. Mix that all together and you have a player that was simply un-defendable from end to end. He's been the biggest revelation of the camp so far in terms of being an unknown on a national scale.

Maalik Wayns is proving himself once again at the national level.
The speedster has people talking after his proficient 17 point (6-10 FG), six rebound, four assist and three steal performance against the likes of Kenny Boynton and Brandon Knight, two of the better guards in the camp.

When looking at the 2009 group of point guards, Wall fits in nicely with the elite prospects in his class. Expect Wall to see a lot of high-major interest and a long line of coaches in tow wherever he plays for the rest of the month.”

Wall was the No. 2 ranked player in the country, according to the RSCI rankings.

Patriot League Preseason Player of the Year: RJ Evans

2009-11-06T14:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report Patriot League Preseason Player of the Year
R.J. Evans, SG, Sophomore, Holy Cross

He was last year’s Rookie of the Year in the Patriot. This year he could be the Player of the Year. Correction, he should be the Player of the Year.

As a freshman, Evans averaged 13.4 points, 5.2 rebounds and 1.7 steals per game. He was one of the best offensive rebounders in the conference and a “scorer supreme” to use the words of those that watched him in high school.

Pac-10 Preseason Player of the Year: Jerome Randle

2009-11-06T13:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report Pac-10 Preseason Player of the Year

Kenneth Faried, PG, Senior, Cal

Whenever a player returns to a conference as the top scorer and assist man, there is a strong chance that they earn Preseason Player of the Year honors. Randle is exactly in this position this season. The tiny guard from Chicago scored 18.3 points a game last year while dishing out five assists a game for Mike Montgomery.

This year, Randle has the Golden Bears sitting atop many Pac-10 lists and inside the top 10 in the eyes of a number of hoops pundits. He and backcourt mate Patrick Christopher will certainly battle Washington’s trio of Abdul Gaddy, Isaiah Thomas and Venoy Overton for the “top backcourt in the Pac-10” title all season.

Scout.com listed Randle as the No. 15 ranked point guard in the class of 2006. Scout nailed the evaluation on Randle: "One of the fastest, smartest and most poised point guards around. You can't take the ball from him and he makes sound decisions. You want the ball in his hands at all times and he exudes confidence. Forget the size, the kid is a player. Plus, he'll launch 3s with range and confidence."

Ohio Valley Preseason Player of the Year: Kenneth Faried

2009-11-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report Ohio Valley Preseason Player of the Year
Kenneth Faried, PF, Junior, Morehead State

The nation got to know who the New Jersey native was last season in March. His play late in the schedule within conference play and in the post-season was inspired. He’ll have a chance to shine on the big stage once again next week when he and his teammates play Kentucky.

Faried is the nation’s top returning rebounder at 13 a contest. The bouncy big man is also a capable scorer, putting in a hair under 14 a contest. In the Ohio Valley Conference, you have to have a bouncy forward to win. And no one has a guy like Faried.

Academics stunted his recruitment out of high school in New Jersey and he wasn’t a big name player on the grassroots circuit, even in the highly covered area of the Northeast. Consider him one of the best steals in mid-major basketball.

Northeast Preseason Player of the Year: Jeremy Goode

2009-11-06T11:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report Northeast Preseason Player of the Year
Jeremy Goode, PG, Senior, Mount St. Mary's

For those that have watched the Charlotte native since high school, they aren’t surprised with the career that Goode has had so far at The Mount. The 5-9 senior has enjoyed a great career so far for the Northeast Conference program.

Last year, Goode averaged a team high 14.9 points, 4.1 assists, 3.2 rebounds and 1.9 steals a game. This year, he is hoping to get his program back to the NCAA tournament.

I was first impressed by Goode after watching him at the Dell Curry Shootout (now known as the Bojangles Shootout) in 2004. His game, even then, was about putting defenders on their heels. And he won big games at that level, too. See the trend?

Mountain West Preseason Player of the Year: Malcolm Thomas

2009-11-06T10:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report Mountain West Preseason Player of the Year
Malcolm Thomas, PF, Junior, San Diego State

When he was coming out of high school, he was only a two-star prospect.

A year later, Thomas was a dominant force at Pepperdine. As a freshman, the 6-9 big man averaged 12.5 points and a team high 8.8 rebounds and two blocks. After a difficult season in Malibu, he wanted to leave for greener pastures.

Thomas considered transferring to UCLA, Boston College, Arizona or UNLV after his stellar rookie season at Pepperdine. Instead, he went home to San Diego City College. While there, Thomas was amazing. He led his team in points (21.1), rebounds (12.9), blocks (3.8) and field‑goal percentage (60.6).

Big things are expected for Thomas and San Diego State this season. Rightfully so.

Thomas’s high school and Pepperdine teammate Tyrone Shelley could very well be the Player of the Year in the conference, too. Shelley is one of the best scorers in the country. He could be the top scorer in the conference this season.

Missouri Valley Preseason Player of the Year: Osiris Eldridge

2009-11-06T09:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report Missouri Valley Preseason Player of the Year
Osiris Eldridge, SG, Senior, Illinois State

If last year’s Missouri Valley Conference tournament was any indication of what Eldridge has in store for this season, watch out.

The bouncy Chicago native was an absolute terror for opponents in the post-season and even tested the NBA waters after his season. He’s a major talent in the MVC and one of the elite athletes in the Midwest.

Eldridge’s scoring numbers dropped last year from nearly 16 a game to 14 a contest. However, the rest of his game improved. He shined as a rebounder (6.2 a game), assist man (2.4) and defender (1.5 steals).

As a recruit, Rivals.com ranked him in the top 150 and top 40 at his position. Coming out of high school, Eldridge understood his level and where he could shine.

Mid-American Preseason Player of the Year: Darion Anderson

2009-11-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report Mid-American Preseason Player of the Year
Darion Anderson, SG, Junior, Northern Illinois

There may not be a more wide open league for teams and players this season than in the Mid-American. Take your pick for Player of the Year. Seriously. There are probably seven guys that could all make a strong case for the award that means very little.

My pick is Anderson.

Here’s why: he’s a terrific score (16.9 points a game last year). He’s a great rebounder (5.4 a game) for a 6-2, 200-pound guard. He’s the top player for what I believe is one of the top two teams in the league.

But it is a crap shoot.

The race is so wide open that Anderson could even “lose” the award to his own teammate, Xavier Silas.

MEAC Preseason Player of the Year: Reggie Holmes

2009-11-06T07:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report MEAC Preseason Player of the Year
Reggie Holmes, SG, Senior, Morgan State

There is a value of staying home and making a difference. That is what Holmes did. The Baltimore native stayed home after a strong career at St. Frances to play at Morgan State.

He has made a significant difference for the NCAA tournament team and the revival of Todd Bozeman’s coaching career. Holmes averaged nearly 17 points a game and was the top shooter in the conference last year. At 6-4, he’s also one of the top rebounders in the league, too.

As a high school prospect, Holmes didn’t make a splash with the .com services. In fact, he doesn’t even have a profile on the two major networks.

Metro Atlantic Preseason Player of the Year: Ryan Thompson

2009-11-06T06:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report Metro Atlantic Preseason Player of the Year
Ryan Thompson, PG, Senior, Rider

The New Jersey Ironman was the second leading scoring in the MAAC last year at 18 a game. He played over 38 minutes a contest and played all over the floor for the Broncs. The 6-6 guard is a proven shooter, defender and decision-maker in the backcourt.

Like his older brother, Jason, Thompson was under recruited and developed late. There is a train of thought that the younger Thompson cold follow big brother to the NBA because of his size at the point guard position.

He picked Rider over George Mason, Drexel, and Marist coming out of high school.

Ivy League Preseason Player of the Year: Ryan Wittman

2009-11-06T05:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report Ivy League Preseason Player of the Year
Ryan Wittman, SF, Senior, Cornell

Andy Bernard, you aren’t the most popular Cornell alum this time of year. That is Wittman’s honor right now.

The 6-7 son of former Indiana star and NBA head coach Randy Wittman is making a name for himself in college. The younger Wittman averaged 18.5 points a game last yea and is one of the premiere shooters in the conference. He returns to the league as the top scorer and the hardest player to defend in the conference.

Ryan James, the best hoops guy I know in Minnesota, had Wittman as the sixth best player coming out of his state in 2006. In hind sight, Wittman was the best guy in the class.

Horizon League Preseason Player of the Year: Gordon Hayward

2009-11-05T19:29:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report Horizon Preseason Player of the Year
Gordon Hayward, SF, Sophomore, Butler

Hayward was under-recruited and looked over by the .com world, including myself, despite several nudges from those that followed the program closely. Hayward was not ranked by the national recruiting services and when he committed to the Bulldogs, it didn’t receive any notoriety.

Boy, were we ever wrong.

Shelvin Mack, a fellow sophomore on the team, was thought to be the gem of the class. While Mack is certainly a tremendous player, Hayward was clearly the steal of the class and the steal of the entire 2008 recruiting class. Hayward would have shined at any level, judging his success with USA Basketball this summer.

Hayward averaged 13.1 points, 6.5 rebounds, two assists, 1.5 steals and 0.9 blocks a game as a freshman all the while shooting nearly 45 percent from three.

You don’t find guys like him in the Big Ten anymore so for him to land at Butler and in the Horizon, it doesn’t come as a big surprise that the Bulldogs are the favorites to win their league but also receive recognition as a national top 10 program.

Great West Preseason Player of the Year: Tyler Cain

2009-11-05T17:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Great West Preseason Player of the Year
Tyler Cain, PF, Senior, South Dakota

Hard to really call this a league since the Great West won’t be eligible for the NCAA tournament bid until 2020 but that doesn’t mean the league lacks for good basketball players.

Enter Cain, a bruising 6-8, 235-pound power forward. Cain averaged 15.4 points, 11 rebounds, all the while leading his team in blocks (82), steals (45) and shooting percentage at 66.5 from the floor.

Cain is a defensive gem in the low blocks as well. He’s big, strong and plays with a football mentality. Recruited by the low-majors, Cain was not a highly sought after prospect coming out of high school despite a good prep career.

Conference USA Preseason Player of the Year: Jerome Jordan

2009-11-05T16:00:00.000-08:00

Conference USA Preseason Player of the Year
Jerome Jordan, C, Senior, Tulsa

For the first time in what feels like forever, a Memphis player is not the Preseason Player of the Year in Conference USA. In fact, there isn’t one Memphis player on the Preseason All-Conference USA team.

Tulsa’s tower of terror gets the nod this season. He is one of the premiere shot-blockers in the country (top ten in the nation last year with 88) and a capable scorer on the low-block. The 7-footer rips down over eight rebounds a game. He is certainly capable of pulling down upwards of nine and a half. That will only help his draft status.

As a recruit, Jordan was a non-factor player. He didn’t play his senior year at Florida Air Academy, a school that consistently pumps out Division I players, due to transfer rules. He didn’t play summer ball after coming to the United States from Jamaica.

Stetson was really the only other true player for his services. A year from now, he could be playing in the NBA.

Colonial Preseason Player of the Year: Charles Jenkins

2009-11-05T15:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Report Colonial Preseason Player of the Year
Charles Jenkins, SG, Junior, Hofstra

The CAA is quickly becoming a league where the country looks for the best mid-major guards. This year, keep an eye on Jenkins.

All Jenkins did was score nearly 20 points a game, grab 4.8 rebounds, hand out 4.3 assists a game and collect 1.4 steals a game. He’s also one of the best assist to turnover guys back in the league this season. The ironman is the top returning scorer in the CAA and has Hofstra on the top half of a very competitive league that sent five teams to the postseason last year.

Jenkins was a non-factor on the recruiting scene as a prep star despite having a very respectable high school career.

He scored 36 points against New York powerhouse St. Raymond's and saw a rise in his recruitment. However, he laid low on the recruiting radar and took a redshirt year when he enrolled at Hofstra.

You could argue he is the best redshirt player in the country.

Big 12 Preseason Player of the Year: Sherron Collins

2009-11-05T14:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Big 12 Preseason Player of the Year

Sherron Collins, PG, Senior, Kansas

Many believe the Kansas Jayhawks are the top team in the country heading into the season. Hard to argue against that. With the bulk of the team back in Lawrence, the Jayhawks certainly boast the talent.

Sherron Collins will glue it all together. The 5-11 bowling ball from Chicago is the team’s senior leader. Collins led the team in scoring at 18.9 points and assists with five a game. He’s a speedster with big-time athleticism in the backcourt. His play should have Bill Self looking at another Final Four this season.

Collins was a rarity at the time he “blew up” nationally. Few outside of Chicago had actually watched the three-sport superstar in person. He was a legend in conversations amongst the message boards and .com evaluators. It wasn’t until the Boo Williams Invitational where he burst onto the scene and everyone had a chance to watch him.

His first game of the tournament in the back gym at Hampton University was packed with reporters and analysts. Collins didn’t disappoint.

After watching him for the first time, you could say I was smitten.

“He's got wheels for feet, springs for legs, a stump of oak for a chest and every other adjective you can find. Collins is the real deal,” I wrote in 2005.

Collins was the No. 14 ranked player in the class of 2006, according to the RSCI rankings. In hindsight, that might be too low.

Big West Preseason Player of the Year: Larry Anderson

2009-11-05T13:00:00.000-08:00

Big West Preseason Player of the Year

Larry Anderson, SG, Long Beach State, Sophomore

The 6-6 wing is one of the fun stories of all of the West Coast schools. He left his Long Beach home to go to the cold winters of Maine to play at Wincendon in order to shore up his academics. He entered college as a solid pick up for the 49ers and as a guy that should help.

Little did anyone know he’d turn out to be the conference’s Freshman of the Year and one of the most versatile players in the league. He enters his sophomore season as the most intriguing player in the Big West and should play over 30 minutes a game this season.

Anderson shined at the National Prep Showcase, the event to play well at if you are a post-graduate or prep school prospect. Anderson did and because of that he became a hot prospect late in the game. Little did anyone realize he was as good as he turned out to be. Scout.com listed him as a three-star prospect coming out of prep school.

A number of high-majors looked but he decided on the home school - Long Beach State - and is a key reason by Dan Monson's program is a contender for the Big West this season. Not bad for a club that won just six games less than three years ago.

Big Ten Preseason Player of the Year: Manny Harris

2009-11-05T12:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Big Ten Preseason Player of the Year
Manny Harris, SG, Junior, Michigan

The Big Ten is stocked deep with top talent and this award could have gone to five different players. But what pushed Marris over the edge was his all-around game. At 6-4, the Detroit native can play three positions for John Beilein. Harris has helped turn the program around and into a NCAA tournament team and Big Ten contender.

As a sophomore, Harris averaged 16.9 points, 6.8 rebounds, 4.4 assists and 1.2 steals a game and he helped put the Wolverines into the second round of the NCAA tournament.

Harris was the No. 42 ranked player in the class of 2007, according to the RSCI rankings. Looking back on the first time I saw him at the King James Classic in 2006, Harris is still the same kind of player except he is a much better scorer in college than he was in high school. His real name is “Corperryale” and, man, do I wish he went by that instead of Manny.

Big South Preseason Player of the Year: Artsiom Parakhouski

2009-11-05T11:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Big South Preseason Player of the Year

Artsiom Parakhouski, C, Senior, Radford

Let’s be honest. No one, and I mean no one, saw this one coming. The 6-11 center from Belarus was an under-the-radar big man that enrolled at the College of Southern Idaho. He played as a freshman but was merely a role player.

A year later, he was quietly one of the top junior college prospects in the country. As a junior at Radford, he averaged a double-double (16.2 points and 11.2 rebounds) a game. The big fella was one of the top 10 rebounders in the country last year. Bet you didn’t realize that.

Hey, he was the Big South Player of the Year last year. Why change things?

Big Sky Preseason Player of the Year: Anthony Johnson

2009-11-05T10:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Big Sky Preseason Player of the Year

Anthony Johnson, SG, Senior, Montana

After two years at Yakima Valley Community College, Johnson was outstanding in his first year in the league last year. The Tacoma, Washington native scored a league high 17.6 points a game last year. Johnson was his league's most valuable player and piloted his team to a championship.

Could history repeat itself this season?

There is little history on Johnson on the Internet, minus a story from Jed Tai (the best source for hoops in the Northwest).

Big East Preseason Player of the Year: Luke Harangody

2009-11-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Big East Preseason Player of the Year

Luke Harangody, PF, Senior, Notre Dame

There isn’t a player in college basketball with a better career scoring average over the last three years than Harangody. The 6-8 brute has been the nuts and bolts of the Irish program and the most successful player for the program since Troy Murphy.

Harangody averaged a Big East high 23.3 points and 11.8 rebounds a game last year as a junior and even handed out a couple of assists a contest. He’s the top returning rebounder in the conference, too.

The first time I saw Harangody was at the Spiece Run 'n Slam in Fort Wayne, Indiana. That was the perfect place to watch the bull in a china shop big man.

I wrote: "He's not going to win any points for style and grace but Luke Harangody will earn the respect of true hoops fans. The 6-foot-8, 245-pound class of 2006 prospect is a blue collar post player that loves to battle for boards, dive for loose balls and score inside the paint."

He hasn't changed a bit.

RSCI rankings had Harangody as the No. 83 ranked player in the class of 2006.

Atlantic 10 Preseason Player of the Year: Chris Wright

2009-11-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Atlantic 10 Preseason Player of the Year

Chris Wright, SF, Junior, Dayton

Try finding a more athletic player in college basketball than Wright. He mixes bounce, size and strength about as good as anyone. And the scary thing is this: Wright has yet to reach the highest point of his game.Wright averaged a team high 13.3 points, 6.6 rebounds and 1.3 blocks a game as a sophomore.

The first time I saw Wright play was in New Orleans at the 16 and under nationals. I only saw him play one game but that game was memorable. Playing against a good team from South Carolina that featured Leron Dendy, Wright had one of the best dunks I’ve ever seen in person. He broke loose in transition and threw down a 360 dunk in the open floor. No one saw it coming. Wright left the tournament after the game due to the nastiest spider bite I’ve ever seen in my life. He needed surgery to remove the infection.

The best game I saw of Wright in high school was at the Flyin' to the Hoop. And Wright didn’t even play his best. Confused? The 6-8 forward played against Oak Hill Academy, the nation’s top team at the time, and scored 21 points in a difficult match-up. He was in front of a packed house in a high energy situation. His second half alone was a good indicator of good things to come. Right now, there isn’t a better player in the Atlantic 10 than Wright.

According to the RSCI rankings, Wright was the No. 57 ranked player in the class of 2007.

Atlantic Sun Preseason Player of the Year: Ben Smith

2009-11-05T07:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops Atlantic Sun Preseason Player of the Year
Ben Smith, PG, Senior, Jacksonville

Smith has helped transform the Dolphins from a one win team into a NCAA tournament contender. Not bad for a guy that had one Division I offer coming out of Dublin High School in Georgia. Smith averaged 16.9 points, four assists, 3.3 rebounds and 2.2 steals as a junior.

Smith shined on the national stage in Las Vegas and at the state level at my first Georgia Hoops Fall Showcase.

After watching him against the best players Georgia has ever seen in one building, I wrote: "Ben Smith isn't a sexy prospect but he sure is efficient and makes things happen. The 5-foot-10 point guard always finds a way to win games, knows how to lead a team and he's tough as nails. His understanding of the game makes him a guy that can help a low to mid-major program."

American East Preseason Player of the Year: Marqus Blakely

2009-11-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops American East Preseason Player of the Year

Marqus Blakely, PF, Senior, Vermont

Suffice it to say that all of the .com recruiting services missed it with this guy. The New Jersey native is not only freaky but one of the toughest players to defend in the Northeast. Blakely, a 6-5, 225-pound forward from New Jersey, averaged 16.1 points, nine rebounds, 2.7 blocks, two steals and shot 61 percent from the floor. He has a bright career ahead of him overseas after his stellar career as a Catamount is finished.

ACC Preseason Player of the Year: Kyle Singler

2009-11-05T05:00:00.000-08:00

National Hoops ACC Preseason Player of the Year
Kyle Singler, PF, Junior, Duke

Singler is the most versatile guy in the league and will play all over the floor now that Duke is stocked with size…Averaged 16.5 points, 7.7 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 1.5 steals and one block a game as a sophomore…He is one of the top perimeter threats at his position in the country.

Recruiting notes: One of the most down to earth kids I’ve ever covered during my time at Rivals.com…Hails from Medford, Oregon, sleepy city off Interstate 5, six hours south of Portland and six hours north of Sacramento…Was the No. 5 ranked player in the class of 2007, according to the RCSI rankings…He is the highest rated player from the class of 2007 to still be playing college basketball… The first time I ever wrote about Singler was in July 2004 after seeing him at the Nike Peach Jam.

33 hours of preseason goodness

2009-11-04T14:57:00.000-08:00

Starting on Thursday, I’m going to try something different here at National Hoops. And I need 33 consecutive hours of your time.

At 8 a.m. all the way through Friday afternoon, I will release my preseason Player of the Year picks for each conference in college basketball every hour on the hour for 33 hours. Easy enough, right?

I’ll roll out a preseason Player of the Year every hour for the next 33 hours. In each post, I’ll note the conference, the player, some notes, RSCI ranking and other various tidbits about that particular player.

What is the RSCI? It is the Recruiting Services Consensus Index, a combination of the "rankings from well known recruiting experts into a single, consensus ranking."

We’ll go from A (starting with the ACC) to W (ending with the West Coast Conference). Buckle up, pop open a case of Red Bull and enjoy.

12 @ 12: Best preps-to-pros

2009-11-04T08:59:00.000-08:00

The list of players that left high school early to go to the NBA is smaller than you think. However, there are some great names on the list. In fact, the two most recognizable names on the list are also the two best players in the game today. Who else made our list of the best preps-to-pros?

1. Kobe Bryant
2. LeBron James
3. Kevin Garnett
4. Dwight Howard
5. Amare Stoudemire
6. Tracy McGrady
7. Rashard Lewis
8. Josh Smith
9. Al Jefferson
10. Monta Ellis
11. Jermaine O’Neal
12. J.R. Smith

12 @ 12: White men can jump

2009-11-03T08:58:00.000-08:00

This is a tongue-in-cheek 12 @ 12. It isn’t meant as a racially sensitive topic so save your emails. After watching Monday Night Football and Game 5 of the World Series at the Taco Mac on Chastian Road in Kennesaw, Georgia (a.k.a. the best sports bar in Georgia), my table (myself and the fantasy football league) and a neighboring table discussed the best Caucasian players to play college basketball since 2000.

The reason? Three white guys were named first team All-Americans on Monday. Kansas’s Cole Aldrich, Duke’s Kyle Singler and Notre Dame’s Luke Harangody were named to the preseason All-American list.

So with that in mind, here was our list of the top 12 white guys to play college hoops since 2000:

1. Tyler Hansbrough, North Carolina – He was the only four-time All-American of the 2000s and one of the greatest college basketball players of all-time. No surprise he was the easy choice.

2. J.J. Redick, Duke – The Blue Devil sharp-shooter was a two-time All-American and one of the best scorers of the 2000s.

3. Casey Jacobsen, Stanford – Before Redick, Jacobsen was the premier perimeter scorers in the country. He too was a two-time All-American.

4. Luke Harangody, Notre Dame – He could pull off something rare this season if he is named an All-American at the end of the year. It would be his third such award. Harangody has averaged over 19 points a game so far in his three-year career.

5. Adam Morrison, Gonzaga – He and Redick were one of the best stories of the 2000s. The two battled all season long for scoring supremacy. The mustache man was an elite scorer for Mark Few.

6. Kevin Love, UCLA – Despite only playing one year of college hoops, Love’s impact was certainly felt. The double-double man helped the Bruins make it to the Final Four.

7. Andrew Bogut, Utah – The Aussie was the undisputed National Player of the Year as a sophomore in 04-05 after averaging 20.4 points and 12.2 rebounds a game.

8. Gerry McNamara, Syracuse – Has there been a more clutch guard in the Big East since 2000 than him? He was Mr. Big East tournament and helped the Orange win a National Championship.

9. Kirk Hinrich, Kansas – He piloted the Jayhawks to two straight Final Fours and was one of the best set up guards in the country.

10. Nick Collison, Kansas – Teaming with Hinrich, Collison was a foundation piece to the two Final Four runs. He left Kansas as the all-time leading scorer in the Big

11. Troy Murphy, Notre Dame – After three straight years of leading the Irish in scoring and rebounding, the New Jersey native left the school as one of the all-time best in South Bend.

12. Steve Blake, Maryland - It is hard to argue against championships and Blake helped pilot a team that no one thought could win it all. Take him off of the team, the Terps likely don’t win it all.

12 @ 12: Weekend randomness

2009-11-02T09:50:00.001-08:00

1. A big move to help clean up the college basketball recruiting landscape just passed this week. The rule limits or eliminates package deals and, what has been called extortion by some college coaches, “scouting services” by AAU coaches.

It was ruled that:

Coaches will no longer be allowed to hire a high school or AAU coach that coaches a prospective student athlete at a camp or a clinic
Make payments to non-profit entities that is associated with a prospect (i.e. to a grassroots team that has a player the school is recruiting)
Use 1-900 numbers for recruiting purposes

It was also ruled that schools can not purchase recruiting services from “coaches” that run grassroots programs.

“It’s about time,” one Division I head coach, who requested anonymity, said. “We’ve bought reports from guys for $400, $500, $600 and never received a report. You have to buy their report because if you don’t, you’re screwed. That coach won’t let you recruit his guys. It’s sick. They handcuff you so they can make a little money. You wonder how many programs they’ve squeezed money out of.”

Not anymore…let’s hope so, at least.

2. Prep Stars has released it's fall rankings for the class of 2010.

There aren't many new revelations, other than Kyrie Irving making a jump to number four overall. The New Jersey guard recently committed to Duke.

The site also has European big man Enes Kanter at number 13 overall. Kanter has bounced around several American high schools since coming to the United States. Multiple sources have told me that the hopeful NBA lottery pick will never play college basketball because of questions about his amateur status.

The only other two players that were of a surprise inside the top 25 are Ray McCallum (No. 23) and Dominique Ferguson (No. 24). Neither player is in the National Hoops Report top 50.

3. I love Halloween because it almost forces you to talk your neighbors that live four or five houses down from you that you only speak to every so often. This Halloween, a neighbor (David) and I sparked up a conversation about hoops recruiting. He’s a big Tennessee fan and surprised me with this question: “How good is Jayvaughn Pinkston?” That is a loaded question. Pretty good was my initial answer to David. But the more we spoke and the more I thought about the bruiser from New York, my answer changed. And I don’t know why I haven’t thought more about this. My answer soon became this: “Pinkston will be one of the top winners from the 2010 class.” Why not? He’s won more times than not since he was a pre-teen bully on the hardwood. He’s a major match-up problem. He’s college ready. Now, I’m not sure if he goes to Tennessee or not. I think Villanova is the big winner but nevertheless, Pinkston could be a guy that gets overlooked in this class but has a great college career. For the record, David and his lovely wife, Tina, gave away bright orange Reese’s Peanut Butter cups. Not surprising at all.

4. There has been a couple of themes amongst the college coaches that I’ve talked to this past week: 1. They are ready to play a team that isn’t their own. 2. The class of 2010 is very weak for instant impact talent, especially with the players that are still yet uncommitted.

5. That being said, look for a number of names that very few people have heard of to emerge this month. Prep school players usually become hot targets in November simply because they are already playing and college coaches can see them in real time situations. Don’t be surprised if, at the minimum, five players emerge from the National Prep Showcase as heavily recruited players.

6. Jay Bilas pointed something out in his weekly column on ESPN.com. He noted Coach K’s time with Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim on the USA Basketball team is something to note as the Duke Blue Devils use more of a zone this season. Duke always plays man-to-man. But with a lack of athleticism in the backcourt of late, the Blue Devils have been burned by athleticism on the wing, and even down low for that matter. With a bigger team and recognizing a need for change, Duke could switch things up and zone much more this season. That’s something to watch this year in the wide-open ACC.

7. I was talking with a coaching friend of mine who is starting a program from scratch this year. He beat a prominent non Division I team in an exhibition game. The coach that just lost berated his team and offered this gem: “We just lost to a team that’s been together for 20 days, dadgummit.” Friend says to me: “I have a feeling we won’t be playing them again. Ever.” I love this time of year.

8. I'll keep saying it until the season starts but the most important freshman on Georgia Tech’s roster isn’t Derrick Favors. It is Mfon Udofia. Favors is all-world. I’m not naïve or down right stupid to think his impact will be monstrous but the Jackets lacked focus at the point guard position last year but have it this season with Udofia. Jeff Goodman spoke to Western Kentucky head coach Ken McDonald, who scrimmaged the Jackets over the weekend, and Udofia impressed.

9. My good friend Aran Smith of NBADraft.net has Lithuanian big man Donatas Motiejunas as the third pick in the 2010 NBA Draft. I’ve seen the young man once and that was against the likes of John Wall and the other 2009 stars in the Nike Hoop Summit. He’s talented. No doubts about it. He’s long. He can shoot it. He has good range. He’s a skilled lefty. But why would any team draft him not only third overall but in the lottery or even in the first round? Of the top 40 scorers last year in the NBA, only six were foreign born players. Tim Duncan is one of the six, too. After watching Ricky Rubio’s absolute denial to play for a bad team, teams have to worry whether or not top international players will even sign if they aren’t happy with their situation.

10. I get the feeling that this NBA season could be the best we’ve seen in 10 or so years.

11. I like the new Twitter Lists feature that allows you to sort those you follow on the social networking site. I have created a college coaches list, featuring 114 college coaches that actively use Twitter. Feel free to follow the list.

12. Here are my 12 football thoughts from the weekend:

A. What a weekend for college football. If you didn’t see Oregon dismantle Southern Cal, you missed one of the finest offensive outputs in Pac-10 history. The Ducks looked like one of the top three teams in the country in that game. If you aren’t buying Oregon, make sure you watch them this season.

B. Ole Miss faked the football world in the preseason but Dexter McCluster isn’t faking anyone. The Rebels should find more ways to get him the ball and not let Jevan Snead try out for NFL teams every week. McCluster is the best player in the SEC that gets the least amount of pub.

C. Brandon Spikes, Big Brother is always watching. And that is dirty.

D. Speaking of Florida, the Gators made athletic play after athletic play against a very average to below average Georgia team. Every interception Florida made was amazing.

E. The Houston Cougars will be a fun team to watch in a bowl game. These guys score points like they are on PlayStation.

F. My top five looks like this: 1. Florida. 2. Texas. 3. Boise State. 4. Oregon 5. Alabama. If Alabama beats LSU this weekend, then it is time to jump the Tide back into discussion for the top spot overall in the top five. Thank goodness I don’t cover college football. It’s too confusing.

G. Why isn’t anyone talking about Brett Favre as the league’s MVP? Another week, another amazing performance in a game that matters. His play has earned back the respect of a number of those that looked at him with disdain after a drama-filled off-season (again). Favre is one of the most exciting player the NFL, or even sport for that matter, has ever had. At 40 years old, he’s as fun to watch as he was when he was 27. And this Vikings team might be the second best team he’s ever directed.

H. Philadelphia is incredibly fast. Desean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin make for two speedy wideouts for Donovan McNabb to throw the long ball to. He’s never had that in his career in Philly.

I. Monday Night Football has been great this season. Good chance that tonight’s New Orleans-Atlanta tangle could be the best of the year so far.

J. Tom Cable, you sound like a real horrible person. Downright sad, actually.

K. These guys, statistically speaking, are some of the best wide outs in the NFL today: Steve Smith (NY Giants), Sidney Rice (Minnesota) and Miles Austin (Dallas). Guarantee you that no one drafted any of these guys before round 14 in fantasy drafts if they were drafted at all.

L. Who is the Heisman leader right now? Put six names on a dice, shake up it, roll it out and Yahtzee! You have a winner. Colt McCoy, you should be the winner, right?

M. Who is the early NFL MVP leader right now? Peyton Manning sits atop my list. Drew Brees is second. Favre is third.

Just a Minute with Frank Burlison, part two

2009-10-30T12:52:00.000-07:00

In our second part of the Just a Minute series with Frank Burlison of the Long Beach Press-Telegram, we dive deeper into the recruiting he’s covered over the last 30 years.

Last Friday, he told about Jason Kidd and other prep stars. Today, he touches upon Magic Johnson and others.

Can you recall a story of seeing one of the all-time greats for the first time?

“In the summer of 1976, I was in Las Vegas for a tournament and I was in Tiny Archibald’s office at UNLV. We were in there talking and Bill Frieder comes walking in, and I had never met him at the time, he was an assistant coach at Michigan. He was talking about players, the big name players. He asks Archibald ‘Is Jerry Tarkanian going to recruit this kid named Earvin Johnson from Flint? Let me tell you, you need to go watch him. You aren’t going to get him because he’s going to Michigan or Michigan State but let me tell you, he’s unlike any player you’ve ever seen. He’s going to be one of the all-time greats.’ So I’m sitting there thinking ‘God, this guy must be really good.’

“You hear about the hype. Guys like Eugene Banks from Philadelphia and Albert King and Darnell Valentine and Jeff Lamp but back then they had all of the hype. So they decided to put together the McDonald’s All-American selection committee and I was put on that just because they needed some people from the West. So I flew back to Landover, Maryland to see a game of the Capitol Classic. There was Earvin Johnson. I was watching him for a couple of days. When I got home, all of my friends and coaches asked me who impressed me the most and I told them about this kid who was a 6-8 point guard. I told them to mark my words. They didn’t believe me. I told them that he was going to be the best player ever in his class. Sure enough Bill Frieder knew what he was talking about.”

Do people realize just how good Ben Howland has been? He’s taken three straight teams to the Final Four in this era. In today’s landscape of college basketball, you don’t really win your conference three years in a row.

“Forget taking three teams to three straight Final Fours. Florida is incredible. But he basically had the same team for two years and arguably the best team we’ve seen in the last decade. But the thing with Howland and UCLA, he went to a Final Four and lost arguably his best player, Jordan Farmar, to the NBA. The following year you lose a first team All Pac-10 and All-American in Aron Affalo to the draft and steal go back. The next year they go again.

“If you think about, he goes to Northern Arizona, which was basically a glorified Division II school, and gets them into the NCAA tournament once or twice. He took a Kenyon Martin-led Cincinnati team right down to the wire in the NCAA tournament when he was there. Then he goes to Pittsburgh, which was one of the worst programs in the Big East when he got there. In two years, he gets them to the NCAA tournament and is in the Sweet 16 two straight years without a single player that was ever drafted. That might be more impressive than three straight Final Fours. It’s incredible. That’s an amazing stat. He’s done it at NAU, at Pittsburgh and at a high-level at UCLA. It’s amazing.”

The Pac-10 went through an unbelievable run there over the last four years. It seems like there were so many pros. You’ve been covering the Pac-10 since you first got started. Is that run one of the best runs of talent you’ve seen since you started this?

“It’s incredible. There were better teams in the league of the last couple of years and the level of the players was much, much better. There were just incredible players in the league recently. I think this is the year you can’t lose that many pros at an early age, where you only have these guys for a year or two. I still think you’ll see four, maybe five, schools from the Pac-10 in the tournament but I don’t think we’ll see it like it has been. There won’t be six teams from the league in the tournament and five of those teams are better seeds. This year, you’ll have a couple four or five seeds and a couple of seven to nine seeds.”

As somebody who has been a newspaper man for a long time, are you surprised more newspapers didn’t cover recruiting and high school sports?

“I think it took a long time for people to take one. My paper, the Long Beach paper, we had a guy that followed football recruiting. It was an obsession with us. We had a section called Recruiting Day. We called every college SID and have them fax us their recruiting lists. We’d have three or four part-time employees that were just typing up agate, sometimes two pages worth. For one day a week, 98 percent of our staff was working on football recruiting stuff. Nobody else did it. The LA Times couldn’t give a rat’s ass about recruiting. The Orange County paper did a little bit and a few of the Southern papers did a little bit. By the time newspapers started catching on is when papers started crumbling as we know it today. Certainly the Internet has changed it not only from the coverage of recruiting but in the process of recruiting, too. Anybody who is reading this obviously knows the reasons why. In reality, the Internet and agents or agents representatives probably are the two things that maybe 10 years ago had maybe no or little impact on recruiting that are now huge factors in recruiting. Anyone who doesn’t think so, doesn’t follow recruiting.”

You mentioned the Internet and agents having a big impact on today’s landscape of the game. Is there anything else that you’ve seen that has changed with prospects?

“The specter and the allure of NBA careers is really taking over. Not so long ago when you would talk to guys about recruiting, they’d say the NBA of the better players but it was more about getting on television or playing in the best conference or, if they are a legitimate student, they actually cared about the school and education. Chances are now, kids are thinking more and more of the NBA. Everybody and their mother thinks they are going to be in the NBA and everyone, including their mother, want to be around when and if it does happen.”

Who were the two best players you saw this summer?

“The two best players I saw over the summer were Kyrie Irving and Harrison Barnes.”

Some of the best games I’ve ever seen since covering high school kids came from Kevin Love. He ripped down nearly 30 rebounds at the City of Palms. The first time I saw Love was when he was a freshman at the Les Schwab Invitational and was outstanding in his first big, major event. Have you ever watched a player live up to the hype, the early hype, as well has he has and succeed?

“Jason Kidd lived up to the hype. O’Bannon, you knew he was really good, but he didn’t have the hype that Kidd did. On every level of basketball that Love played, people would always say he’s a great player but can he do it at the next level? As an eighth grader, he was 6-4 and kind of pudgy. They’d say he’d overpower people at that level. They’d always say wait until he gets to the next level against better and bigger athletes. Well he dominated high school level. They’d say the same thing because he played in Oregon. Well he dominated the national summer level. Well, when he gets to the NBA he’s this, he’s that. He had a great rebounding average as a rookie. You look back and talk to old NBA guys and they always say there is one thing that you can always safely know is this – if a guy is a great rebounder in high school, he’s going to be a great rebounder in college. If he’s a great rebounder in college, then he’s going to be an outstanding rebounder in the NBA. That isn’t about how athletic you are or how tall you are. That’s about a mentality.”

Your bio claims that you are an expert on movies and burgers. I can’t end this interview without asking where the best burgers are on, in your opinion.

“The obvious one is the In-and-Out burger. It’s almost cliché but it is true. I really haven’t found any outside of Southern California that are really better. Fat Burgers, Tommy’s and In-and-Out are probably the three.”

Well what is the best movie you’ve had a chance to watch this year?

“The best movies I saw this summer were Inglorious Bastards, District 9, 500 Days of Summer and The Hurt Locker. Those are the four best movies I saw over the summer.”

Just a Minute archives:
Gary Parrish, CBS Sports
Jody Demling, Louisville Courier-Journal
Jeff Goodman, Fox Sports
Rob Harrington, Prep Stars
Jerry Meyer, Rivals.com
Aran Smith, NBADraft.net
Dave Telep, Scout.com

12 @ 12: Where are they going?

2009-10-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

It is almost November and in recruiting, November means two things: the high school basketball season starts and players sign their National Letters of Intents. There are still a number of top players that have yet to make their college decisions. Where will they go? We take a shot at where we think the top 12 uncommitted players in the class of 2010 may be going.

1. Harrison Barnes - Duke. I’m sticking to my guns with this one. I’m also sticking to my belief that Oklahoma, not North Carolina, is second.
2. Brandon Knight - Connecticut. The reason? Playing time. He could play every minute he wants when he’s in Storrs.
3. Adrien Payne - Florida A&M. Why not? The big man from Ohio seems to always have a new list. But in all seriousness, West Virginia is our pick.
4. Tobias Harris - The Big East. From there, it is hard to call. The gut says Syracuse. Connecticut is the other likely finalist.
5. Jelan Kendrick - Since he maintains his decision will come in the spring, we still believe that his list of school will change a number of times. Memphis and Georgia Tech are strong right now.
6. Doron Lamb (pictured) - The Big 12. From there, it is hard to call (part two). The gut says Oklahoma. Kansas is the other likely finalist.
7. Josh Selby - Kentucky. He makes perfect sense for John Calipari. He’s Chris Douglas-Roberts, part two.
8. Terrence Jones - Washington. And he’ll be a Pac-10 All-Conference player as long as he’s there.
9. Justin Coleman - Prep school or junior college. Or tricky recruiting.
10. Tarik Black - Memphis. His buddy, Joe Jackson, is already locked up for Josh Pastner. Black could follow suit.
11. Josh Smith - UCLA. And not a soul will be surprised.
12. Ray McCallum - Detroit. Chance to play for dad? Chance to help his team make it to the NCAA tournament? Chance to be a mid-major star? Hard to pass on all of that.

12 @ 12: Weekend Randomness

2009-10-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

1. Kyrie Irving caused quite a stir last week with his commitment to Duke. He announced it on live television on the sparsely watched ESPNU channel. One problem: he verbally committed to Duke nearly a month before his big announcement.

So why did he deny reports that he committed? I have a theory.

There is pressure from the fine folks that coordinate the ESPNU on-air announcements. They have asked kids to “keep your mouth shut,” as one parent told me last year about a conversation between a producer, the high school coach, AAU coach and the player regarding the player’s commitment. I knew the player committed. The player knew I knew he committed. The parent knew I knew he committed. They told me, for goodness sakes, but asked that I not print anything because if I did, the parent said “ESPN said they will pull the interview five minutes before (his son) was to go on the air.”

That is why there is a denial. Sure, I get it. The kid wants his moment on television. That’s pretty cool. I can’t deny that. But who has ESPNU? Who watches that channel anyways? I can promise you that more people read Rivals.com and Scout.com more than they watch ESPNU. Why not announce it via the Internet sites where the traffic is greater? Enough of my complaining.

2. One more thing…Irving said he visited Texas A&M as a favor to assistant coach Scott Spinelli, who played college ball with Irving’s father at Boston University. Favor visits are insulting more than anything else. Coaches believe that having a high-profile player coming to campus does wonders with recruits. Hogwash. Having a big-time player coming to town and not landing him hurts more than helps. It’s like saying you’ve faced Nolan Ryan 12 times in your playing career and struck out all 12 times. Now I’m done. I swear.

3. Okay, okay. This is it. I swear. Irving is a terrific commitment for the Duke Blue Devils. He is a terrific kid. He is a terrific scorer. He has terrific basketball I.Q. He is the best commitment in the Duke backcourt since Jason Williams and Chris Duhon. His impact will be felt immediately. All eyes are now on you Harrison Barnes. Just stay off Twitter.

4. In all of my years of covering college basketball recruiting and high school hoops, I never went to the Eddie Griffin Challenge in the fall. The day is a match-up of the top players in Philly and New Jersey. It is one of the few events that I truly want to cover but never can. My friends at NBE Basketball were there. And their coverage is excellent (no surprise there).

5. I’m not going to say West Virginia’s Devin Ebanks is a sleeper. But I will say this: he’s the best player in the country that gets the least amount of credit. In fact, he’s a better version of Rudy Gay. In fact, he’s better than Rudy Gay. In fact, he could be the best player in the country.

6. The NBA season officially starts this season. Can’t wait to see where amazing happens.

7. I’ve pumped them before, last week in fact. But if you don’t read Rush the Court on a daily basis, you are missing out on a great college basketball site.

8. Brilliant story written by Shira Springer of The Boston Globe about former Celtic Antoine Walker and how he is losing nearly $110 million. If you've been to Vegas in July, this story shouldn't surprise you one bit.

9. You can stop chewing your nails and staying up late at night. The latest ranking of the nation’s top sixth graders is now up on at the HoopScoop, the biggest mockery of basketball on the planet.

10. Is it me or does Rick Pitino look really aged in this sit down with ESPN's Andy Katz? He may say his off-the-court sex-capades won’t play into his team. His team said the same thing at the Big East media day. But take one good look at him, and he looks like a man that has lived with a lot of internal stress of late.

11. I know of three teams that went paint-balling as a team building experience this week. Very cool idea.

12. Here are my 12 football thoughts from the weekend:

A. Reason number one why BYU isn’t as good as their record or ranking: they can’t handle athletes. Florida State laughed at the Cougars’ lack of speed. TCU walked all over the BYU secondary. Both losses came at home, one of the toughest places to play in the West.
B. Wow, what a finish in the Alabama-Tennessee game. Perhaps the best finish of a game this season?
C. Then Iowa comes along and scores on a last second touchdown against Michigan State just an hour later.
D. Thank goodness the best game of the week isn’t on Versus every single week. That was the freshmen ‘B’ team doing the game on play-by-play, commentary and camera work. Sheesh.
E. Texas wide receiver Jordan Shipley, how many times a week do you hear, “You remind me so much of Wes Welker.”
F. If you aren’t a believer in the Pittsburgh Steelers, you should be. Now that Troy Polamulu is back in the secondary, that defense is downright deadly. Just ask Percy Harvin.
G. We know this much – Brett Favre will not make a tackle on a defensive return.
H. Move over Dos Equis man, Mike Tomlin is the coolest man in the world. Those aviators are GQ, baby.
I. Shame on Pittsburgh kicker Jeff Reed. What was that attempted tackle on Percy Harvin’s kickoff return? That was offensive.
J. Part of me wonders if the Houston Texans are this year’s Arizona Cardinals.
K. Ted Ginn, Jr. has a bad case of the Braylan Edwards. Ginn can’t catch a ball when it matters.
K. Mile Austin, welcome to the Big Time, kid.
L. Who is the Heisman leader right now? Another week, another blank stare at a list of great players that have underachieved by their lofty standards. How about giving the award to the SEC officials? Jimmy Clausen of Notre Dame will probably be the popular pick with Alabama’s Mark Ingram being the most logical choice at the current moment.
M. Who is the early NFL MVP leader right now? Peyton Manning sits atop my list. Drew Brees is a close second. And the New Orleans gunslinger may take over the top spot in the very near future. He was AMAZING in a terrific second half comeback on Sunday.

Just a Minute with Frank Burlison of the Long Beach Press-Telegram

2009-10-23T08:33:00.000-07:00

Prior to my immersion into the .com recruiting world with Rivals.com and NBADraft.net, I was a young, hungry hoops addict that wanted to dive into the hoops journalism scene. I reached out to several top writers in the hoops world. One of those writers was Frank Burlison, one of the best basketball writers I knew of.

To my surprise, he replied back. We eventually talked for a while about hoops and for a couple of stories that I wrote for various publications. Now years later, I had the great pleasure of reaching out to Burlison again for a Q&A session for the National Hoops Report.

Burlison is a member of the basketball writers Hall of Fame and the brain trust behind the Best in the West list of the top high school basketball players from the West.

In part one of our two-part series, we talk a lot about the Best in the West and a number of other topics.

How long have you been doing the Best in the West series?

“This is our 31st year that I’ve done it. The first one I did, I was 21 years old. It was 1977. I’d do it every spring but with the advent of the November letter of intent whenever that was in the 80s, I thought it becomes rather anti-climatic. Everybody would have signed five months prior to the list coming out and people lose the enthusiasm with it. I moved it to coincide with the early signing period.”

When you did your first one, was it a matter of, “Okay, here is who I think is the Best in the West.” Or did you reach out to people like you do now?

“In 1977 I started doing it because at the time we had another guy at the paper who was really into football recruiting. He was heavy into it. Obviously when you are talking about the late 1970s, there is no Internet, no television games for high school, no recruiting shows. The way you got your information nationally was you knew coaches and you talk to them on the phone or you talked to them at games about the good players that they have seen. You have different friends that are writers that you’d call up and ask. Or you go to a big library that had all of the metropolitan papers and you’d learn what days would have the high school coverage and literally go through stacks of papers from across the country. You’d sit there for hours and read everything. There was no Google. No Internet. And if there was a big summer tournament, you’d try to go to it. You’d go to BCI. The Superstar Camp, which I think started in the summer of ’74 at Point Loma College in San Diego, then moved to UC Santa Barbara for a long, long time after that. Anyways, for someone like me in the West, it was great. Coaches would go to BCI, Superstar camp and that’s about it. Those camps would get about 90 percent of the best players in the West and a sprinkling of guys nationally. You’d have Watts summer games, which still exists but only has about 30 teams, but back then you’d have like 120 of the top teams in Southern California. It was a two weekend long thing. There’d be a few others. The only other camps out there were the Five-Star camps and Bill Cronauer camps. There wasn’t all these venues to see players like there are now. If you got to see 20 percent of the best players in the country, you were feeling pretty good. The first Vegas event that I went to was in 1975 at Valley High School. I think there was only like 18 teams there – two from New York, two from L.A., one from Vegas, one from Arizona, one from Utah, that was it. It was a three-day thing. College coaches would be there. The first one that I can remember had Riverside Church (out of New York) that had Jeff Ruland and Albert King. You were almost giddy to see an elite level player in person.”

Your story about the library reminds me of a story a head coach told me about his days as an early recruiter and doing the same thing with the newspapers and calling the kids that scored the most points in a game or the writer that wrote the game story.

“Or they’d go find the paper in the spring time that had the all-city or all-state teams. You’d get all excited and almost yell out ‘Oh there is an all-state team from Utah or Texas!’ You couldn’t tear the paper, so you’d either copy it or hand write it all out. Or you take your ruler out and rip it out and put it in a folder so no one knew you just ripped it out. The stuff I do now is just amazing for finding this information. You’d write the papers and ask them to mail you their all-state teams. Back then, I’m 17, 18-years-old, and I’m not going to work up a giant phone bill so I’d just write the papers and ask for them to send it to me. More often than not, they’d write you back. People would start to send more and more lists as it went along. It was really time consuming but it was a labor of love. Nowadays you Google a kid and there are three or four websites that have a profile on the kid and eight different papers have done a story on him and MaxPreps has all of his stats and you probably can find three different mug shots. You just don’t find sleepers anymore because of that.”

How much has Best of the West really evolved?

“When I first started doing it in 1977, I had already known a lot of college coaches just from covering the high schools and a little bit of college stuff. Back then, recruiting rules pretty much only said, ‘Don’t blatantly buy players.’ They could recruit 365 days a year if they wanted to. So I’d see coaches at Verbum Dei, Long Beach Poly, Crenshaw, all of the big programs. You’d see coaches all the time. You’d see the same coaches every summer, too, at the leagues. St. John Bosco and Bellflower would have great summer leagues with the best teams. I’d go there on my free nights and talk to the coaches and talk to people and drum up list. A lot of the people that I trust today I met way back then at these types of places like Dick Davey, who is now at Stanford. I’ve known Ben Howland since high school. We went to rival high schools. I got to know a lot of these guys when they were high school coaches or young assistant coaches. There are guys who vote now for Best of the West that were players on the Best of the West list. There are guys now that are Best of the West guys whose fathers were on the Best of the West lists back then. When you think about all of the years, it gets a little over-whelming.”

How many people vote for the Best of the West team now?

“Back then, I’d call the 12, 13 coaches that would recruit the West the best. There’d be two or three national coaches that I’d call, too, just because they would always been out here recruiting. I’d just talk to everybody and just reach a consensus of 10 players and an honorable mention. Now, I want to make it as objective as I could and I made a ballot and made it a regular vote. Back then, when there was no email, I’d type up a ballot and mail it out to make it easier for them. Four or five days later, they’d start to trickle into the office. I’d find myself racing into the office to see who else sent their ballot in and they’d pile up. Nowadays, I have like 30 ballots sitting here. Before I left the Press-Telegram in ’98 to go to the Orange County Register, it was ridiculous. I’d send out around 120 ballots and get 80 to 90 back. At the highest point, I think I had 90 or so voters through the mail. It became a very valid thing. In the late 1980s, the NCAA came up with the rule where college coaches couldn’t comment on players before they had signed so that ended me listing on who voted because technically that would be a violation of who voted for who. Now I think last year I had 50 or so ballots. Once you get to 50, the guys have already separated themselves beforehand. Nowadays, you already know who it’s going to be more times than not. You know what people are thinking and who people are watching. It’s not quite mysterious as it used to be. But in a year like this, after Terrence Jones or Josh Smith, you don’t really know. You can flip a coin and it because interesting.”

You bring up a good point about how there are really no more sleepers any more. Maybe as early as five years ago you could walk into a gym in Las Vegas and find a kid.

“Let’s put it this way, I still think there plenty of guys that are misevaluated. I don’t mean to put down any of the guys that do the scouting or speak ill will of anyone that does that for a living at all. Sleepers are guys that people just didn’t see. I think there are guys who people see but maybe don’t see in the right setting or the people who saw the player and just didn’t understand that player and what he does well. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t had any coaching. Maybe it’s because he’s a passive individual. All of those things have to be considered. You have to factor those things in. There probably aren’t as many sleepers anymore but there are still a lot of players that are not evaluated correctly. It doesn’t mean he’s way better than people think. I think sometimes the hype gets in the way sometimes with players, too.”

Who comes to mind, 10, 20 years back that are some of the best out of nowhere stories?

“A guy like Stacey Augmon was a guy like that. People maybe never realized how good he was until he got to Vegas. He never went to ABCD camp, he didn’t go to any of the Bill Cronower camps. Back then, the guys that didn’t go to those camps were the sleepers. He’s one that comes to mind.”

You said John Williams “was LeBron James well before the Cleveland Cavaliers' superstar was born.” For the kids, who is John Williams?

“Magic Johnson was the first 6-8, big, bulky kind of guy that was that skilled with the ball. John Williams came a couple of years after him and he was that same kind of player. He ate himself out of NBA stardom. Then LeBron came around. For their particular era, those three guys are unique compared to everyone else. Obviously Magic is an all-timer. In time, LeBron will be an all-timer. John Williams was a great high school and eventually a good college player.” (Read more on John Williams here).

Can you talk about Jason Kidd, who you call the best ever BIW player, when he was in high school?

“Kidd was one of these guys that had massive hype even pre-Internet, pre-national publicity. You’d hear about him all the time. He played varsity at St. Joseph’s as a freshman. Newspaper people and college coaches would always say, ‘You should see this kid playing summer league. He’s only 14. He’s in eighth grade. Jason Kidd! Jason Kidd!’ I saw him in Vegas for the first time and saw him at the Nike camp and you were just like, ‘Wow!’ Even back then, I was starting to become skeptical of hype but when you watched him, you were like, ‘Wow, he’s ridiculous.’”

More from Burlison's Q&A coming next week.

Just a Minute archives:
Gary Parrish, CBS Sports
Jody Demling, Louisville Courier-Journal
Jeff Goodman, Fox Sports
Rob Harrington, Prep Stars
Jerry Meyer, Rivals.com
Aran Smith, NBADraft.net
Dave Telep, Scout.com

NHR Mailbag: Oct. 22

2009-10-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

Over the summer, Jelan Kendrick was mentioned with Georgetown a lot. Now, not so much. Is he truly wide open?

He’s contended that he is wide open and is claiming offers from 30-plus schools, Georgetown being one of them. I think Memphis is in good shape. He made the trek to the school for the Midnight Madness festivities and liked it up there. But that being said, I don’t anticipate him making a decision in the fall and while Memphis is certainly a contender, I can see his list changing shape several more times before he finally makes his decision.

Do you think Brandon Knight and Corey Joseph ever consider playing together at UConn?

I’m not so sure either one has thought about playing with the other one and I don’t think it will factor into either one’s decision. I do think, however, that the two could co-exist on the same team and in the same backcourt. Both can play the one and the two. Knight will demand the ball more than Joseph, who I’d play more at the one than Knight if they played together. At the end of the day, I don’t foresee the two playing together.

There seems to be several teams who seem to have filled their scholarships for next year but you continue to hear about them being involved with recruits. What's the deal with that and explain what these teams could be telling potential recruits? Also, can you sign a recruit to a letter of intent if you're over-extended on scholarships? How does that work?

College basketball recruiting is never truly finished, especially in the fall. In today’s landscape of the game, rosters are always being reshaped and restructured at the end of the year. You could see a transfer or a player leaving for the pros or an injury. You never know. Teams will never say it but sometimes they might be trying to force a player off the team too and that would open up a spot. And finally, they could be planning on a redshirt year for a player, too. Scholarships are renewed every year for every player on the team. I’m a believer that staffs are always looking to fill two more spots than they really have.

After the defections to the Big East, Conference USA was on the board-line between being a low high-major conference and a high mid-major conference, mainly because of Memphis. Now that Calipari has moved on does C-USA officially become a mid-major conference or can Josh Pastner keep Memphis at Calipari-level?

That is a tough question only because there is a fine line between high-major programs in mid-major conferences. Memphis certainly fits the bill the most. I still consider them a high-major school. I think I always will. I consider Gonzaga, Xavier and, you could argue, Butler for high-major status in mid-major conferences. Regardless of what coaches are there, the teams that continually win against BCS conference teams have to be considered a high-major program. There really isn’t a rule or a definition that one can follow regarding this distinction. I know this though – Josh Pastner will try to keep Memphis not only in high-major contention but he’ll fight tooth and nail to make sure the Tigers remain one of the top programs in all the country.

Who is/was better coming out of high school, Brandon Jennings or John Wall?

From a skills standpoint, I think John Wall is/was better than Brandon Jennings. He’s bigger. He’s quicker. He’s stronger. He’s covers more ground in the open floor. But Jennings was still quite the prospect in high school. He went from a dominant pass first guy to a dominant score first guy. Moreover, he won more games. That’s a great equalizer when it comes to point guards. I’d take Wall every day though. I think he is a better player at the end of the day.

Dwight Powell headed to Stanford, where does Georgia Tech turn now for help in the frontcourt?

That is a good question. Tobias Harris is certainly a guy that the staff really wants to land. That isn’t a secret. But something tells me he won’t be leaving the Northeast for college. That bodes well for Syracuse and Connecticut.

The staff has spent some time in Australia and New Zealand this fall looking at a handful of prospects, too. The program is big in that neck of the woods thanks to former Jacket Luke Schenscher.

What’s the latest on Tarik Black and Tony Mitchell. I know Black was at Marquette Madness this past weekend, but I was wondering if he has any other visits set up and what his timetable is? Same question for Mitchell. Will he take visits?

I think it is important to note Black’s visit to Marquette on the first practice weekend of the year. A lot of people, myself very much included, thought Black would have committed to Memphis soon after Joe Jackson popped for the program. I still do think Black ends up at Memphis. But for him to not be at home for Midnight Madness is a big storyline that isn’t being talked about in the national landscape. That bodes well for Marquette.

Regarding Mitchell – I’ve been told that his recruitment could likely carry over to the spring and could be similar to Latavious Williams’s recruitment because of academics. I think Mitchell is much better and is in better shape in the classroom so it may not be as complicated in the spring.

I'm a SoCon fan and was wondering who the top 2010 recruits are for Davidson, College of Charleston and GA Southern? Who do you think will win the conference and who will get Player of the Year award?

I really like the James Carlton commitment for College of Charleston that happened this week. He’s the ultimate SoCon big man and after a potential red-shirt year, the North Carolina native could be a three-year starter.

Trent Wiedeman, a brute of a forward from Greater Atlanta Christian in Georgia, is close to committing and it will come down to College of Charleston, Georgia Southern and High Point. He’s the top recruit for each of those schools right now.

As far as winning the conference – I like College of Charleston this year. It is their time and I like Andrew Goudelock to take home the Player of the Year honors this season.

Quinn Cook vs. Kyrie Irving are both are studs and have similar games. Can you compare the two?

You are right, the two are studs. Cook isn’t the scorer that Irving is. Irving is a sneaky scorer that can pump in 30-plus points with little fanfare. Cook can score it but he has never really been a threat to go for a load of points. He is more of a setup man. Cook is probably a little quicker and a tad more athletic. I like Irving’s long-term potential a little bit better because of his high basketball IQ.

12 @ 12: Top mid-major transfers

2009-10-21T09:14:00.001-07:00

After looking at the top 12 high-major transfers last week, we dive into the mid-major schools this week. Who tops the list? Who will make a difference? Who will help take their team to the NCAA tournament? We take a stab at the top dozen mid-major transfers that are eligible to play this season.

1. Tyrone Shelley, Pepperdine to San Diego State (pictured above) - After averaging 15.1 points a game at Pepperdine as a freshman, the 6-5 sophomore is back home and ready for an equally big role for the Aztecs. Shelley’s addition, as well as his high school teammate Malcolm Thomas’s addition, make a strong case as to why San Diego State will be in the National Hoops Report top 25 pre-season teams.

2. Armon Bassett, Indiana to Ohio - There are those in the Midwest that believe the former Hoosier could be the Player of the Year in the MAC despite missing a couple of games at the start of the year due to transfer rules. He averaged over 10 points and three assists a game in his career at IU.

3. Tony Freeman, Iowa State to Southern Illinois - After being named third team All-Big Ten, the Illinois native returned home for his senior season. Before ending his junior year early due to an injury, Freeman averaged 13.8 points, 3.1 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game. He’ll likely content for All-Missouri Valley Conference honors this year.

4. Derrick Jasper, Kentucky to UNLV - A change of scenery is what the California native was looking forward. What he found was the keys to the car for the Running Rebels. Jasper should drive Lon Kruger’s team back to the Big Dance once again this year.

5. Xavier Silas, Colorado to Northern Illinois – The Texas native averaged nearly 10 points a game as a sophomore at Colorado. He started 35 games for the Big 12 school and should start every game this year for Ricardo Patton, the coach that recruited him to Colorado.

6. Shamari Spears, Boston College to Charlotte – The former ACC starter gives the 49ers some more brute strength on the low blocks. He averaged 9.6 points and 6.1 rebounds as a sophomore at BC. He should be good for 13 points and similar rebounds for a team that is ready to right the ship.

7. Christian Polk, Arizona State to UTEP – After scoring a dozen points a game as a freshman, he dropped down to less than four a game last year for Herb Sendek. Now in West Texas, Polk and Randy Culpepper make for a deadly duo for Tony Barbee’s team.

8. Larry Wright, St. John’s to Oakland - After two years playing for Norm Roberts, the 6-2 Michigan native is back home. And there are some that expect him to be the Summit League Player of the Year. We aren’t as confident but Wright should be an instant starter and an all-conference level player this season.

9. JayDee Luster, San Diego State to Wyoming - The 5-7 point guard was looking for a change. And boy will he get one. The San Diego native leaves the majestic winters of SoCal for the dreary Wyoming blizzards. In return, Luster will likely start for a team that is trying to make a move from middle of the pack to relevance in the Mountain West. How about this – he’s already a team captain.

10. Eli Holman, Indiana to Detroit – The Detroit coaches are expecting a lot from him defensively. The long-armed Californian will block a lot of shots and clog the lane. A near 7-footer, Holman is a rarity in the Horizon League.
11. Larry Davis, Seton Hall to Loyola Marymount - After last year’s three win season, the only way to go is up for LMU. Davis, a New York native, should play a big role in the upswing. He’s a smart scorer that could be a 15 points per game guy.

12. Justin Tubbs, Alabama to East Tennessee State - There just aren’t guards like him in the competitive and balanced Atlantic Sun. The muscular and athletic 6-4 guard could be the difference maker for a team that always battles for the top spot in the A-Sun.

12 @ 12: Weekend randomness

2009-10-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

1. I held my annual Georgia Hoops Fall Showcase over the weekend at the New Birth church in Lithonia, Georgia and came away impressed with the effort level put forward by the players at the event. The tone was set early by our amazing staff of coaches, the best you will find at any fall showcase nationally, and the players took the attitude and ran with it. We talked about taking home three things from camp regardless of the sport that we all love. I’d love to hear the feedback from the players and parents on what the three things they took home with them. Email me at georgiahoops@gmail.com.

2. Top 2010 prospect from the Georgia Hoops Fall Showcase: Cameron Solomon, SG, Lovejoy & Chad Johnson, PG/SG, Westlake

3. Top 2011 prospect from the Georgia Hoops Fall Showcase: Henry Brooks, PF, Miller Grove & Ryon Riggins, PF, North Gwinnett

4. Top 2012 prospect from the Georgia Hoops Fall Showcase: Kyle Meyer, C, Northview

5. Top 2013 prospect from the Georgia Hoops Fall Showcase: A.J. Davis, SF, Greater Atlanta Christian

6. For more detailed coverage from camp, be sure to check out ESPN Recruiting, Scout.com and D1Spects.com. I’ll be running daily stories on D1Spects.com regarding the camp.

7. Jerry Meyer of Rivals.com tackled an interesting question in his mailbag over the weekend regarding the top seven players he's scouted in high school. In order, he picked:

1. LeBron James
2. John Wall
3. Mike Gilchrist
4. Greg Oden
5. Dwight Howard
6. Michael Beasley
7. Brandon Knight

My list looks a little different:

1. LeBron James
2. Dwight Howard
3. Greg Oden
4. Kevin Durant
5. John Wall
6. Derrick Rose
7. Michael Beasley

8. Do you use Twitter? I do. So do a lot of college coaches. Dave Telep of Scout.com tackled the issue and it’s role in recruiting. He and I share the same belief that it offers zero advantage in the recruiting process. Telep surveyed a number of coaches about it’s effectiveness.

9. If you missed out on who was visiting where for Midnight Madness, Scout.com did a great job of tracking down the lists for schools across the country.

10. In all of my years of covering recruiting, I’ve never heard a recruit say he committed to the school because a coach awkwardly danced in front of the student body, drove in on a race car or preached to the followers for 10 minutes. Rappers, dunk contests and intra-squad scrimmages are fun, sure, but they aren’t the recruiting tool that they are perceived to be.

11. There seems to be this belief that if you aren’t committed to a school before your senior year than you are behind pace in the recruiting calendar. Wrong. What’s the rush? It is perfectly okay to still be uncommitted right now. With the April period closed for evaluations, college coaches are still identify, even in October, as to who they want to pursue during the high school season. Besides, with the constant changing of coaches, the increased number of transfers and now the departure of players to not only the NBA but to international endeavors, teams are always scrambling in the spring to figure out their recruiting plan. Word of the wise to prospects: Be patient, play hard and make teams make you a priority.

12. Here are my 12 football thoughts from the weekend:

A. The Texas-Oklahoma game just didn’t seem to have the same kind of juice this year. Neither does the Big 12 for that matter.

B. Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco, last year’s star rookie quarterbacks, never looked like Mark Sanchez and Matthew Stafford have this year.

C. The New York Giants entered Sunday’s match-up against the New Orleans Saints with a 5-0 record. But the combined record of the teams the Giants defeated five games into the season was 6-19. Clearly the record was deceiving.

That made me wonder, of the four undefeated teams in the NFL right now, who could be like the Giants? Indiapolis, Denver, Minnesota and New Orleans are all undefeated. The combined record for teams that Denver and New Orleans have defeated is 14-15, the best of the four. The combined record for teams beaten by Minnesota, the only 6-0 team in the league, is 11-23. Indianapolis opponents combine for 10-18.

D. It took Peyton Manning five games to finally get into his groove last year en route to a MVP season. Tom Brady looked like he is finally finding his old form, albeit the lowly Tennessee Titans, on Sunday. He was making pinpoint passes in the snow. If he has time to plant his front foot, forget about it. That pass will be complete and likely six points.

E. Have the Tennessee Titans lost their jerseys this season? The Oilers gear has been the go-to uniform this season for Jeff Fisher’s club. The way the team is playing, maybe they should just hand in all of the jerseys and call the year a wash.

F. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Brett Favre is still simply amazing.

G. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Ray Lewis is simply amazing.

H. When the Atlanta Falcons signed former Jacksonville Jaguar Mike Peterson in the offseason, there was a collective groan from fans over the disappointment in the lack of movement on the defensive end. Once again, Thomas Dimitroff has proven he and head coach Mike Smith know much more about you and I regarding football personnel. Peterson is the hardest hitting player on the Falcons and has made big play after big play on a mediocre Falcon defense.

I. Speaking of my hometown Falcons, Matt Ryan is simply amazing to watch. He already has it, whatever it is, in just a season and five games into his NFL career. I wonder how many Super Bowls rings he’ll be fitter for.

J. Peter King, one of my favorite sportswriters on the planet and inspiration for this “Weekend Randomness” 12 @ 12, wrote: “It is a mark of how good Ben Roethlisberger is that he threw for 417 yards, with two touchdowns, and no one noticed. It's becoming routine.” So, so true. Did anyone outside of the Steel City see those numbers? Sheesh.

K. Wow, what a fantasy football weekend. It was the best scoring Sunday of the year. If your team didn’t score in the 100s, you probably lost.

L. Who is the Heisman leader right now? Your guess is as good as mine.

M. Who is the early NFL MVP leader right now? With Indianapolis on a bye week, Peyton Manning didn’t move up or down on my MVP list. However, Drew Brees has the offense playing at a Super Bowl caliber team in New Orleans. He shredded the Giants defense for 369 yards passing on 23-30 attempts and four touchdowns inside the Superdome.

Submit your questions for The Mailbag

2009-10-19T05:57:00.000-07:00

Have a question regarding recruiting, high school hoops, college basketball, rankings, coaches or anything that relates hoops, ask away. National Hoops Report editor Justin Young will answer your submissions in this week's edition of The NHR Mailbag on Friday. To submit your question, email nationalhoopsreport@gmail.com, via Twitter, or in the comments section below.

A little advice from your's truly

2009-10-15T16:17:00.000-07:00

"Can I ask you for some advice?"

I get asked this question almost daily. Sometimes I feel like Lucy from Charlie Brown. For you kids, that was a cartoon back in the day. And we're not talking The Family Guy. Cartoons, the kind that were meant for kids.

Anyways.

I'm not a great advice giver. I promise. But I'll try.

Here are a couple of things to consider as the season approaches:

- Do you get it? Either you do or you don't. It's that simple. Do you have good grades? Do you honor the rules and guidelines that are given to you by your parents, teachers, coaches, leaders and those that have your best interest at heart? Do you play hard in blowouts? Do you run through a wall in practice? Do you stand up for your teammates? Do you do the right thing? People are watching. They are always watching.

- Are you humble? Guess what, it's okay to say you didn't do something right. It's okay to sit back, take the tongue-lashing from a coach or hear a criticism from someone that knows the game and the recruiting process. Learn from it. Get better from it. You learn the most when you are the most humble. Swallow your pride every once in a while. Part of becoming a man, is taking it like a man.

- Find your fit. Parents and players ask round the clock about what school is the best. It's about the fit. Of course, everyone wants to play at the highest level. Who doesn't want to hear Dickie V go crazy about you? But guess what, there is more to life than that. Don't rob yourself of a great opportunity because you want to go to a high-major and play when the games are clearly in the books. Will you find your best fit at a: High-major? Mid-major? Low-major? Division II? Division III? Junior college? NAIA? Do your homework. Finding the best fit is the first start to an amazing college experience.

- If you do go to a high-major school, make sure you know what it takes to be a teammate. Guess what, that guy that you'll be rooming with or traveling in a bus across the country and flying in a cramped airplane is just as good as you (or better). So are the guys that the assistant coaches will be recruiting when you are in college. Sometimes it is his night to shine. Hopefully you all shine together.

- If someone goes out of their way to come and watch you play (ahem, a college coach!), be sure to sincerely thank him. Chances are, he'd probably like to be tucking his kids into bed and sitting on the couch with his wife back home. Instead, he came to watch you play. Be aware of that. Be sure to thank them. It goes a long way.

- Research, research, research. I can't stress this enough. I can't tell you how many times I've seen kids renege on their commitment. Honor your word. It is part of becoming a man. Find out everything you can about that school. Visit them. See the town you want to live in for four years. Find out if they have your major. See the campus. See the people. You might meet your wife there. You might meet your future business partner there. You might cure cancer thanks to the studies you receive there. Find out if that coach runs a style of play that you can shine in but be challenged to grow as a player. Can you win at that school?

- Associate yourself with people that you trust. That is, hopefully, your parents. That is, hopefully, your high school coach. That is, hopefully, a travel team coach. Seek out those that want you to succeed long past your playing days are over. There are a lot of wolves in sheep’s clothing. Beware.

- If you are a college prospect, everything will take care of itself. Don't worry about rankings. They have never paid for anyone's education. You do by your play, your work in the classroom and your character. You can't rank those. If you want a gold star, I'll take you down to CVS and buy one for you. Worry about what happens on the court, what happens in the classroom and what happens within the walls of your own home. Everything takes care of itself if you are doing your part.

I could go on for days but this should cover it. For now, at least. Play ball, play hard, play for fun, enjoy your high school days and find those that you consider your friends and listen to your family, who loves you and wants the best for you. If you do that, you won't need the advice because you are probably already living these principles already.

(I orginally wrote this for my Georgia Hoops blog on 10/22/07. In preparing for my camp this weekend, these thoughts re-entered my tiny, pea-sized brain. I hope they can help someone.)

12 @ 12: Top high-major transfers

2009-10-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes change is good.

A number of high-major programs have welcomed new faces to town and rely on the newcomers quite a bit this year. Here is a look at the National Hoops Report's 12 best high major transfers.

1. Wesley Johnson, Iowa State to Syracuse (pictured above) – The former Cyclone may be the most significant transfer in the country. Jim Boeheim’s team needs a go-to guy and the 6-7 forward should be that guy. In fact, Johnson could even turn his season into a position in the NBA Lottery.

2. Elliot Williams, Duke to Memphis – Back home in front of family and friends and on a team that needs to find it’s identity, the native son could be in store for a magical year. He’s proven himself as a dynamic scorer and should have a green light to let it fly.

3. Jordan Crawford, Indiana to Xavier – Talk to anyone in Cincinanati and they’ll tell you that the 6-5 guard is much more than a bigger than life dunk from the summer. He’s one of the most versatile guards in college basketball.

4. Malcolm Grant, Villanova to Miami – He’s the best point guard Frank Haith has had since he’s been at the helm of the ACC school. And for this year’s team, that means a lot. Grant could be the surprise of the conference this year.

5. Ben Hansbrough, Mississippi State to Notre Dame – The Irish will love his toughness in the backcourt and his mindset to get the meat-eaters (i.e. Luke Harangody) the basketball but can also score off the ball. Hansbrough was a sophomore starter at Mississippi State.

6. Curtis Kelly, UConn to Kansas State – The coaches in Manhattan are excited about the match-up problem the New Yorker will be in the Big 12. He’s bigger and stronger and ready to give the team a presence on the low block. He only makes Wally Judge better, too.

7. Alex Stepheson, North Carolina to Southern Cal – Now back in his hometown, the muscular forward is exactly what new head coach Kevin O’Neill needs – a tough guy in a tough guy system.

8. Herb Pope, New Mexico State to Seton Hall – Finally on his feet and with a stable foundation under him, the former prep star is expected to shine. Word out of the Pirate camp, Pope has looked like his old self. That’s good news for Bobby Gonzalez and bad news for the Big East.

9. Vernon Macklin, Georgetown to Florida - For once, the Gators are gaining one instead of losing one. Macklin was rarely used in the Big East. He won’t be in the SEC. Bouncy and brawny, the Virginia native should play a significant role this year.

10. Jonathan Mitchell, Florida to Rutgers - After winning a national title at Florida, the former New York Player of the Year should start in the Big East. He adds leadership and a winner’s edge to the club.

11. Jeremiah Rivers, Georgetown to Indiana - The Hoosiers have only one way to go this year and that is up. Rivers gives the team some stability in the backcourt and versatility to run different looks.

12. Taylor King, Duke to Villanova - Jay Wright's team needed a perimeter threat and that is exactly what the former California prep star is. He's not afraid to fire from a far. With quick guards always on the attack, King will spot up and be a threat from the wing.

12 @ 12: Naismith Award favorites

2009-10-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

A number of the top basketball analysts in the country have published their preseason top 50 Wooden Award nominees. For the most part, the lists are the same. Looking at the lists, I’ve come up with a dozen players that stand out the most.

My preseason favorites to win the Wooden Award are in alphabetical order:

1. Cole Aldrich, Kansas
2. Devan Downey, South Carolina
3. Devin Ebanks, West Virginia
4. Luke Harangody, Notre Dame
5. Gordon Hayward, Butler
6. Robbie Hummel, Purdue
7. Kalin Lucas, Michigan State
8. Greg Monroe, Georgetown
9. Kyle Singler, Duke
10. Tyler Smith, Tennessee
11. John Wall, Kentucky
12. Willie Warren, Oklahoma

I won’t be surprised to see seven or eight new faces on this list by the end of the year.

12 @ 12: Weekend randomness

2009-10-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

The fall is slowly disappearing and the basketball season is right around the corner. By next Monday, teams will have already practiced. The energy is growing stronger for the year. Can you feel it?

In the meantime, here are 12 things bouncing around my brain on a Monday.

1. This will be the last week of self-promotion in the Monday 12 @ 12. I can’t say enough about my upcoming camp on Saturday, Oct. 17. Former University of Georgia interim head coach Pete Hermann is our lead instructor at the camp. What a goldmine of knowledge he is for young players.

I’ve spent the fall going to showcases across the Southeast and I can promise you that none will provide the type of instruction that Hermann and our staff will provide. Our coaches combine for over 200 years of coaching and playing at the NBA, European, NCAA Division I, II, III, NAIA, junior college and high school levels. Are you in the camp? If not, you can register today by clicking HERE.

ESPN and Scout.com are our official media partners for the event – the two most visited recruiting websites on the Internet.

2. I took in a day’s work at the Pangos All-South camp over the weekend. The camp was stocked with good, young talent from the class of 2012 and 2013 classes. It wasn’t as strong as the camp has been in the past (few camps are this fall) but there were still several that stood out.

3. The top 2012 player from the Pangos All-South camp was: Charles Mitchell of Marietta (Ga.) Wheeler (pictured). The big man has really improved his offensive skill work in the post and scored with both hands all over the paint. He’s a below the rim player but knows how to use his body to score and rebound. Nice day’s work on Saturday.

4. The top 2013 player from the Pangos All-South camp was: A.J. Davis of Greater Atlanta Christian (Ga.). The 6-6 lefty and son of former NBA player Antonio Davis won the individual battles I saw him in on Saturday. He’s able to score down low, from the wing and defended the post. Impressive fall so far for the youngster.

5. Pangos All-South 2012 notes: Haven’t seen an athlete like Shaquille Johnson of Conyers (Ga.) Salem in a long time. Kid is incredibly explosive…Really liked the way Jack Montague (Brentwood, Tenn.) ran his team. Probably the best PG in the building. Really knew how to play…Mississippi post Gavin Ware of Starkville is a hoss. He couldn’t be moved on the low block…Lithonia (Ga.) Miller Grove always has players. Tony Evans, a 6-4 wing, could be next...Damien Wilson, a 6-4 guard, had it rolling as a scorer on Saturday…Marietta (Ga.) Wheeler always lands a big transfer. Keep an eye on New Yorker move-in Winston McCleod. He’ll be on the JV because of the move-in this year but he’s a player to watch much like Winthrop bound Joey Jerome was after he moved in…Mississippi big man Devonta Pollard is one of the biggest sleepers for high-majors in 2012…Same goes for Memphis guard Chris Jones. He’s a blur with the ball and strong to boot.

6. Pangos All-South 2013 notes: Southwest Atlanta Christian forward Chris Davenport could be one of the best power forwards in the Southeast’s 2013 class. He’s skilled in the post and a great outlet passer…Brandon Bibbs of Atlantic Shores (Va.) was one of the best ball-hanlders at the camp…Looking forward to see Ishmael Martin of Lilburn (Ga.) Parkview again at my camp this weekend. Nice looking young player…Nick Gorski, a 6-7 forward from Richmond (Va.) Cosby has a chance to be a player. Thought of the Wear twins from California when watching him…Terrence Thompson of Alpharetta (Ga.) will be asked to wear a lot of hats this high school season. The 6-3 wing could be a surprise player in Atlanta.

7. No mailbag this week at the National Hoops Report.

8. If you don't have an ESPN Insider account, I'd urge you to get one for Jay Bilas and Jay Bilas alone. He's the smartest man in college basketball analysis. He is honest, well-spoken and backs up his points exceptionally well. He breaks down a number of items in his weekly column including: Phone Call Sensibleness, Recruiting, Letter of Intent, The Rules Committee, Ollie from Hoosiers, The Food Police and fun with numbers. Well worth the read for lunch today.

9. Gary Parrish of CBS Sports nailed it with Louisville. A day after Rick Pitino said: "Don't become part of that negative environment that just knocks and constantly says things that tear things down. Build things up. That's what positive people do," two of his players were arrested.

When I interviewed Parrish last month, he said "One of the keys to this business is not giving your opponent any fuel for ammunition. Louisville right now has a lot of ammunition against that program."

Louisville is loading up on ammo for all the wrong reasons right now.

10. Really thought Scout.com’s Dave Telep knocked it out of the park with this outside-the-box story about visits and the anxiety level of college coaches during the process. The .com recruiting industry needs more stories like this. It reveals more from the coach's perspective. It's raw and honest - something that isn't always the case in recruiting.

A number of quotes stand out but this one, I thought, was intriguing: "Positioning of the visit depends completely on a kid's timetable. If we think we can get it done, we'd love to have the first visit. If the recruit is truly committed to taking all his visits, we'd rather go last. If it's unclear, we'll go first. As a rule, we try to get our most critical guys on campus as early as we can."

11. Ready for the college season to start? These guys are. Make sure you bookmark these guys. You'll probably be reading them a lot this year. Jeff Goodman of Fox Sports, Gary Parrish of CBS Sports, ESPN's crew of Jay Bilas, Andy Katz, Fran Fraschilla and Doug Gottlieb, Frank Burlison, Mike DeCourcey of The Sporting News, Basketball State, Rush the Court, The Mid-Majority and Ballin' is a Habit.

12. Here are my 12 football thoughts from the weekend:

A. Wide receivers, stay far away from Deion Sanders. Again. And again. And again. And M.C. Hammer for that matter.

B. Forget the ups and downs of offense in the SEC, the defenses in the league are scary. Florida beat LSU on the account of its defense. And LSU’s defense wasn’t too shabby either in defeat. Alabama’s defense may be the most physical in the league, too.

C. Thursday night games in NCAA football are becoming equally as exciting as Monday Night Football games. This week’s match-up of undefeated Big East teams – Cincinnati (5-0) and South Florida (5-0) – will have BCS nerds chewing their fingernails.

D. BYU quarterback Max Hall was a preseason Heisman candidate. Wonder why he isn’t considered one right now? The Florida State loss doesn’t help. But it is his 10 interceptions. He threw 14 last year.

E. Speaking of quarterbacks…can’t wait to watch Arkansas’s Ryan Mallett in the NFL. He’s 6-7, strong-armed and being groomed by All-American jerk and smart offensive coach Bobby Petrino…Florida State is struggling but not because of Christian Ponder. The junior from Texas has only thrown one interception this season. He was great in the first half against Georgia Tech…Central Michigan’s Dan LeFevour has 20 total touchdowns this year. He’s 6-3 and 240 pounds. Think he’ll get a sniff for a first round pick?

F. Did anyone outside of the Denver Broncos locker room think the team would be 5-0 and have a win against the Patriots under their belt? And Kyle Orton would be as good as he’s been? Josh McDaniels, the youthful leader of men at Mile High, let it all hang out at the end of the game. That was great to see. Imagine if Bill Belichick did that after a win? Think it would inspire the Patriots, a team that looks a little lost right now?

G. Very emotional day for the Cincinnati Bengals defensive coordinate Mike Zimmer. His wife, Vikki, died last week. After struggling with her shocking death, Zimmer piloted his defense to a great win at Baltimore. What was more stirring was the immediate out-pouring of emotion from every single player on that Bengals team on the sidelines and locker room to Zimmer. You could tell Zimmer is very well respected in that locker room.

H. Tom Cable, however, is not in Oakland. Amazing story
.

I. Good thinking, Owen Schmitt.

J. It seems like the officials spent more time on their backs than quarterbacks on Sunday.

K. Who would have thought the UFL had better jerseys than a team in the NFL (see the Denver Broncos).

L. Who is the Heisman leader right now? While I’m not a big Jimmy Clausen fan and certainly not one that believes he will win the Heisman, his best chance to earn the award will come this weekend when the Irish play Southern Cal. Clausen will shoot up the charts with a big win. Call the race wide open right now. Something makes me want to push hard for Eric Berry of Tennessee. Sure, defenders never win. But this kid is Ed Reed like.

M. Who is the early NFL MVP leader right now? Peyton Manning is clearly the best player in the NFL right now. He’s winning big games. He is directing his offense. He is taking the confidence of teams. Five games in, the Colts are undefeated and rolling. After a week 6 bye week, the Colts have a tough slate ahead of them with games against San Francisco, Baltimore, Denver and the Texans twice.

Live from the Pangos All-South camp

2009-10-10T05:53:00.000-07:00

I'll be at the Pangos All-South camp today at Parkview High School in Lilburn, Georgia. This is always one of the top events of the fall for the National Hoops Report. The event is for the top underclassmen in the Southeast.

Last year Quincy Miller emerged on the national scene. The year before it was Jelan Kendrick emerged as a national prospect. Who will it be this year? We are eager to find out.

I will be updating live from the event through Twitter. Follow me for the updates.

I will also be handing out invitations for my Georgia Hoops Fall Showcase at the event along with one of our camp coaches, Drew Catlett, a former assistant coach at Georgia State, West Virginia and other stops. He will be instructing players at today's Pangos camp and looking for the top prospects with me.

If you are interested in attending the camp, you can register today via ScoreLore. Click HERE to lock yourself into the camp.

NHR Mailbag: Oct. 8

2009-10-08T05:26:00.001-07:00

Rockdale County's Kevin Ware (pictured above) was quoted as saying, "I've been talking to Tennessee and Georgetown a lot lately. Tennessee is the school at the top of my list. I love Coach Pearl. He has a great style of play and is a great coach. I might be committing really soon."

UT already has Trae Golden verbally committed for class of 2009. How would those two complement each other on the court? Also, UT has had recent success getting guys from the state of GA, do you see that success continuing?

Kevin Ware and Trae Golden are two different players. Ware is cut from the mold of former Vol Ramar Smith in the sense that he is a super athlete that is improving his ball skills. Ware gets by at the prep level with his top-shelf athleticism. He’s a freak in that regard. Smith was more skilled but was always caught in between positions.

Ware makes sense in Tennessee’s up-tempo style of play. I don’t see him in Georgetown’s think first, react second type of style. The Vols make the most sense. Golden could pair well with Ware because neither player would have to play a position. They’d be considered a backcourt player and neither a point or a shooting guard. Neither guy has a real position. You can have a lot of versatility with the two. I think Golden brings more stability.

I do see the trend continuing for Tennessee in Georgia. The Vols have in grained themselves in the Peach State and have a great in-road with the state’s top players. You could argue that Tennessee is the top SEC school recruiting the Peach State right now.

How would you rank the 2010 Wake Forest recruiting class?

At this point, Dino Gaudio and his staff have reeled in a top 10 class at the current time. Now that could change as we get closer to the November signing week. But as of right now, the Demon Deacons have a solid five-man class where every position was filled. You have to like the balance that the class brings to the team next year.

I don’t, however, think there is a true star of the group. I think all five are solid contributors over time. J.T. Terrell will score the most points of the five while Travis McKie will be a good four-year producing player somewhat similar to Maryland’s Landon Milbourne.

The most intriguing guy of the class is big man Carson Desrosiers. He might be the gem of the class. Melvin Tabb is the best rebounder of the bunch and Tony Chenault will be a solid back-up point guard for two years and a serviceable starter in his junior and senior seasons.

It will be interesting to see who emerges as the go-to guy and the player the coaches trust the most.

What's your breakdown of recent Oklahoma commitment Cameron Clark? You have him higher in your rankings than some others, so I'm eager to hear what you like so much about him.

I really like Cameron Clark. I’m a big fan of big wings. And he’s a big wing. A very good big wing. The Texan can shoot, score, put the ball on the floor and I think he could develop into a good defender, too.

With Clark, I think his best basketball is ahead of him and every time I saw him play, he looked better and better. I really like to see players ending their high school careers on the way up. As he prepares for his senior season, Clark looks like he is continuing the upward climb. I have him ranked high in part to his high ceiling as a prospect.

What if anything can you tell us about the prospects of VCU landing any of the three big man recruits they have had in for visits over the last couple of months in Michael Bradley, Cady Lalanne and Melsahn Basabe?

Truth be told, I don’t think VCU lands any of these players. Bradley is a likely Connecticut commitment any day now. Lalanne will visit Ole Miss this weekend but sources have indicated that UMass is the team to beat. Admittedly, I don’t really know what’s going on with Basabe.

Let me throw another name into the mix – Dante Williams of Miller Grove High School in Georgia. The 6-9 big man is looking hard at VCU, UAB and Tennessee. All three schools have a legit shot of landing him. I think he’s one of the better big men out there and comparable with Lalanne. I think VCU fans may be sleeping on the Rams’ chances with him.

Who are the top 2010 big man prospects with high major talent (or potential) being overlooked by the high majors?

At this stage of the game in a weak year for big men, there just aren’t that many big men that are being overlooked. Staffs are searching high and low for players. I’ve talked to three different coaches this week that have been to places like New Zealand, Australia, France, Croatia and Nigeria to see players, in particularly big men.

But some names in the states that fit the mold (somewhat) to what you are asking include: Hippolyte Tsafack (Miller School/VA), Steve Adams (Pasadena/CA), Ugo Okam (Montverde/FL), Jordan Railey (Beaverton/OR), Godwin Okonji (Findlay/NV).

How would you compare the following bigs: Kadeem Green (Charlotte, NC), Santoine Butler (Augusta, GA), or Donte Williams (Lithonia, GA). Who are in the recruiting mix with those guys and why haven't we heard much about them recently?

Of the three players you mentioned, I think Williams the best player of the bunch. I think he’s the best of the bunch by a significant gap. He has high-major potential and could be an all-conference level player at the mid-major schools.

Green is next on the pecking order. The Canadian has always been a very intriguing player. He has good size and length and 6-8 and he’ll have a game or two where you would like to say he’s a high-major guy. Ideally, Green would probably be served at the Atlantic 10 level.

Butler is now at Oldsmar Christian in Tampa, Florida and that should help his recruitment. When he was in Augusta, he was isolated away from a lot of schools. But he did play well at times in front of recruiters. I think Butler could play in a conference like the Southern or Big South and that is probably where he’ll go at the end of the day. Academically, Butler will have to get after in Tampa to open more recruiting doors.

What can you tell us about Justin Coleman and his recruiting. Evidently he is very talented.

Justin Coleman is very talented. He has a lot of features that the big-timers have. From an athletic standpoint, Coleman is one of the elite in the 2010 class. Academics are a major concern with him. Word is, he could be a part of the 2011 class or junior college bound barring an academic miracle. Now, we also have to remember in recruiting, anything is possible. It would surprise me if he becomes the guy everyone is going after come March.

In your opinion, who are the best recruiting bets at this point for Marquette?

That is a tough question to answer simply because Marquette recruits with such a large brush. They have ties to Texas, Northeast, the Deep South and, of course, the talented areas of Milwaukee, Chicago and other Midwestern cities. And then mix in junior colleges, a place where Buzz Williams has looked every spot he’s been as a college coach.

All of that being said, Coleman (who is mentioned in the previous question) is thought to be the favorite of the 2010 kids. Chicago Reggie Smith guard is high on the Big East school while local guard Vander Blue also comes to mind.

Where does Quincy Miller end up, in your opinion?

Good question. Something tells me that it will come down to a Duke-Illinois battle. Duke is Duke. And Illinois was one of the first high-major schools to really move on the versatile forward. Both Coach K and Bruce Weber have both taken the reigns in this recruitment and both head men have really made an impression with the 6-8 forward.

Miller doesn’t seem like a guy that will be making a decision any time soon and that bodes well for schools like Florida, Kentucky, Kansas, Oklahoma, Wake Forest and the other schools that are hot after him, too.

12 @ 12: Top 12 in Florida

2009-10-06T09:00:00.000-07:00

CLASS OF 2009 FLORIDA HOT DOZEN
1. John Henson, PF, Sickles NORTH CAROLINA
2. Kenny Boynton, SG, American Heritage FLORIDA
3. Wally Judge, PF, Arlington County Day KANSAS STATE
4. Rakeem Buckles, PF, Pace LOUISVILLE
5. Kyryl Natyazhko, C, IMG ARIZONA
6. Rodney McGruder, SG, Arlington Country Day KANSAS STATE
7. Keith Clanton, PF, Orlando Christian CENTRAL FLORIDA
8. Ramon Galloway, PG, Dwyer SOUTH CAROLINA
9. Dexter Fields, SG, Olympia UAB
10. Toarlyn Fitzpatrick, PF, Cambridge SOUTH FLORIDA
11. Ben Eblen, PG, Florida Air Academy ALABAMA
12. Terrance Beasley, PF, Pensacola TULANE

FLORIDA HOT DOZEN HIGH SCHOOL PLAYERS
1. Brandon Knight, PG/SG, Pine Crest, 2010 (pictured)
2. Austin Rivers, PG/SG, Winter Park, 2011
3. Fab Melo, C, Sagemont, 2010 SYRACUSE
4. Ishmael Douda, C, Grandview Prep, 2012 MIAMI
5. Dwight Powell, PF, IMG, 2010
6. Patric Young, PF, Paxon, 2010 FLORIDA
7. Okaro White, PF, Clearwater, 2010 FLORIDA STATE
8. Stacey Poole, SF/SG, Andrew Jackson, 2010 KENTUCKY
9. James Bell, SF, Montverde Academy, 2010, VILLANOVA
10. Jumail Jones, SF, Montverde Academy, 2010 MARQUETTE
11. Cady Lalanne, PF, Oak Ridge, 2010
12. Malik Martin, PF, Pace, 2013

Hot dozen archive
California
Georgia
New Jersey
North Carolina
Texas

Submit your questions for the NHR mailbag

2009-10-06T01:39:00.000-07:00

Have a question regarding recruiting, high school hoops, college basketball, rankings, coaches or anything that relates hoops, ask away. National Hoops Report editor Justin Young will answer your submissions in next week's edition of The NHR Mailbag. To submit your question, email nationalhoopsreport@gmail.com, via Twitter, or in the comments section below.

12 @ 12: Weekend randomness

2009-10-05T09:46:00.001-07:00

1. I spent the weekend in Boca Raton at the adidas Superstar Showcase at Lynn University and really came away impressed with the start-up event. The players competed, played smart and took advantage of the stage and opportunity all the while not playing selfish or out of control. Matt Ramker did a great job of assembling a top-notch staff and ran a terrific event. The event will be a staple on the National Hoops Report travel calendar from here on out. Saturday was about the younger guys. Sunday was about the next group of prospects from the Sunshine State.

2. The top 2010 player from the event was: Cady Lalanne of Oak Ridge High School (pictured).

3. The top 2011 player from the event was: Adonis Burbage of Orlando Christian.

4. The top 2012 player from the event was: Ishmael Douda of Grandview Prep.

5. The top 2013 player from the event was: Malik Martin of Monsignor Pace.

6. After spending the weekend in Florida, I’m excited to roll out the top 12 players from 2009 and the Hot Dozen for the Sunshine State for tomorrow’s 12 @ 12.

7. Get better Emmanuel Negedu. The Tennessee freshman spent last weekend a Knoxville hospital after having to be revived with a difibulator. Negedu is one of the most engaging young men I’ve ever covered on the prep scene. He has an infectious personality and a motor that didn’t come with an off switch. I hope nothing but the best for a guy that wants to be the best and not just in basketball. He is a future leader of men.

8. Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that the off-the-court issues Kansas is currently having will really sidetrack this team’s quest for a National Championship. The talent is certainly there. But is the mental focus? Champions have a steel wall with Kevlar coatings around their minds. The focus is solely on winning all the marbles. I do wonder if the Jayhawks are in that mental state.

9. If you need a good read for lunch, check out ESPN's story and breakdown of the all-time rankings of college basketball programs. A lot to go through but if you are a college hoops addict, and I assume you are, make sure you read it.

10. I’ve been to a lot of individual showcases this month and there are two things that I value more than anything this fall: Guys that can hit jumpers and kids that compete.

11. My Georgia Hoops Fall Showcase is quickly approaching on Oct. 17. This is the first year that I have opened it up to non Georgia residents. If you are interested in attending, please email me at georgiahoops@gmail.com. The event is open to all non Division I programs to evaluate players, too. College coaches, please spread the word. Former University of Georgia interim head coach Pete Hermann is our lead instructor. What’s he doing before he works our camp? Spending time with Larry Brown and the Charlotte Bobcats. Are you in the camp?

12. Here are my 12 football thoughts of the weekend:

A. Oregon is back. The Ducks could win the Pac-10, especially if LaGarrett Blount returns to the team before the Oct. 31 game against Southern Cal. The Ducks average nearly 200 yards a game on the ground without him.

B. Patrick Willis of the 49ers is the best player in the NFL that few people are talking about.

C. What an amazing run after the catch from Brandon Marshall. His snag and sprint kept the Broncos, yes THE BRONCOS, undefeated and it sent the Cowboys back to Dallas looking for hope in an already dismal year.

D. Terrence Newman of the Dallas Cowboys is the most overrated defensive back in the NFL.

E. Ben Roethlisberger is playing for the absolutely perfect team and for the perfect coach. He’s working on his place in Canton if you ask me. Have you ever seen a quarterback that big, that good and that poised in the face of adversity on the field?

F. If you are a hardcore NFL fan, make sure you follow Pro Football Talk, Peter King, Adam Schefter and MoveTheSticks.com.

G. These celebration rules in college football are too inconsistent and ridiculous. The Georgia-LSU game was ruined or enhanced (depending on who you talk to) because of two terrible “celebrations.” Yet, Notre Dame doesn’t get a penalty for the near-minute long celebration by tight end Kyle Rudolph against Washington. Stripes, be consistent.

H. Cincinnati is 5-0 and quietly in the top 10. With seven games remaining, the Bearcats only face one top 25 team (this weekend at No. 23 South Florida) for the remainder of the year. If Brian Kelly’s team can run the table, will Cincy get a shot at the National Championship?

I. Other than Sam Bradford, it has been a relatively healthy season for stars in both the NFL and NCAA.

J. What is more surprising this year: the Tennessee Titans being 0-4 or the Denver Broncos 4-0?

K. Don’t call me on Saturday night. The LSU-Florida game is the best game of the year to date. The two programs are the most physical programs in the country and there are just pros everywhere you look in this one. Think Trent Johnson and staff will try to have over a 100 basketball prospects on campus? What a recruiting opportunity!

L. Who is the Heisman leader right now? Colt McCoy of Texas sat at home in Austin over the weekend with an off week. And so did his top spot in my Heisman list. The next three weeks will be telling for the Longhorn gunslinger.

M. Who is the early NFL MVP leader right now? Peyton Manning is starting to separate himself from the rest of the pack and he is the most valuable individual on any of the 32 teams in the NFL. He alone has raised the level of play with a team with a new head coach, new receivers and a new backfield.

adidas Superstar Showcase: Sunday

2009-10-05T06:18:00.001-07:00

BOCA RATON, FLA. -- The young stars of Florida took over the action on Sunday at the adidas Superstar Showcase at Lynn University. The kids didn’t disappoint either.

SHOWCASE STARS

Malik Martin, PF, 2013, Pace (pictured) – There wasn’t a player in the building on Sunday that was a better long term prospect than the long-armed 6-foot-8 post player. His ceiling is outstanding. Just 14-years-old, Martin has a frame that looks like it could fill out to the near 7-foot mark. He is quite comfortable facing the basket and shooting the 14-foot jumper. There is a good group of basketball people around him to help him continue to grow and develop into a top-level player. Martin was easily the best player on Sunday and you could argue that he could be the best long-term guy from the entire camp.

Quinten Payne, SG, 2013, Bishop Verot – From a basketball perspective, no one understood how to play the game better than the 6-foot-3 Chicago area transplant. Payne did everything well in this setting. To start the day, he wanted to move the ball around and showed his awareness as a passer. As the day moved forward, Payne showed off his fine offensive touch. He squares up and knocks down shots with beautiful technique. He’s much more athletic and bigger than his brother, Cully, who is a freshman at Iowa. The Hawkeyes have offered already. Smart move. Payne is on his way to a high-major roster spot.

Stephon Blair, PF/C, 2012, Dillard – Blair played with great energy and passion throughout the camp. He was the best rebounder of the second day and no one stood a chance against him from a physicality standpoint on the low blocks. He enjoyed being the punisher and wanted to send the message that you’d have to fight him tooth and nail for anything that came off the rim. The locals say he is improving at a rapid clip and that he is willing to put in the work. That is encouraging. Blair was one of the top players overall from the weekend. Alabama, Kansas State and Cincinnati are already in the mix.

Jordan Montgomery, SG, 2012, Orlando Christian Prep – Outside of Payne, the only no-brainer high-major guard on Sunday was the 6-foot-2 guard. Montgomery has a basketball body (great length, long arms, bouncy legs) and a game that can translate well to the next level. He can handle like a point guard and had little trouble with defenders creeping into him. Montgomery showed his perimeter touch with several good-looking perimeter jumpers. He rebounds the ball well and could be a great defender. Very nice surprise from the event and should be a guy that high-major sneak a peek at this fall.

D.J. White, SG, 2013, Boca Ciega – For a guy that has yet to play in a high school game, he sure does have a lot of swagger and confidence. White was a difficult player to defend because he was on constant attack to the basket and never let a defender play his physical. White just powers through the defense and scores in traffic. His jump shot will need some fine tuning but the talent is there. His father, David, was a McDonald’s All-American before a career at Florida State.

Devontae Morgan, SG/PG, 2012, Tampa Prep – The swagger and confidence that the 6-2 guard played with was likable. He knew he was one of the better players on the floor and picked his moments to shine. His pull-up jumper was his go-to move all day. When he shifted over to the point guard position, he demonstrated good change of speed and direction and passed the ball quite well. Florida, Florida State, Wake Forest, Jacksonville, Stetson and Elon have all made early indications that they are watching him.

NOTES FROM THE NOTEPAD

Paul Jones, an aggressive 6-5 power forward from West Boca HS was a rebounding and dunking machine. The 2012 prospect was Mr. Energy and was rewarded for his hard work with easy scores at the rim…Not sure what position Jeff Coby plays in college but the class of 2012 prospect from Sagemont sure got a lot done on Sunday inside the paint. He’s a 6-5 post that showed he could defend the three…Really liked the play of Tavares sophomore combo guard Darien Anthony. The 5-10 running back look alike was one of the top rebounding guards and he was quick and smart with the ball. Very good effort from him on Sunday…Monsignor Pace brought a lot of players to the camp and it seemed like each of their players peaked our interest. Samad Hines, a 6-4 combo forward, was a producing mismatch player…The same thing can be said about Orlando Christian Prep. The school was well-represented with prospects. Isaac Cohen, a 6-4 wing from the 2012 class, did the dirty work and got better as the day moved forward…Romas Marcinkevicius, a bruising 6-7 freshman post from Pinecrest, looked more like a bouncer than basketball player. He played tough and was the strongest youngster in the event on Sunday.

adidas Superstar Showcase: Saturday

2009-10-03T15:35:00.000-07:00

BOCA RATON, FLA. -- The first adidas Superstar Showcase was a major success this weekend at Lynn University. The stars shined, a number of young prospects emerged and some sleepers took advantage of the platform they were playing on.

SHOWCASE STARS

Ishmael Douda, C, 2012, Grandview Prep (pictured) – The 7-footer has improved dramatically over the last 12 months. He was the best performer and prospect on Saturday. The future Miami Hurricane played a lot like Solomon Alabi of Florida State but with more offense. That is a scary thought. Douda could be on his way to a top 25 status nationally and likely even higher if he continues this kind of progression. Douda absolutely dominated on the glass and as a shot-blocker. Douda recorded a pair of triple double-doubles on Saturday.

Harold Doby, SF, 2010, Oldsmar Christian – What a day of passing the ball for the future Georgia State Panther. The 6-6 combo forward did a great job of finding guys in the half court. Doby, an Augusta, Ga. native, looks comfortable in the Sunshine State and playing at a high level.

Cady Lalanne, PF, 2010, Oak Ridge – When he wanted to, the 6-8 power forward was one of the top overall players in the camp. The big man is comfortable facing up. He can score on the low blocks. He can pass well out of the post. But he also disappeared at times. Defensively, he played hard against Douda and gave the big man some trouble at times. Overall, it was a solid effort. Lalanne will visit Ole Miss next weekend. He’s down to the Rebels, Georgia, UMass and VCU.

SLEEPER CENTRAL

Adonis Burbage, PG/SG, 2011, Orlando Christian – Really liked his versatility in the backcourt and his scoring punch. He was one of the top sleepers from the event and he impressed with his creativity, savvy and court awareness. His ceiling is high and the mid-majors that are currently recruiting him (Jacksonville, Elon, Furman, Liberty and Georgia Southern) will probably bite their nails for the next year and a half with fear that he could sneak up a little higher.

Terral Merritt, PG, 2011, Orlando Christian – Wow. Speed, speed, speed. That is what he brought to the table on Saturday. There wasn’t a faster player in the gym. Merritt could not be defended and he just sprinted past players with the dribble. Merritt scored at will because of his jets. His jumper was average and if he can fine tune that aspect of his game, his future could include all kinds of high-majors. Merritt said LSU, Western Carolina, Northeastern and Rutgers are showing early interest.

A.J. Roberts, PG/SG, 2011, Norland – The 6-1 guard has the speed, the scorer’s touch, the body, the smarts and the toughness to become a nice mid-level guard. As the day grew older, Roberts played with more intensity and looked more comfortable in this setting. Keep an eye on him.

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

Cleon Roberts, SG, 2012, Norland – The hoop mavens in South Florida are high on the sophomore and it is easy to see why. He’s a scorer with size and looked good as a perimeter shooter. Roberts plays with great awareness and was consistently knocking down the jumper. Florida State has offered and Roberts has been on the Seminole campus. Florida Atlantic, Alabama and Georgia Tech have also been in to see him play. Roberts is a no-brainer high-major kid.

The class of 2012 and 2013 will play on Sunday. Matt Ramker, the event organizer, is excited about the prospects for Sunday’s event.

NOTES FROM THE NOTEPAD

Rod Days was one of the more highly touted players coming into the camp and for a guy that is 6-7 and just a junior, he certainly has a lot of potential and intrigue to his game. He is a match-up problem because of his size and athleticism but consistency isn’t always there. Nevertheless he’s piling up the offers. Miami, Florida State, Delaware, Stanford, Wake Forest, Louisville, South Carolina, Georgia Tech, Ole Miss, Georgia and Alabama are high on his list. Days said South Carolina and Wake Forest are his current top two.

Big man Kyle Sikora (6-9, Florida Christian HS) could be a sleeper after a year of prep. The class of 2010 center’s confidence grew as the day rolled on. He’s a project but could become a low-major post…Jorel Terrell, a 6-6 post from Martin County, was the master of the tip-in, grabbing rebounds and starting the break. The senior will find a college home because of his energy…Non Division I schools should be all over Eddie Odio (2011/Columbus HS) and Spenser Mitchell (2010/Winter Springs HS). Both guys play hard and play well…Reshawn Rembert, a 6-3 junior guard from Tampa Sickles, scored by constantly attacking the rim. Not a bad defender either…Kristian Rolle, an undersized power forward from Monsignor Pace, will be a nice low-major power forward for schools to recruit in 2011…Every time we looked up Zach Perkins, a 6-3 senior from Archbishop Mitty, was making a play.

Live from Boca

2009-10-03T05:35:00.000-07:00

I will be doing live updates on my Twitter account today from the adidas Superstar Showcase at Lynn University. First item of business: Fab Melo, the prize of the 2010 Syracuse recruiting class, will not be attending. Instead, he will be taking the ACT.

What to watch for this weekend

2009-10-02T09:50:00.000-07:00

It is a busy weekend for basketball all over the country but there are two spots that the National Hoops Report will be watching the most.

BASKETBALL IN BOCA

I’m heading south to attend Matt Ramker’s adidas Superstar Showcase at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida. There should be a good group of players from the Sunshine State at the two-day event. Some of the notables include: Fab Melo (Syracuse), Ishmael Douda (2012/Miami), Cady LaLane, Marvin Baynham (Georgia Southern), Harold Doby (Georgia State) and a host of other young players.

Ramker said the young players could be the story of the camp. He’s excited about the prospects. Some notables include: Cleon Roberts (Miami Norland/2012), Quentin Payne (Bishop Verot/2013), Malik Martin (Miami Pace/2013), Stephon Blair (Ft. Lauderdale Dillard/2012), D.J. White (Ciega St. Petersburg Boca/2013) and Deon Clark (Naples/Barron Collier 2012).

I’ll have a camp recap on Monday here on the National Hoops Report.

HOUSTON READY FOR GREAT WEEKEND OF HOOPS

Jim Hicks, the king of all things Houston basketball, editor of RCS and the king of the quote, shot me an email about the Super 16 Extravaganza Fall High School Championships presented by Boost Mobile this weekend at DeKaney High School.

The event boasts the top players in the always-loaded Houston area.

Houston Bellaire will be there. Texas A&M bound senior Tobi Oyedeji, Texas Tech bound Jamel Outler and junior Sheldon McClellan, a Texas commitment, lead the top team in the city. On a side note, think there is a strong sense of inner team rivalry with these three Big 12 bound players? And when will Baylor snatch up a Bellaire kid?

Other players of note in the event include: Wannah Bail (Lutheran North/2012), Amos Olatayo (Stephen F. Austin commitment), Aaron Durley (St. Thomas/2012), Nick Shepard (Westbury Christian/2010), Darrius Richardson (UT-Arlington commitment), Jon Caleb Sanders (Liberty commitment), Steven Baird (Liberty commitment), Justin Coleman (Christian Life/2010), Chris Coleman (Christian Life/2011), Jason Carter (Christian Life/2010), L.J. Rose (Second Baptist/2012), Anthony Norris (Sam Houston/2011), Andrew Harrison (Strake Jesuit/2013) and Aaron Harrison (Strake Jesuit/2013).

Teams in the event: Alief Elsik, Bellaire, Bush, Christian Life, Clear Springs, DeKaney, Dickinson, H.C.Y.A., Jones, Kingwood, Klein Forest, LaPorte, Lutheran North, North Shore, Sam Houston, Second Baptist, Seven Lakes, Strake Jesuit, St. Thomas, Westbury Christian and Wheatley.

“This could be the most balanced crop of teams in the six year existence of the event,” Hicks said. “Trust me when I tell you, several of these teams have enough octane to kick like a well fed mule.”

Buy 12, get 12 free: Impact freshmen

2009-10-01T10:38:00.000-07:00

In yesterday's 12 @ 12, we looked at the top dozen impact freshmen in the country. That just wasn't enough to cover all of the bases. Here is a look at 12 more guys that should make a significant impact this season as college rookies.

1. John Henson, North Carolina – It was hard leaving the 6-11 combo forward off the original 12 @ 12 list yesterday. The reason? Ed Davis, Deon Thompson and Tyler Zeller. Henson will play and play a lot but the seasoned veterans will play more early and Henson’s strength will still be a question mark this season. But that, of course, doesn’t mean he isn’t one of the true elite NBA prospects in the college game right now.

2. Xavier Henry, Kansas (pictured) – There are no secrets about his scoring ability. For four years straight on the national circuit, Henry pumped in points and points and points. That is exactly what he’ll do for one of the best teams in the country. Henry won’t be asked to be the go-to guy either. That will be the first time in his young career. And that could be exactly what he needs to be a big-time contributor this season.

3. J’Covan Brown, Texas – There is a belief coming out of Austin this pre-season that Brown, not Bradley, will have a bigger impact this year. I, for one, am not as high but do see a need for the value that Brown brings. He can score. He can defend. He’s tough. He’s athletic. He’s also hard-headed. In some cases, that is exactly what a team needs. For the Longhorns, he’s the perfect answer in a backcourt that needs some depth, skill and scoring.

4. D.J. Richardson, Illinois – The Illini lost three starting guards from last year’s team and replaced them with three intriguing in-state prospects. Richardson is the king pin of the bunch. The Peoria native can defend, score and play all over the floor. He fine-tuned his game at Findlay Prep last year and he should be ready to step right into a starter’s role and shine. Don’t be surprised to see him develop into one of the premiere winners in the Big Ten.

5. Lamont Jones, Arizona – There is a need for scoring in Arizona’s backcourt and there aren’t many players that can throw up shots quite like Jones. He has a quick trigger and great range on his jumper. Arizona needs a shot in the arm and Jones should provide it. There is a reason why he was committed to Southern Cal, Virginia Tech and Louisville. Schools from coast-to-coast wanted him and wanted him bad. The reason? He can really pump in the points. Don’t be surprised to see him score over 14 a game this year.

6. Alex Oriakhi, Connecticut – Watch the rough and tough power forward and you get a feeling that Jeff Adrien might be back in Storrs. There is a need for a player like Oriakhi at UConn right now and his knock you around, take your ball from you and make your cry bully behavior on the low blocks is exactly what Jim Calhoun needs alongside a freakish athlete like Stanley Robinson.

7. Tommy Mason-Griffin, Oklahoma – The Sooners will hand TMG the keys to the car and ask the Houston native to press the gas to the floor this year. Small in stature but big on confidence, Mason-Griffin ended his high school career well and knows the studs on the OU roster as well as you’d want your freshman point guard to know his team. TMG should start every game and be one of the top assist men in the Big 12.

8. Noel Johnson, Clemson – When Terrence Oglesby decided to leave college after his sophomore year for a pro career overseas, the Tigers needed to replace his perimeter offense. Boy did they. Oliver Purnell and his staff were able to pluck Johnson from the ripe Georgia recruiting fields and could even have an upgrade at the two guard position with Johnson. He can do a lot of things in the backcourt. While Milton Jennings is the marquee player (he was a McDonald’s All-American), Johnson will be the most important freshman on the Clemson team this year.

9. Roberto Nelson, Oregon State – Someone has to score points for the Beavers. Lucky for Craig Robinson, that is what Nelson does really well. Oregon State is enjoying more recruiting notoriety with Robinson now at the helm and Nelson was one of the first major scores. He’ll be asked to do a lot and if he scores upwards of 16 points a game, don’t be surprised.

10. Nolan Dennis, Baylor – Scott Drew has had successful for consecutive years with a multiple guard lineup. That was mostly out of necessity. This year with Dennis, a former Memphis commitment, the Bears can throw a number of big guards on the floor and not only confuse defenses with skilled offensive players but also do something that the Bears haven’t done a good job at in the past – defend in the backcourt.

11. Mfon Udofia, Georgia Tech – The focus is on another freshman in Atlanta this year. Maybe you’ve heard of him – Derrick Favors? Yeah, he’s good. But Udofia means more in the grand scheme of things. Why? Udofia is a leader, a winner and a competitive and aggressive player. That is what the team lacked last year. His attitude is already rubbing off on the team. Udofia will glue all of the talent together. That is hard to measure in the box scores.

12. Dane Miller, Rutgers – Does this one surprise you? It shouldn’t. The 6-7 forward will play nearly 28 minutes a game this year because of his versatility. Miller is one of the most versatile players in the 2009 high school class and he is yet to tap into his high-level talent. Don’t be surprised to see his name on the Big East Freshman of the Week list several times this year.

NHR Mailbag: Oct. 1

2009-10-01T07:20:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a week for questions. There are a number of great inquiries in this week's edition. We cover all kinds of topics, including one of the most underrated recruiting classes in 2010, Josh Selby, Roscoe Smith (pictured), North Carolina hoops and much, much more.

Anything you can tell me about the St. Joseph Hawks 2010 recruits?

I really like the 2010 recruiting class that Phil Martelli and staff are building. In fact, if they don’t crack the final top 30 team rankings in 2010, they will probably be one of the top 10 mid-major recruiting classes in 2010.

Clearly C.J. Aiken is the prize recruit at this stage. At 6-9 and highly athletic, he’s already a step above most players at his position in the Atlantic 10. His impact should be felt immediately.

As good as Aiken is and will be, I really like Darius Quarles in the class. He committed early to St. Joe’s and had he waited, it wouldn’t shock me at all if the entire Big East were to recruit him. Quarles is a legit 6-7 and a legit small forward. I really like his versatility and size on the wing. He and Aiken have great futures past college with basketball.

Langston Galloway, a Louisiana native, is an interesting commitment. He is a cerebral player that can play both guard positions. I’ve been watching him since he was a freshman in high school and have enjoyed watching his progression into the player he is now. Combo guards have shined at St. Joe’s in the past. No reason to think he can’t as well.

Quincy Miller ahead of Reggie Bullock? Elaborate please.

That was a tough call for me to rank Miller ahead of Bullock in the recent Hot Dozen rankings for North Carolina. I like Miller, a junior, a little more simply because he has more time to improve. With his size (6-8) and his shooting ability his position, he can be one of the most deadly offensive players in the country. Miller is a multi-talented prospect that can play all over the floor.

Bullock is the second best shooting guard in the county in the class of 2010 behind Memphis bound guard Will Barton in my opinion. Bullock has ideal size for a shooting guard and will be one of the best players in college basketball when he gets to Chapel Hill.

However, I think Miller has better long-term potential than Bullock. But not by much.

Any read on Josh Selby yet?

I really don’t have a good read on Selby. None whatsoever. But we can all guess, right? If I were to rank the schools in likeliness of landing the enigmatic guard from Baltimore it would be as follows: 1. Kentucky 2. Kansas 3. Syracuse 4. Baylor 5. Miami 6. Indiana. That is a total shot in the dark guess.

What are you feeling for Roscoe Smith? Back up for Duke in Barnes sweepstakes? Or real deal? UCONN is in on him hard.

Good question. Smith’s recruitment has always been a big mystery to me because I just can’t figure it out. I too have wondered if Smith is a back up if the Blue Devils can’t land Harrison Barnes or whether or not he is truly a must-get guy for Coach K and staff. Last year, Duke put all of it’s eggs in the Kenny Boynton basket and lost it all. I wonder if that led to more targets than usual in 2010.

I agree that Connecticut is in there strong with Smith. And, like Selby, I’m taking a shot in the dark with this one but I’d order the teams as such: Georgetown, Connecticut and Duke.

Xavier has had a tremendous amount of recent success both on the court (2 Elite Eight, 1 Sweet Sixteen) and off the court (multiple top 100 recruits). That being said, we receive tremendous notoriety as a "stepping stone" school for our head coaches and often unfairly receive the dreaded "mid-major" label. We now are consistently landing players ranked 70-150 range. Do you ever see X making the jump to compete for the upper echelon 4* recruits and potentially a 5*? Do you think given the players we are currently landing we can compete to take that next step to win a national championship? If not, what would it take i.e. new league, firm long term coaching commitment from Chris Mack?

Wow, that’s a loaded question. Let me start by saying Xavier is no longer a mid-major program. It is that simple. The school has been too deep into NCAA tournaments for too long to be considered that. The school administration is fully committed to the basketball program and every single head coach that has been there has struggled with the decision to leave the program for a school in a BCS conference.

You could even argue that outside of Thad Matta’s trip to the National Championship game with Mike Conley, Greg Oden and Daquan Cook, every coach that leaves Xavier for another program never had quite the same success when they coached in Cincinnati.

The team has been that successful with the 70-150 level players for so long. Rarely, if ever, do you have short term players at the school, too. The players that are in the 70-150 range stay for four years and you can build continuity which breeds success in college hoops.

If Xavier were to jump to say the Big East of Big Ten, they would clearly need to land the five-star type of players. But why make the jump to the Big East and face that brutal night in, night out schedule? Or even join the Big Ten, a conference where Xavier would immediately be a top three team in the league but give up an automatic first or second place finish in the Atlantic 10 every year? I understand the thought but the Atlantic 10 makes too much sense and Xavier has been very successful because of their current conference.

With Pierre Henderson-Niles graduating after this season and Angel Garcia’s health being questionable, the Memphis Tigers are only left with one true big man (Will Coleman) for the 2010 season. How are there chances looking with Tarik Black and are there any other bigs high on the radar?

Memphis has a very good chance at landing Black. With Joe Jackson on board and Chris Crawford making his decision on Thursday afternoon (and I wouldn’t be shocked if he picked Memphis), Black could be next to pledge to Josh Pastner. Black makes the most sense for the Tigers. I love his toughness, athleticism, rugged play and his attitude around the rim. He wants to punish the iron. How can you not love that in your big man?

Another name worth watching is Freddy Asprilla, a former center at Florida International who is now at a junior college. He is visiting Memphis in the near future and those around him would love to see him in a high profile situation for future pro endeavors.

With so much depending on a ultra fast point guard, who can handle the rock, to run North Carolina offense what point guard will be the next Ty Lawson or Ray Felton for the Tar Heels in the near future? And why is C.J. Leslie not rank in the top 15 and does Carolina get him?

Great question. North Carolina is at its best when speed is in the backcourt. Moreover, Roy Williams basketball teams are better when there is speed in the backcourt. This year’s team will be interesting to watch because there isn’t great speed there right now. And Kendall Marshall, as good as he is as a game manager and flat out winner, he isn’t the quickest guy either.

Finding speed in 2011 and/or 2012 is a must. A couple of guys to watch in 2011 are: Marquis Rankin (fits the speed mold), Quinn Cook.

Guys to watch in 2012: L.J. Rose, Jaylen Beckham and D'Vauntes Smith-Rivera.

Regarding Leslie not being a top 15 player - I never saw him play at a level that a top 15 guy should be playing at. Now, I probably do have him undervalued as I don’t currently have him in the top 25. It is something that I acknowledged after I release my post-summer top 25. I need to see more consistency, attention to rebounding and finishing around the basket before I get too excited about him being an elite level player in 2010. Nevertheless, he’s a talent and getting better at those areas. I get the feeling that if UNC really wants him, they could probably get him.

Michael Bradley is interested in studying pharmacy, however Boston College doesn't have a pharmacy program. Any idea why he scheduled a visit to Boston College? Who do you think is currently the front-runner in his recruitment?

Kids say the darndest things. In all my years of covering recruiting, the major field is one of the most misunderstood angles. I, for one, changed my major three times. I went to school for pre-law and ended up in sport management with a communications focus. Mixed in the middle of all of that, I was an English major. Point of that story: majors change, opinions change and college coaches can really sell their program. Looks like Boston College certainly did.

As far as a front-runner – hard to really tell. If I were to take a guess, UConn would be my first choice.

Last week you said Reco McCarter was "harder to find than a missing sock in the dryer." However, VCU found him and received a verbal. According to some of the internet sites this was a major get for VCU. Any thoughts?

I wish I could elaborate on him. But since I’m still looking for that other missing sock, I can’t. Those that are close to him and those that have coached him have all spoken highly of him and believe he will be a valuable contributor for Shaka Smart.

How the heck did Binghamton find itself with five knuckleheads who had to be dismissed? Bad luck or did they sell their soul for a chance to go to the NCAAs? Can a coach survive this? Other than scouting intramural games is there any chance of replacing those players this late in the off-season?

Binghamton knew what they were getting into when they recruited those kids. Each of those guys came to college with history. Bad luck? Not really. Bad apples? Absolutely. Get enough bad apples together and the rot really begins to smell. The school and coach Kevin Broadus did the right thing by kicking each of these guys to the curb. But now you have to wonder about more ripple effect.

Joel Thirer, Binghamton’s Athletic Director, resigned on Wednesday. You do have to wonder if Broadus can survive this as well. Something tells me that he won’t.

As far as replacing the missing pieces – you can’t. Not right now at least. I’m not sure how you do it. Know anyone at Binghamton that can play ball? Or stand over 6-8? Have them make a trip down to the basketball office. And hopefully the campus police have never seen your face.

What's the deal with Shawn Kemp Jr.? Any idea why he re-opened his recruitment? Even though he was recruited by Alabama's previous coach I thought he recently solidified his commitment to Anthony Grant?

Kemp cited that he and the new Alabama staff wanted to feel each other out more.

I would not be shocked to see Georgia recruit Kemp and recruit him hard. Kemp grew up in Georgia. Mark Fox recruited Kemp when he was at Nevada and the Wolfpack were second on his list when he committed to Alabama last year. UGA also has Phillip Pearson on staff. Pearson was at Alabama when Kemp committed to the Tide. There are a lot of over-lapping connections for the Bulldogs.

I’d expect his recruitment to take on all comers at this point. Schools are looking high and low for players right now and Kemp is one of the best available big men in the country at the moment.

Anthony Grant signed point guard Ben Eblen this year and recently got a commitment from a higher rated point guard Trevor Releford for 2010. Did he just recruit over Eblen?

That happens. Eblen is a good player and I’m a fan of his game but truth be told, if he is your point guard, you aren’t beating teams like Kentucky, Florida, Tennessee, Ole Miss and South Carolina right now. Enter Releford. He at least gives you a shot in the highly competitive SEC right now.

The Tide coaches love Releford’s feel for the game and his ability to run a team. They believe he can be a starter from the day he gets to Tuscaloosa.

Moreover, Alabama needed Eblen in the 2009 class for depth purposes. A point guard was a need in 2010 regardless.

12 impact freshmen

2009-09-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

Freshman, freshman, who doesn’t love a freshman? They make everything better, right? Well, at least they do before the season officially tips off. In today’s 12 @ 12, we look at the top dozen instant impact rookies in college basketball.

1. John Wall, Kentucky – No brainer pick here. He is picked by some as the National Player of the Year. That may be a little too much for a guy that hasn’t proven himself as a winner at the highest level yet but there is no question that he’s the most talented rookie in college basketball. Getting to the Final Four (and beyond) would certainly end the knock that he doesn’t win the big one, wouldn’t it?

2. Derrick Favors, Georgia Tech – Those in Atlanta have compared him to Dwight Howard and while the comparisons aren’t dead on, Favors will certainly be a major factor. He’s a double-double guy from the outset and a challenge-free run through the high school and grassroots ranks, Favors is ready to play against a high competition.

3. Kenny Boynton, Florida (pictured) – The Florida Gators need to push the reset button. And the in-state star should do it. Boynton will start from day one and his presence will be felt immediately. He can score. He can defend. He can shoot. And more importantly, he wins, wins, wins.

4. John Jenkins, Vanderbilt – Don’t be surprised if the 6-5 guard leads all freshmen in scoring this year. After all, he scored over 40 points a game as a high school senior. He is one of the elite shooters in the country, too. Jenkins is quietly one of the best freshmen in the country right now.

5. Michael Snaer, Florida State – Toney Douglas is gone. And he took his 21.5 points per game with him. Snaer, a score-first guy, has to love that. The California guard is similar to Douglas in the sense that the two can score with the best of them. Snaer is bigger, more athletic and has deeper range, too. Don’t be surprised to see him average 15 points this year.

6. Lance Stephenson, Cincinnati – From a straight basketball perspective, he’s a major talent. The New Yorker is big, strong, athletic and when he wants to be, a fierce competitor. Stephenson is his own worst enemy but leaving Coney Island for Cincy could be the magic he needs to have his best basketball year to date.

7. DeMarcus Cousins, Kentucky – You could argue that the 6-10 center is the most talented player in the class. He’s one of the most skilled post players to come out of high school in a long, long time. His passing skills are just as good as his rebounding. And his rebounding is just as good as his scoring. If John Calipari can channel it all together, Cousins could be argued for the number one pick in the draft in June.

8. Dante Taylor, Pittsburgh – Is there a power forward better suited for the Panthers more than Taylor? Doubt it. He’s as rugged, skilled and tough as they come and his game just screams Pitt. He’ll be a fan favorite not just because of his effort but because of his likely 16 points and nine rebounds a game as a rookie.

9. Mouphtauo Yarou, Villanova – How the basketball world continues to sleep on this guy is amazing. The .com recruiting world knows plenty about him and understands his value but most college basketball pundits aren’t seeing the light with him. Sure, most African imports struggle in college. Yarou is very much the exception.

10. Avery Bradley, Texas – Last July, we saw the quick rise to elite status for the Washington state native. His rise was quick and very noticeable. The rise hasn’t ended. Bradley is an elite defender and it could be argued he’s the best on the ball defender in the country. Right now. Oh, and his offense is outstanding, too.

11. Abdul Gaddy, Washington – The Huskies are now the home to the best three guard rotation in the West. With Gaddy, the best pure point guard entering college, Isiah Thomas and Venoy Overton, Washington will be dancing for a while in March. Gaddy makes the other two so much better.

12. Wally Judge, Kansas State – Sure, there may be others that you could argue make this 12th spot. But Judge quietly had a huge senior season and is physically, mentally and athletically ready for the next level. While he is no Michael Beasley, Judge will likely lead the team in rebounding and maybe even scoring this season.

Truth be told, 12 may not be enough for one day. We’ll have an additional 12 freshmen of impact on Thursday.

True Hoops Elite Showcase notes

2009-09-29T14:23:00.000-07:00

I spent Saturday at the True Hoops Elite Showcase at Norcross High School and had a chance to watch a number of talented young guys in action. Here is who caught my eye:

Devonte Pollard (pictured) was the best long-term prospect at the camp. The 6-foot-7 lefty from Kemper County High School (Miss.) is a very bouncy big man that plays with good energy and bounce around the cup. Pollard has the look of a top 65 level player (or maybe better) in the 2012 class. He’s a great athlete and tries to rip the rims off when he in the area. Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Alabama and Georgia State have all been in to see him so far this fall, he said.

Keon Brown, a 2011 power forward from Evangel Christian in Chester, Va., was an interesting prospect at the True Hoops camp. The 6-foot-7 forward scored with ease in the paint. He’s a nice mid-level sleeper to watch in the junior class. American, Hartford and St. Francis have offered, Brown says. Boston College, Wake Forest, Western Kentucky, Virginia Commonwealth and DePaul are interested, too, he says.

Zachary Reynolds, a 6-foot-8 power forward from Mt. Zion (N.C.), was one of the top post players in the camp. The class of 2011 prospect was a tough customer in the low-post because of his toughness, shot-blocking abilities and his non-stop energy. His energy was an intimidating factor.

Class of 2013 prospect Dennis Miles, a well put together 6-foot-5 wing, the top freshman at the event. He’s a strong kid that can hit shots from the wing but also cause problems because of his athleticism from the wing. He has a future at a high-major school in time.

NOTES FROM THE NOTEPAD

After shining last week at the Elite 75 camp.75 camp, Hendrix Emu, Joemar Black, Tyler Brunson and Delron Summey were back at it at the True Hoops Elite Showcase.

Emu displayed his great passing touch. Black showed off his athleticism. Summey used his versatility. Mix the trio with Reynolds, one of the top big men at the camp, and Mt. Zion should enjoy a successful year on the hardwood.

For a deeper look into the top performers from Georgia at the event, be sure to check out D1Spects.com.

12 @ 12: Top dozen in N.C.

2009-09-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

CLASS OF 2009 NORTH CAROLINA HOT DOZEN
1. John Wall, PG, Word of God, KENTUCKY
2. Ryan Kelly, PF, Ravenscroft School DUKE
3. Mason Plumlee, PF, Christ School DUKE
4. Rashanti Harris, C, Patterson School GEORGIA STATE
5. Karron Johnson, SF, Laurinburg OKLAHOMA STATE (Did not qualify)
6. Hassan Whiteside, C, Patterson School MARSHALL
7. Garrius Adams, SF, Middle Creek MIAMI
8. Lakeem Jackson, SF, Christ School SOUTH CAROLINA
9. Arsalan Kazemi, PF, Patterson School RICE
10. DeAndre Kane, SG, Patterson School MARSHALL
11. Jason Calliste, SG, Quality Education DETROIT
12. Earnest Ross, SG, Panther Creek AUBURN

NORTH CAROLINA HOT DOZEN HIGH SCHOOL PLAYERS
1. Quincy Miller, PF, Quality Education Academy, 2011
2. Reggie Bullock, SG, Kinston, 2010 NORTH CAROLINA
3. C.J. Leslie, PF, Word of God, 2010
4. Damontre Harris, PF, Trinity Christian, 2010 SOUTH CAROLINA
5. Ian Miller, PG, United Faith, 2010 FLORIDA STATE
6. P.J. Hairston, SG, Dudley, 2011 NORTH CAROLINA
7. Marquis Rankin, PG, Vance, 2011
8. Marshall Plumlee, PF, Christ School, 2011
9. Luke Cothron, PF, Flora McDonald Academy, 2010
10. J.T. Terrell, SG, West Charlotte, 2010 WAKE FOREST
11. Melvin Tabb, PF, Enloe, 2010 WAKE FOREST
12. Peter Jurkin, C, United Faith Academy, 2012

Hot dozen archive
California
Georgia
New Jersey
Texas

12 @ 12: Weekend randomness

2009-09-28T08:55:00.001-07:00

Whoa, what a weekend for recruiting news. That is the focus of today’s 12 @ 12.

1. Kyrie Irving will announce very soon (if he hasn’t already) that he will be a Duke Blue Devil. In fact, I’ve had several people tell me that he committed to Coach K during his visit to the ACC. Word as of Monday morning is that Irving could still visit Texas A&M. Regardless, the multiple sources that I’ve talked to say Irving to Duke is a done deal. That isn’t a shocker at all. The only thing surprising that he took just one official visit. I thought he’d visit more places first. Ten seconds into talking to Irving in Orlando for TheDevilsDen.com this summer, I knew that he’d be going to Duke. I covered Duke basketball recruiting for two years for Rivals.com and every single player that committed to Duke all said the right things the right way. Irving said all of the right things regarding the Blue Devils.

2. Harrison Barnes has also said all of the right things in the right way regarding Duke (and all of the other schools for that matter). But like Irving, from the first time I talked to Barnes, he just screamed Duke. He told the National Hoops Report about his official visit tour on Thursday. All signs point to him a November decision. He will take his visits as planned and then go from there. If I were to pick a dark horse, I like Oklahoma in this one.

3. With Irving likely headed to Duke, the 94.8 million Kentucky fans on the Internet now all want to know who is the next target to commit to John Calipari. My guess? How about Josh Selby? Evan Daniels of Scout.com broke the news on Sunday night that the Baltimore native trimmed his list to six schools over the weekend. Kansas, Syracuse, Kentucky, Miami, Indiana and Baylor have made the cut. The family hasn’t set up a visit yet with any of the finalists. Translation: things will probably get crazy before they become calmer with Selby. He’s probably going to sign in the spring, too. Patience grasshoppers. All 94.8 million of you.

4. Also cutting his list this weekend was New Yorker Tobias Harris (pictured above). Harris is down to seven schools and Maryland, West Virginia, Georgia Tech, Tennessee, Louisville, Kentucky and Syracuse have made the cut. If I had to pick the front-runners in this one, it would be Syracuse, Maryland, Georgia Tech and West Virginia (and in that order) going into October. He visited Syracuse over the weekend. Gut says the ‘Cuse are sitting the prettiest, too. If he pops for the Orange, that is a scary, scary class.

5. The big omission on Selby and Harris’s respective lists is Connecticut. And the Husky nation was a little disturbed to say the least. But they shouldn’t. UConn happen to have two of the best high school players on the planet on campus this weekend. Florida guard Brandon Knight and Andre Drummond visited the Storrs campus. Rivals.com ranks both players tops in their respective classes. Where was Michael Gilchrist?!? Connecticut fans shouldn’t fret. I’ve been pretty open in my belief that UConn will fight until the end with Miami for Knight.

6. With a lot of big-timers cutting their lists, Scout.com caught up with Jelan Kendrick and tried to get a peek into his recruitment. The only real revelation is that the 6-foot-6 point forward likes to do yoga.

7. Portland, Oregon forward Terrence Jones is now down to seven schools, according to Scout.com. Still not sure which direction he goes in but something tells me he stays in Pac-10 country.

8. The Nike Team Florida workout was this weekend and the .com recruiting world was there for it. (Rivals, Prep Stars, Scout, ESPN and others were there to cover it.)

9. I’ll be in Florida this coming weekend for the adidas Superstar Showcase at Lynn University. Basketball in Boca Raton? Yeah, sign me up.

10. Here is a commitment that you probably looked past but shouldn’t have: Jonathan Arledge to George Mason. The 6-foot-8 power forward from the D.C. area was described to me as a Thomas Robinson like player. If so, then the CAA has an all-conference player coming to the league next year.

11. If you recruit bad apples, the bruises usually come to the surface. Point in case – Binghamton. Wow, what a debacle. In a week’s time, the team lost five key players a month and a half before the season starts.

12. This is a basketball blog. But it is football season. And I like football. And you like reading this blog. We all win. Here are 12 thoughts from the weekend on the gridiron.

A. Minutes after Mark Sanchez was about to be the topic of conversation for the week at ESPN, Brett Favre slung the ball 50 yards for a game-winning score. He just won’t go away.
B. Really enjoyed this tweet from Daniel Jeremiah, former NFL scout: “Did Jack Youngblood get as much credit for playing with a broken leg as (Tim) Tebow is getting for playing with a cold?”
C. As impressive as Favre’s last second heave-ho pass was, Greg Lewis’s catch and dragging of the feet was amazing.
D. As impressive as Favre’s last second heave-ho pass was, Carson Palmer’s last second touchdown to Andre Caldwell was more important. The Bengals beat the Steelers because of that. Yes, the Bengals.
E. The Detroit Lions finally won a game. And everyone at Ford Field should have received a free Ford Focus. The fans have suffered enough.
F. The Baltimore Ravens are deadly now that they have some offense. When do Ravens fans start booking hotels in Miami?
G. I’m not sure who had the worst uniform weekend? New York Jets, the Seattle Seahawks or the Oregon Ducks.
H. Football in the rain – much more fun to watch it then play in it.
I. Who is the Heisman leader right now? I’m sticking with Colt McCoy of Texas.
J. Who is the early NFL MVP leader right now? I still really like Drew Brees here but after watching Peyton Manning on Sunday night dismantle the Arizona Cardinals, it is hard not to politic for him to win another trophy this early in the year.
K. Want to have fun with some numbers? 3-0. 16 points allowed all season. Want to guess who those stats belong to? How about the Denver Broncos? Incredible.
L. The Dallas Cowboys play the Carolina Panthers tonight. And we, the football world, will learn at least two things: 1. Dallas has a brand new stadium. And Jesus walked on water there. 2. Jake Delhomme will throw an interception. Or eight.

Kyrie Irving to...

2009-09-27T17:49:00.001-07:00

...Duke? Hearing that may be happening by Monday at the latest from multiple sources. He raved about his trip on Twitter on Sunday.

Fastbreak Friday: Sept. 25

2009-09-25T09:56:00.001-07:00

It is Friday and that means visits. Lots of them. Scout.com takes a look at the weekend's visitor's in their On Campus report. We just break ‘em down.

ACC visitor of the weekend: Kyrie Irving (pictured) is visiting Duke. And he’s excited. The top 15 prospect is making his much anticipated visit to Durham and there are no secrets that the Blue Devils are high on his list. While he’s never publicly said it, there is a common belief that Duke is the leader for his services. While it wouldn’t surprise many if he commits shortly after his trip, Irving probably won’t. That’s not how he has handled his recruitment to date. Don’t be surprised to read glowing comments from Irving regarding Duke after this season.

Big East visitor of the weekend: Michael Bradley is visiting Connecticut. That isn’t the most earth-shattering news this weekend. Having Brandon Knight and Andre Drummond, two guys that could be the best players in their respective classes, on campus is the big news. Huge news actually. Amazing news. Nevertheless, neither Knight nor Drummond will commit to UConn this weekend. (Although I do think UConn does land both. Yes, even Knight.) But Bradley, a sleeper big man from Tennessee could be wowed by the highest level school recruiting him and pop for the Huskies. And is there a better high-major program than UConn when it comes to finding untapped talent and developing big men? Food for thought.

Big Ten visitor of the weekend: Northwestern can’t land the big ones, right? That’s the belief in recruiting circles. That could be changing. Bill Carmody and his staff came to Atlanta and plucked a good one away in Jershon Cobb. This week the staff is hosting Florida guard Will Sheehey for an official visit. The 6-5 guard wants to play at the highest level but also go somewhere that offers a great education. While Sheehey won’t be an all-conference level player he could be a three-year starter for the program alongside Cobb.

Big 12 visitor of the weekend: Kansas State is continuing to think outside the box. Frank Martin and his staff are recruiting outside of normal Big 12 recruiting circles for players. Shane Southwell, a native New Yorker, is visiting the Little Apple this weekend. Southwell won’t win you over by scoring a lot of points. That isn’t who he is. The strong bodied 6-foot-6 wing is more of a point forward that is a terrific passer and an aggressive dribble drive wing. K-State is a serious contender for the 2010 prospect.

Pac-10 visitor of the weekend: Huntington Beach (Calif.) wing Anthony Brown is making the trip north to see Stanford. That’s a big deal. The 6-6 high-ceiling prospect is a major Pac-10 target and truth be told, he has the personality of those that play at Stanford. Wouldn’t surprise us at all if he is the latest Johnny Dawkins commitment.

SEC visitor of the weekend: Like recruiting drama? Follow Adrien Payne’s recruitment. The Ohio big man is visiting Kentucky this weekend. His recruitment changes at a daily clip and while West Virginia is probably still the behind the scenes leader, keep an eye on this one. Remember, drama. This one could be fun and by fun I mean confusing and ever-changing.

Mid-major visitor of the weekend: Two places to watch this weekend – BYU and Harvard.

Kyle Collinsworth will make the short trip across the street from his Provo High to BYU for an official visit. The 6-foot-6 wing is quite familiar with the program. His brother, Chris, played for the Cougars before leaving for a two-year Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints mission.

Since Tommy Amaker took over at Harvard, the Ivy League school has raised the bar for recruiting within that league. This weekend is the biggest recruiting weekend for Amaker and his staff since he got the job. Dwight Powell, a National Hoops Report top 15 player, will be in Boston. He won’t be the only top-notch player there. Rod Odom, a top 150 level player, will also be in town.

Barnes ready for official visits

2009-09-24T17:47:00.000-07:00

Harrison Barnes is getting ready to pack his bags for a month long of official visits. The nation’s top player has scheduled a slate of official visits and ready to make the next step in his recruitment.

Barnes will visit Oklahoma (Oct. 2), UCLA (Oct. 9), Kansas (Oct. 16), Duke (Oct. 23) and Iowa State (Nov. 6).

As always, Barnes is taking a very methodical and intelligent approach to his recruitment and wants to make sure he is finding out the information he is looking for.

“To date, the Fall Contact Period is going extremely well. I credit my previous unofficial visits for equipping me in making this process manageable,” Barnes said. “Initially not knowing what to expect while orchestrating the in-home and official visit schedules I didn't want to confine myself into making a fall decision without having adequate time to process all the information.

“As a result of this portion in the recruiting process being so positive and reaffirming, I'm feeling confident what I once thought would be a regular signing period decision now will be an early signing period decision. It has been humbling to see the support the six programs have shown me over the last year.”

Just a Minute with Gary Parrish of CBS Sports

2009-09-24T10:25:00.001-07:00

When college basketball fanatics log on to the Internet, there is a good chance they go to CBSports.com to read what Gary Parrish has to say. He is one of the premiere college hoops columnists in the country and a must-read.

After seven years at the Memphis Commercial Appeal, three years with CBS and several years of freelance work for recruiting publications like Prep Stars, Parrish brings a unique perspective to the basketball landscape.

Parrish, however, can not justify or explain his taste in basketball shoes. (See above.)

Did this offseason in college basketball felt like a bad year of VH1 smut reality television? It seems like there was drama every where you looked.

“It’s been wild. With the Rick Pitino stuff then John Calipari taking a hit with the NCAA stuff and then Billy Gilespie with his DUI. Someone was joking the other day that Ken McDonald is the sanest coach (in Kentucky) right now. It’s been wild. You’d like to think the majority of what we do is writing about, you know, basketball, wins and losses and made three-pointers. But in reality, we’ve spent a lot of time away from the court. You have the Josh Selby de-commitment or a coach having an affair in a restaurant or a coach getting pulled over and having a pretty embarrassing mug shot, it seems to be one off the court issue after another this off-season. I don’t know that is just college basketball. We are dealing with it in all sports. I don’t know if it is because having a 24/7 news cycle now where nothing goes unreported or today’s culture is just changing. It seems different one way or another.”

Will all of these off the court issues hurt the game or will the beat go on and nothing changes? Will basketball just continue be all about basketball? How much will these distractions impact, if at all, schools like Kentucky, Memphis and Louisville? Arizona had a lot of distractions and it obviously affected that program tremendously. Could any of these schools go that route?

“It all matters to varying degrees. I don’t think it affects the sport of college basketball. When we didn’t get to see Amare Stoudemire, LeBron James, Dwight Howard and all of those guys in college basketball, we still watched. I don’t the game or the sport gets hurt by any of this because we’ve seen that the game always prevails but I think the individuals that are involved in all of these off the court issues it matters.

“The Pitino thing is pretty obvious. His credibility and ability to lead young men, whatever that means, has been called into question. He’s lucky to have survived this. Coaches have been fired for much less. Larry Eustachy, Mike Price, Dick Price, who was at Memphis before Calipari, they have all done in much less than what the Pitino has owned up to. If you believe Karen Sypher’s side, it is much worse. Coaches have been fired for worse. He says it won’t affect him going forward but can he really preach about discipline anymore after he lacked some, at least for one night. My impression coming out of July was tthat they thought they were going to get Fab Melo pretty quickly. I know they felt like they had that one knocked out. This was all before the news of the abortion and all of that. I wonder if Fab Melo was put off because of that. I don’t know if it did or not. There is some turmoil and some uncertainty within that program. Schools that are recruiting against Louisville will certainly point all of this out when they recruit. One of the keys to this business is not giving your opponent any fuel for ammunition. Louisville right now has a lot of ammunition against that program.

“For Kentucky, anything they do recruiting won’t affect Cal’s problem. It won’t affect Kentucky and it won’t affect the way he recruits. The only difference is the perception of what he is doing at Kentucky. I think they are playing in the National Championship game this year. It’s very possible. There will not be columns about the return of Kentucky basketball. There will be stories about how long Calipari will remain as the head coach of Kentucky basketball. That is the problem that Cal has gotten himself into whether it is his fault or not. His perception has taken a huge hit this offseason. He’s the only coach in the history of the sport to have two Final Fours at different schools removed from the history books. While the state of Kentucky will celebrate his success, the other 49 states will mock him. That’s just what Kentucky will have to deal with moving forward.”

With all of this stuff going on, there are a lot of things that have been lost in the shuffle. You look at guys like John Riek, Renardo Sidney, Lance Stephenson – in other years, everyone in the media would be asking publicly, “How in the world did these guys get into college?” Because of these major stories, how much are other stories being looked over? Do people even know who the pre-season number one team is in the country right now?

“I think so. You don’t write about Cole Aldrich. Instead, we are writing about Xavier Henry’s dad making wild public comments. You don’t write about John Wall as much because you are writing about John Calipari’s NCAA issues. You don’t write about Samardo Samuels having a breakout year as much because you are writing about an abortion. For those of us that write about college basketball 12 months out of the year, if it wasn’t for these things, we’d be writing about actual basketball. Imagine that. Given that we have a bank robber signing at Utah State or a Big East coach having an affair in a restaurant or the highest profile coach in America dealing with NCAA issues, there is plenty of to write about outside of basketball. Honestly, I’m thankful for it because I’d much rather write about issues than straight up basketball. I does seem like the game is put on the backburner. Of course, once the game starts, that will all change. But there is no question in an offseason where we could have written about Aldrich or Willie Warren or Greg Monroe, we’ve spent writing about the sketchy side. That’s unfortunate for the sport, but not for me.”

Let’s actually talk a little about hoops if we can. What are the storylines that we will be talking about in a couple of months?

“I think the story going in is Kentucky. John Calipari, one of the biggest stars in the sport, is coaching one of the biggest programs in the sport. With a roster that is, you could argue, that is the most talented of any roster in the country. John Wall could be the best player in the country. I just think he is that kind of talent. You throw him next to Patrick Patterson, DeMarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe and that seems to be better than everyone out there. It could be a fascinating story to see play out. Right or wrong, fair or not, John Calipari is the evil character in the eyes of everyone outside of the Kentucky program. You ask a poll on CBSSPorts.com about who the dirtiest college basketball coach is in the country and John Calipari will win it. That’s the public perception. Obviously, it is intriguing that the perceived dirty college basketball coach is running a program that puts 24,000 people in the seats every game. If they get off to a hot start and look up and they are the number one team in the country and Wall is just phenomenal and Patterson is an All-American, then that is the most interesting storyline.

Obviously, Kansas is in a good position, too. They are a year removed from winning a national title and they return everybody from last year’s team. They were way better than what people thought they would be last year. I don’t want to say they will be a consensus number one team but I’m not sure how you can justify voting anyone else in outside of Kentucky. That’s not easy to do, to stay at the top. You look at what happened to Florida. They are still trying to recover from losing all of those guys at the same time. Bill Self, and I think it’s a credit to his ability to rebuild a program, is probably a better coach than people give him credit for. He lost everybody and overachieved with a young team last year. To me, it’s a Kansas, Kentucky story early and if everything plays out, you could have a rematch of Self and Calipari just a year removed from when they played each other.”

Is it too early to project your Final Four predictions?

“Not really. I’ve done my pre-season rankings and I know they never line up the way you think. Someone will have an injury and someone will have chemistry problems. Typically, you just know. There was a reason why North Carolina was the pre-season number one team in the country. We have a pretty good idea of who is going to be good. I am big on talent. The team with the best players win. It’s that simple. Florida won two national titles in row. Why? Because they had the most first round picks on their team. Why did North Carolina win last year? They had the best roster. Looking in those terms, you have to pencil in Kansas and Kentucky as Final Four favorites. After that, I still like North Carolina. They lost a lot, obviously. But North Carolina is one of the few programs that can lose a lot and yet still have a lot. They add a guy like John Henson, which will help tremendously. But I think they’ll have some point guard issues. But if they can get that straight, then they are really good. If you give me Kansas and Kentucky then some combination of Michigan State, North Carolina, Texas and someone that is ranked between 10 to 20 in the preseason poll like an Ohio State or Clemson or a Washington, someone like that.”

Are there any players that you see blowing up and breaking out this year?

“I don’t know if “blowing up” is the right word but I talked to Cole Aldrich this summer and he’s bigger and stronger than he was last year. I think he’s going to be phenomenal. I think John Wall is the most exciting player in the country. If I had to start a college basketball team from scratch tomorrow, I’d start it with Cole Aldrich. You can’t go wrong having that guy up front. You know he’s going to get you rebounds and score down there and frankly he was overshadowed last year because Blake Griffin overshadowed him. Cole might not just be the best big man in the country, he may be the best player in the country. He deserves all the attention he gets.

“I’m thinking off the top of my head here but I think a guy like Devin Ebanks could be a guy that really takes off this year. He’s talented and he had a good freshman year. He wasn’t dominate but he was good. And the thing with Devin is that he has that NBA talent. It has been a trend lately that the teams that gets a guy back that they should have had back win. Where is North Carolina last year if Ty Lawson went pro the year before? Florida wins two in a row because everyone came back. Kansas should have lost Cole Aldrich to the NBA because he was a top 10 pick. They bring him back. Willie Warren fits into that. Greg Monroe fits into that. Devin Ebanks fits into that. Guys who could be in the NBA but went back to college are usually difference makers for wins, losses and success.

“You look at a guy like Gordon Hayward at Butler. I think he’s just fabulous. I don’t know how many people had a chance to see him last year. I know he got a lot of attention this summer playing with USA Basketball but I think with Butler being a top 15, top 20 team and with a schedule that will put them on television a little more, I think he’s going to really impress a lot of people. I think he’ll post big numbers and get the attention he deserves. I love his game.”

Is there a young coach out there that you can see rising up and being the “must-get” guy like Anthony Grant was last year?

“I’ll go back to Butler and Brad Stevens. Here’s a guy that took over the program and has had great success. He’s young. He looks the part. He handles himself that right way. He’s done nothing but win. He’s found some under-the-radar guys. He found Gordon Hayward, who was a pretty unheralded recruit. Now a lot of that is because he didn’t spend a lot of time playing summer basketball. But Brad has taken a winning program and just enhanced it like Mark Few has done at Gonzaga. I thought his name would pop up more last year but if they have the type of year that I think they are going to have this year, they are going to run through their league. Plus, they have a really good team. Matt Howard down low and Shelvin Mack are two tremendous players. I think Stevens will get a lot of attention after this year.

“The other guy that I can see getting a lot of attention is Ken McDonald over at Western Kentucky. He really overachieved last year and he brings nearly everyone back except Orlando Mendez-Valdez. He brought seven new guys and he’s recruiting well by Sun Belt standards. He’s stringing together NCAA tournament appearances. That’s what all this is about. If you at one of the non BCS tournaments and you go to a couple NCAA tournaments, you are saddening in line for a BCS job.

“I always go back to the Darrin Horn story. There were questions about him surviving at Western Kentucky and far away from getting a SEC job. But a kid makes a 30-footer in the NCAA tournament and they get a nice draw and Darrin is the Sweet 16. Now he’s a millionaire coach at a SEC job. That’s how this business works.”

Archived Just a Minutes:

Jody Demling, Louisville Courier-Journal
Jeff Goodman, Fox Sports
Rob Harrington, Prep Stars
Jerry Meyer, Rivals.com
Aran Smith, NBADraft.net
Dave Telep, Scout.com

NHR Mailbag: Sept. 23

2009-09-23T08:05:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a week for questions! The readers asked and the National Hoops Report answers. Let’s dive into this week’s edition of The Mailbag.

What do you think are Nova's chances with 2011 recruits Michael Gilchrist, Rakeem Christmas (pictured), Trevor Cooney and Quinn Cook or any other players?

If were to rank the order of interest for the prospects you mentioned regarding Villanova it would go like this: Rakeem Christmas, Trevor Cooney, Quinn Cook and Michael Gilchrist.

I don’t see Christmas leaving the Philly area for his one year in college. But I also wouldn’t be surprised to see his recruitment play out like Derrick Favors (drawn out but eventually staying close to home). Cooney’s recruitment will get interesting if Duke offers him a scholarship. But at the end of the day, I can see this one being a Big East battle.

Cook’s recruitment is a hard one to gauge. There are a lot of big-time programs, including Villanova, in the mix. He’s visiting schools, doing his homework and looking at the best fit. Wherever he can play right away is where he’ll go, in my opinion.

And Gilchrist. Where do we start? Kentucky, at least in public perception, seems to be the leader but the nation’s top junior and his family say he is open. I believe them. I don’t think they are in a big rush to make a decision either. So that’s why he is fourth on this list. A year from now, that could be quite the opposite. When you are tops in your class, what’s the rush to pick favorites this early?

South Carolina's 2010 recruiting class - how did that happen? Very impressive!

Very impressive indeed. How did it happen? Good recruiters that did their homework, that’s how. Damonte Harris is the catch of the class and the Gamecocks were involved with him long before meteoric rise this summer. The big man was number one on a lot of wish lists and USC had to fight off a lot of schools to get him.

The same can be said about in-state guys Bruce Ellington and R.J. Slawson. The Gamecocks were way ahead of the curve with both guys and landed the in-state pair before a lot of schools could work their recruiting magic.

Now the trick is landing Stacey Poole, Jr., who I believe is a heavy Kentucky lean. But after the success that South Carolina has had so far, maybe I should reconsider my thinking on Poole to UK. Darrin Horn and his staff are on a roll right now.

What kind of class do you think Mark Fox will put together? It seems Georgia has been in the mix for a lot of players, but never really led for any. Could there be a JUCO or two brought in the spring?

Great question. I’m not exactly sure what kind of class Fox and his staff will put together. Losing out on Jeremy Lamb and Trae Golden, two local products, was a big hit to their efforts. The new UGA staff has done a good job of establishing themselves with the top players in the class in the state. Missing out on those two really puts things up in the air right now, at least from my perspective.

They are looking at all kinds of options and junior college could very well be an option. The SEC isn’t getting any easier with the likes of John Calipari entering the league. Mix that with Bruce Pearl and Billy Donovan as well as a great recruiting class from South Carolina in 2010, the Dawgs will need immediate help. Junior college could be that route this year. A lot of schools are looking at that level for big men, too.

A lot of names from the junior college ranks will probably creep up come October after coaches go to some of the top JC showcases and jamborees.

Who do you envision as UGA’s first commit this year?

That is a tough one. Hard to really pick that one after Lamb, Golden and Ralston Turner all went elsewhere. Clearly landing a two guard is a priority for the Dawgs but the first commit, if I was to guess, could be Miller Grove (Ga.) big man Dante Williams. The 6-9 forward has been to Athens and he could make a return trip in the near future. UAB and Virginia Commonwealth are strong contenders for him right now, too.

Butler is in a good position to get Khyle Marshall. What does he do well and how do you see him fitting at forward alongside Matt Howard and Gordon Hayward?

Butler is strong, like you mentioned. So is Missouri, UNLV and UAB. Marshall is a good player but he’s underachieved from what I’ve seen on the spring and summer circuit. He’d be a match-up problem in the Horizon League because of his athleticism. He’s bouncy and aggressive. Truth be told, Marshall would be a perfect transition for Butler when Avery Jukes graduates.

How did Dwight Powell’s visit with Stanford go? Is GT still in the mix with the talented big man? What is the latest with Jelan Kendrick and Tobias Harris?

Powell’s visit to Stanford went well from all accounts and I did find it interesting that he didn’t commit to Johnny Dawkins. I thought there was a strong chance that he would pull the trigger. Paul Hewitt is in Boston today (Tuesday, September 23) to visit with Powell’s mother. Powell will visit Harvard this weekend and Georgia Tech on Oct. 8. I’d expect a decision shortly after that visit.

Kendrick’s recruitment will go deep into the spring and take a million turns before it is all said and done.

Tobias Harris – that one is the biggest mystery to me. Can 11 schools be even? Even after he trims the list to five in the very near future, I still don’t have a good feel for that one.

Is there an under-rated shooting guard in Georgia left in the 2010 class?

Yes. In fact, there are quite a few under-rated guards left in Georgia. Hoops talent in the Peach State is going through a recession. In fact, the entire country is in 2010. There just aren’t as many high-level players in the talent pool this year. That generally means teams are finding value in under-recruited players. A couple of guards come to mind – Chris Davis, a 6-2 guard from Stockbridge, and Cameron Solomon, a 6-4 wing from Lovejoy.

I watched both guys last week at the SEBA Atlanta All-Star Shootout and thought the two were the best guards in the event. Their recruitments are all over the map with schools from all three levels recruiting them. If neither player signs early, it will be interesting to see where they end up in the spring.

Cady Lulane visited VCU this past weekend. Any word on how his visit went and when he anticipates making his decision?

Lulane’s visit to VCU went well from what I’ve been told. He’s visiting Georgia this weekend officially. But a whisper that I’m hearing is that UMass is looking like the team to beat. I’d anticipate him signing in the fall and being a big recruit for the Minutemen.

Anything new on the recruitment of Florida big man Anthony Lee?

The big news from what I’m hearing out of Florida is that Virginia Commonwealth is out. The big man Eustis is headed to George Mason this weekend. Temple, Nevada, Washington and others are also in the mix with the 6-8 forward.

With Boston College now in the mix for Michael Bradley how did that affect the chances of Drake or VCU getting a verbal from him? Are the mid-majors wasting their time?

The mid-majors were there first and they can hang their hat on that. You could argue that Virginia Commonwealth is moving closer to the mid-major that really isn’t a mid-major status. The Rams are selling their CAA to the pros line to the Chattanooga sleeper over and over again. Makes sense, really. But the longer Bradley waits, the more high-majors are going to come in and he’ll have a tough decision to make. He is probably best served going to a good mid-level school, playing early and growing on the court.

First off, how do you feel about DePaul's two recent verbals for 2010, Brandon Young and Moses Morgan? Will they be able to come in and make an early impact for the Blue Demons? Secondly, with at least one scholarship currently open, and some believing it will wind up being three, should DePaul go after the best available talent or pursuing more towards need and try and get size?

I like both Young and Morgan. I thought Young, a 6-2 point guard from the D.C. area, was one of the best sleepers I saw this summer. He has a lot of talent and could be the point guard that DePaul has lacked since Jerry Wainwright took over the program. That’s encouraging.

But will Young and Morgan help DePaul get better in the Big East? I don’t think so.

At this point, the Blue Demons need guys that can help them win basketball games. The best available makes the most sense in large part because the size that is available right now is significantly lacking.

What's going on with the recruitment of Reco McCarter out of Goldsboro, N.C.? None of the sites have updated his recruitment in months.

That’s a good question. Reco McCarter is almost a mythical figure for me. I’ve never seen him play. He’s harder to find then a missing sock in the dryer. That being said, I really don’t have a good feel for what he’s thinking.

What can you tell us about 2010 Virginia big man Josh Henderson? He seems to be a late bloomer and is receiving interest from a few ACC and SEC schools.

I wish I could answer your question better. I haven’t seen him play and in speaking to a lot of coaches, they are still trying to find out more about him. Sorry, I wish I could dive into his situation better.

Have a question regarding recruiting, high school hoops, college basketball, rankings, coaches or anything that relates hoops, ask away. National Hoops Report editor Justin Young will answer your submissions in next week's edition of The NHR Mailbag. To submit your question, email nationalhoopsreport@gmail.com, via Twitter, or in the comments section below.

12 @ 12: Top dozen in N.J.

2009-09-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

CLASS OF 2009 NEW JERSEY HOT DOZEN

1. Dominic Cheek, SG, St. Anthony (N.J.) VILLANOVA
2. Dexter Strickland, SG, St. Patrick (N.J.) NORTH CAROLINA
3. Lamar Patterson, SF, St. Benedict’s PITTSBURGH
4. Justin Crosgile, PG, DePaul Catholic ST. JOSEPH’S
5. Tamir Jackson, SG, St. Benedict’s RICE
6. Lance Brown, SG, Paterson Catholic FORDHAM
7. Austin Johnson, PF, Blair Academy RUTGERS
8. David Bruce, C, Linden SAINT JOSEPH’S
9. Paris Bennett, SF, St. Patrick’s GEORGE MASON
10. Steve Spinella, SG, Apex Academy SOUTH CAROLINA
11. Dylan Talley, SF, Eastside BINGHAMTON
12. Jamee Jackson, PF, St. Anthony QUINNIPIAC

NEW JERSEY HOT DOZEN HIGH SCHOOL PLAYERS

1. Michael Gilchrist, SF, St. Patrick, 2011
2. Kyrie Irving, PG, St. Patrick, 2010
3. Dion Waiters, PG/SG, Life Center, 2010 SYRACUSE
4. Myck Kabongo, PG, St. Benedict 2011 TEXAS
5. Isaiah Epps, PG, Plainfield (N.J.) 2010 PITTSBURGH
6. Kyle Anderson, SF, Paterson Catholic 2012
7. Darius Quarles, SF, Life Center 2010 SAINT JOSEPH’S
8. Devon Collier, PF, St. Anthony 2010
9. Myles Davis, PG, St. Peter’s Prep 2011
10. Ashton Pankey, PF, St. Anthony 2010
11. Julian Washburn, PF/SF, St. Patrick 2010
12. Fuquan Edwin, PF/SF, Paterson Catholic 2010 SETON HALL

(Editor's note: We listed Markus Kennedy, a 2010 Villanova commitment, as the No. 10 player of the current N.J. high school players. However, he is now at Winchendon in Maine and therefore no longer eligible for this list. We moved Pankey and Washburn to 10 and 11, respectively.)

Hot Dozen archive
California
Georgia
Texas

Several stand out at Elite 75 camp

2009-09-21T12:47:00.000-07:00

GASTONIA, N.C. – Nearly 180 players packed into Ashbrook High School over the weekend for the Elite 75 showcase and a number of young players and under the radar guys took advantage of the stage.

ELITE 75 STARS

Hendrix Emu, Evangel Christian (Va.) – Meet one of the top surprises and top players from the camp. The 6-foot-4 guard shined with his athleticism, his active play, attention to defense and ability to always be involved in a play. He was great in transition and knew to always be in motion to the basket. The class of 2011 prospect played the part of a high-major guard quite well.

Joemar Black, Mt. Zion (N.C.) (pictured above) – Everyone was asking, “Who is that kid?” The 6-foot-2 guard was always making plays and was either giving Emu a pass to score or receiving one from Emu in return. Emu, a Flint, Michigan native, showed that he could score from deep with a jumper or in the lane with a dunk or with a floater on the baseline. His offensive game was one of the best of the day.

Josh Clyburn, Victory Christian (N.C.) – The class of 2010 big man was one of the top post players on Sunday. He ran the floor quite well, scored in transition with a number of athletic plays. The 6-foot-8 forward showed he can handle the ball and knock down face-up jumpers. Good day of work from Clyburn.

Tyrek Coger, Upper Room Christian (N.C.) – Few defenders wanted to get in the way of the towering 6-foot-7 center. He’s a big kid for a 2013 prospect and physically had his way with the younger competition. Once he got his big hands on the ball, he turned and usually scored with a simple drop step score.

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

One of the best things about the Elite 75 camp is the chance to see a lot of young players. There were more young guys that stood out this year than older guys

Tyler Brunson Mt. Zion (N.C.) – Last year at the Elite 75 camp, a kid named C.J. Barksdale emerged on the national scene. This year’s youngster to watch is Brunson. The long-armed 6-foot-6 combo forward is an eye-catcher because of his length, perimeter skills and ability to run the floor. The natural gifts are there. Now the trick for the 2012 prospect is matching it with a good mental approach.

A.J. Davis, Greater Atlanta Christian (Ga.) – The class of 2013 prospect is one of the top young players in the Atlanta area and he showed why on Sunday. The 6-foot-6 son of former NBA player Antonio Davis showed off an array of skills. He can score with the perimeter shot but also made an impact with his length around the cup. Davis will be fun to watch develop.

Shaq Patterson, Martinsville (N.C.) – At 6-3 and high school senior strong, this class of 2012 guard was impressive because he knew how to overpower defenders on his way to the basket. Moreover, Patterson is a great rebounder on the wing.

Troy Williams, Pheobus (Va.) – Get ready to hear his name a lot over the next four years. The 6-foot-5 wing from the class of 2013 has already drawn good reviews from the always talented Hampton Roads area. He’s a versatile guy that has great length, good ball skills and plenty of room to grow into his body and into a major player.

Montavis Hall, Victory Christian (N.C.) – Charlotte is quickly becoming a recruiting hot bed for schools in the ACC, SEC and even the Big East. The Queen City is also a place where a lot of programs are looking for future stars. Hall, a 6-foot-5 wing, will probably get a peek or two this high school year by the big boys. He’s got the traits that the good ones have.

NOTES FROM THE NOTEPAD

After his MVP performance last weekend in South Carolina, Ian Miller was back at it again at the Elite 75 camp. He seemed to only be playing at half speed and was one of the top guards in the event…Big man Jervaughn Pressley had his right-handed jump hook falling at a consistent clip on Sunday…South Carolina junior guard Ron Trapp (Lancaster HS) was an intriguing prospect. He was a slasher supreme all Sunday long and got the rim when he wanted…Virginia Tech bound forward Jarrell Eddie and class of 2011 forward C.J. Barksdale both looked heavier in their upper-bodies…Liked the court savvy of 2013 point guard Anthony Bagtas from Westlake (Ga.)…Class of 2013 wing Sindarius Thornwell was one of the top prospects from the Palmetto State in the camp…Great speed to the basket from Jacoby Davis, a 2011 point guard from West Charlotte High…Didn’t get to see Daquan Cook, a 2012 point guard from D.C. enough to see why everyone was signing his praises from Saturday. Wish there was more time to do so.

RECRUITING REVIEW

Clyburn, one of the top sleepers in the event, says he doesn’t have a Division I offer at the moment. However, Mercer, Gardner-Webb and High Point have all said they want to come by and see him in an open gym. A host of other programs are keeping in touch, too. He could be a high school season high-riser.

Black, the guard from Flint, Michigan, said he has heard from Penn State, Cincinnati, San Diego and Oakland to date. Now in the 2011 class, Black said he hopes to have more schools enter the mix this year.

Emu said he has heard from Oklahoma State, Mississippi State, South Carolina, Western Kentucky, UNC Wilmington and Alabama to date.

Delron Summey, a class of 2011 prospect from Mt. Zion via Jacksonville, Fla., said he has offer from Farifield and interest from Clemson, Jacksonville, North Florida, Oregon, Virginia Commonwealth and Auburn.

12 @ 12: Weekend randomness

2009-09-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

1. Are the Sooners moving into elite status as far as recruiting goes? For the fourth straight year, Jeff Capel has reeled in a five-star prospect to Norman. On Sunday, Texas wing Cameron Clark committed to the Sooners.

Clark joins Keith Gallon, Willie Warren and Blake Griffin as the fourth top 25 prospect to join the program. Yet, for some reason, OU isn’t being mentioned in the same breath as North Carolina, Kansas and Duke as major recruiting powerhouses at the moment.

2. Kyrie Irving (pictured above) drops Indiana out of contention, huh? That’s surprising news. Probably the second most surprising recruiting news of the year behind Fab Melo’s decision to go to Syracuse and not Louisville. The National Hoops Report has always believed the New Jersey guard was a heavy Duke lean and borderline lock. Still do. Kentucky, Texas A&M and Georgia Tech will also host the elite level point guard for an official visit.

3. There were a number of commitments that happened over the weekend and there were some that were probably sexier in recruiting circles than JerShon Cobb to Northwestern but this one is important. The 6-4 guard from Atlanta tripped to Evanston and loved his time in the Chicago area. Cobb is a smart guy that can play multiple positions and should fit in perfectly with the way Bill Carmody. Don’t be surprised to see Cobb start three of his four years for the Big Ten school.

4. Terrible news about Tony Wroten, Jr. The class of 2011 superstar tore his ACL in a football game over the weekend and will likely miss his junior season of basketball. His father played in the NFL and Wroten, Jr. could be the best athlete in the country. Those in Seattle say he can pick his college for hoops, football or baseball. Bummer to hear of the injury.

5. Really liked J.P. Olukemi in high school when he was at Stoneridge Prep. He had to go the junior college route and now he’s headed to Oklahoma State. The Cowboys landed a good one and a guy that can help the team right away when he puts on the bright orange for Travis Ford. There are always a few JC guys that can be a difference maker. Olukemi should be one of those guys.

6. Gary Parrish (who will be featured in a National Hoops Report Q&A soon, I promise!) loves the young ones. Ugh hum, the freshmen. His words, not mine. He believes a freshman will have an impact on this year's National Championship team. Who will it be?

7. Andy Katz took a good look at the role of the sports agent in today's college game. Next time you go to a live recruiting event in July, there will probably be 10 guys at the event that you have no idea that they are movers and shakers. Can you spot ‘em?

8. Mike DeCourcy breaks down his top 10 point guards
in college basketball.

9. As the high school season draws closer, it is time to start thinking about the best high school tournaments around the country. Flyin' to the Hoop release it’s schedule last week and the field looks amazing for the Jan. 16-18 event in Dayton, Ohio. Brandon Knight, Tristan Thompson, Adreian Payne, Jelan Kendrick, Corey Joseph, James Bell, Luke Cothron, Jamail Jones, Jordan Sibert and a host of other top 2010 players highlight the field. This looks like the best field the event has ever put together.

10. 24 hours of basketball? That’s like a 24-hour cooking channel or an all music channel. Ridiculous. That’s really dumb.

11. God save us.

12. Crazy weekend for NFL and rather ho-hum weekend for NCAA football. Here are my 12 thoughts on the sport that uses an oblong ball:

A. I bought a ticket on the Jacory Harris band wagon around 8:30 last Thursday night.
B. And I retract my statement about Miami being not being back. They are. Very much so. Harris is one of the several reasons why. Why aren’t the Canes being considered as a top five team right now? Big game awaits them against Virginia Tech this Saturday.
C. Speaking of Miami, one of the most famous U alums, Ray Lewis, had one of the best defensive plays I’ve ever seen when he sprinted through the line on 4th and 2 to stuff Darren Sproles. Lewis’s tackle inside the red zone was the game-winning play. Amazing.
D. Final note on Miami – Jimmy Graham, former UM hooper, caught a touchdown against Georgia Tech. At 6-8 and with a motor that doesn’t quit, don’t be surprised to see him being mentioned as a NFL prospect. Why not? Antonio Gates, Tony Gonzalez and Martellus Bennett are all former big-time hoopers that earn paychecks on Sundays.
E. Dallas built a new stadium. Not sure if anyone caught that on Sunday night.
F. Eli Manning has his critics. None of them were talking on Sunday night after that performance.
G. So Washington beats USC by a field goal at home and that warrants a top 25 position? College football makes zero sense to me.
H. Tennessee Titans running back Chris Johnson can only score touchdowns that are longer than 20 yards.
I. The 49ers remind me a little of the 2002 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Reminder: The Bucs won the Super Bowl that year.
J. If Michael Crabtree joins the 49ers and is used in the offense as a go-to receiver right now, the 49ers will remind me of any team with Terrell Owens.
K. Who is the Heisman leader right now? Colt McCoy is my pick in mid-September because he plays for the best team in the country.
L. Who is the early NFL MVP leader right now? Drew Brees is my pick because he’s the most dangerous player in the league after two weeks.

SEBA camp unveils prospects

2009-09-20T20:32:00.000-07:00

It was a busy weekend for the National Hoops Report. We spent Saturday at the Southeast Basketball Academy camp and Chris Davis (pictured above) was one of the standouts of the day. The 6-foot-1 guard from Stockbridge (Ga.) and others are included in my breakdown of the camp on D1Spects.com.

On Sunday, we trekked to the Elite 75 Showcase in Gastonia, N.C. The coverage from that event will be available here on the National Hoops Report website on Monday.

NHR on the road

2009-09-19T05:09:00.000-07:00

The National Hoops Report is on the road again this weekend for a pair of events. Our first stop is at the Southeast Basketball Academy Atlanta All-Star Shootout at Oglethorpe University on Saturday. Billy LoPresti and his staff are in their seventh year of this great fall event. And every year, a number of sleepers emerge from the loaded Peach State. For full coverage of this event, be sure to check out D1Spects.com on Monday.

On Sunday, the National Hoops Report will be at the Elite 75 Showcase in Gastonia, N.C. This event is one of the best around thanks to the hard work and organization of Ced Canty and his staff. Last weekend in South Carolina, Ian Miller (pictured above) shined at the N.C. vs. S.C. Battle of the Classes. The future Florida State guard jump started his track to the ACC at this event two years ago. We will have full coverage of the camp here on the blog on Monday.

Who will emerge this weekend? We are ready to find out.

Fastbreak Friday: Sept. 18

2009-09-18T08:20:00.001-07:00

Scout.com takes a look at the weekend's visitor's in their On Campus report. And truth be told, it is a rather slow week for visitors. But some elite level schools have some elite level players in town.

ACC visitor of the weekend: Super junior Austin Rivers says he is committed to Florida. In fact, he is adamant. But the son of Boston Celtics head coach Doc Rivers is visiting Duke this weekend unofficially. Form your own opinion on whether or not he is firmly committed to the Gators. The buzz regarding his thoughts about looking at other schools started in the summer and Duke was the first, and sometimes only, school to be mentioned. Surprisingly, this chain of events isn’t a big topic of discussion in the hoops arena. Nevertheless, Rivers will be in Durham this weekend to simply “take a look.”

Big East visitor of the weekend: None of note this week. Bummer.

Big Ten visitor of the weekend: None of note this week. Bummer, part two.

Big 12 visitor of the weekend: It is a HUGE weekend in Norman, Oklahoma as a number of top players are making their way to Sooner country. Texans Cameron Clark, a big time 2010 wing, and LeBryan Nash, a big time 2011 wing, lead the charge. The two are probably the most likely to commit to OU. Also joining the fun are a pair of coach’s sons – Ray McCallum and Trey Zeigler. The Michiganders played together with Team Detroit and McCallum even lived in Norman when his dad, Ray, Sr., was an assistant coach for Kelvin Sampson.

Pac-10 visitor of the weekend: Reprint: The National Hoops Report is a huge fan of Dwight Powell. The Canadian is a very skilled post player that can burn you on the blocks with his back to the basket game. He can face up at the elbows and knock down the jumper. He’s good on the glass. He’s clearly great in the classroom. And he’s the number one target for Johnny Dawkins and the Stanford coaches. Powell is probably leaning to the Pac-10 program at the moment with Georgia Tech close behind. But don’t be surprised if he commits after a visit. (We wrote this last week but Powell didn’t visit on the 11th. He will this weekend.)

Also of note: Arizona is hosting Anthony Brown and Rod Odom for official visits. Brown has long considered the Wildcats even throughout the coaching roller coaster. He is one of the most versatile players in the West.

SEC visitor of the weekend: Brandon Knight is visiting Kentucky. That is a big deal. The muscular guard is the first elite level player from the 2010 class to visit UK in the new John Calipari era. The Wildcats clearly have him high on the must-get list and the staff has been working hard to get the top guard in the country in town. Keep an eye on this trip.

While Knight is the guy that the fans all want to see in Lexington, it is Stacey Poole, an aggressive guard and son of a former Florida Gator, could be the high school player to commit this weekend. Poole told Rivals.com that he is leaning UK’s way. Wouldn’t be a shocker if he pops before the sun rises on Monday.

Other visitors that are visiting potential favorites: Trevor Releford (Alabama), Casey Prather (Florida) and Demontre Harris (South Carolina).

Mid-major visitor of the weekend: A lot of choices here but the one that stands out the most is Tyreek Duren visiting LaSalle. Team Final was one of the best AAU teams on the circuit this year because of Duren’s play at the point. The 5-11 Philly native is the latest future A-10 star in the backcourt. He could be a star in his hometown, too.