Hello World.

After a well-deserved professionally mandated two week break, we’re back at the blogging desk [a state away from our mom's non-existent basement] and ready to get back into the swing of it.

A quick preview of what this site will start to look like until mid-October, when Midnight Madness across the country indicates the end of the off-season and the start of the pre-season …

The Morning Roundup will make its glorious return on Monday, featuring short quips about stories of … well, let’s face it, the stories that interest you, but that you expect me to find on your behalf. (And that’s why we’re here, gentle reader.) The Roundup will run each Monday and Wednesday until the season tips off.

The Blog Day Afternoon will take the place of the Roundup on Friday afternoons, with links to the best posts in the Basketball Province of Equatorial Blogfrica.

In between - the usual. Coverage. Insight. Slash fiction.

Later this month, we’ll begin to roll out our season preview of each conference. If you’re interested in helping us out - ESPECIALLY if you are a writer / blogger / fan from a single-bid conference, please get in touch; we want as much first-person opinion as possible.

To tip us up to a great story, volunteer to pitch in with a conference preview, or if you want to pitch yourself as a general writer for the site - the address remains the same: thirtyfiveseconds[at]yahoo[dot]com.

Finally, a big thanks to everyone reading - sorry that we’ve been out of touch. We promise really really really hope that the actual practice of the law won’t get in the way of writing here the way that studying it has the last two months.

(EDITOR’S NOTE - As you may have surmised by the silence of this site for the last two weeks, we’re in the final throes of bar exam hell. We’ll be back and better than ever - or, at the least, 100% less burdened - on Thursday, but in the meantime we wanted to introduce you to the newest writer for these here interwebs, now_a_hoo. His obligatory “who I am and what I care about” piece, on his equal hatred for Duke and UNC, appears below.)

All-

I’m now_a_hoo, and I’ll be giving your friendly editor a few innings of relief from time to time while he starts his career and tries to have, y’know, a life.

How did I come into this privilege? The Italians (maybe) call it: il nepotismo. He and I used to be roommates. (Ed: Close enough. Actually, we still owe him for a few orders of chicken from Wayside, and he accepted a gig here as accord and satisfaction.)

A few things to get out of the way: James Madison undergrad, UVa for law school. My folks went to Michigan and I grew up in Virginia, so I came up with Michigan and Virginia basketball (during the Fab Five Never Happened and Jeff Jones eras, respectively).

Likes: UVa, Michigan, JMU, small schools, HBCUs, and brunch.
Loathes: tOSU, VPISU, MSU, Bob Knight, Ron Curry, Digger Phelps, snakes, the word “poon”, and ranch dressing.

So in the words of Steve Harvey, now that we got that shit out of the way, I have a confession to make: I’m an ACC basketball fan, but I’m neutral on Duke versus Carolina.

Before you get your Columbia- or Royal- Blue draws in a bunch, let me say this: everything you say about [Duke or Carolina, whichever you hate] is absolutely right.

But here’s the problem: It’s also 100% wrong.

It’ll be OK, Tyler.

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Not dead yet!

With only two weeks to go until the bar exam, it doesn’t take much to provide a ray of light into our lives. (”Leftovers of a bad meal for dinner??!! Hooray!! At least I don’t need to determine if the rubber chicken is a holder in due course of a negotiable instrument!!!”)

That said, we feel fairly certain that the news that maybe, just maybe, Rick Pitino will let Derrick Caracter come back to the Louisville team would have made us WOOT out loud on the brightest of days:

“He came to me one more time and asked for any option available to get back on the team. I have given him the same option I gave Scott Padgett when he played for me at Kentucky. [...] If Derrick is willing to grow up in the game of life and we can help him realize his potential, then we are there to help him. But that’s a big if.”

A big if indeed. Caracter will need to sit out next season to show he can grow “as a student, as a person, and as a basketball player”, and (notably) will NOT be on scholarship, so he’ll have to pay his own way to school. And get a job. And not get Fulmer-like fat again. So his odds of success are, shall we say, less than great.

In other words, a win-win-win for humble bloggers - either he succeeds and he gets a chance to fulfill his unrealized potential as a hoopster (and no one has ever questioned he has the talent to be great), or he fails epically and we can ridicule him on his way down the chute. Like we’ve been doing for the last few months.

Either way, we gleefully add “caracter issues” as a new category to the blog. Because if you think we’re not going to do a few more chapters of this now that there is an actual chance that Caracter will stay … well, you don’t know us very well.

In the meantime - we return to our office cave to execute some wills and devise some property. Word.

(HT: Eamonn, doing fine fine work as always.)

Whoa. Whoa. WHOA. We wouldn’t say that we are disappointed at learning that CBS dismissed Billy Packer, but we are surprised - only because we expected Packer to let go of his microphone CBS-logo’d spew stick when it was pried from his cold, dead hands.

Sure, it’s easy to think that Packer wrote his own pink slip earlier this year when he announced that the KU-UNC national semifinal game was “over”, encouraging viewers to change the channel with seven minutes to go until halftime.

But we know that the heads at CBS made this decision with the heaviest of hearts. After all, how could they get rid of a guy who displayed so much passion for his job?

Or someone who worked so hard to stay on top of the evolving nature of the sport and its coverage?

Or the sense of professionalism and objectivity he brought to every broadcast?

But there is one thing we can all agree on - Packer, uniquely, understood his place in the history of the game:

So, while Packer “pursues other opportunities” in basketball - like finding that damn bowl of tapioca he set down a few minutes ago - we say, goodnight, sweet prince. The Democratic Blogfrican Republic of College Basketball won’t be the same without you.

Brandon Jennings made the seemingly-inevitable announcement yesterday that, regardless of how his third round of testing turned out, he would be heading to Europe next year rather than honoring his commitment to play for Arizona. Jeff Goodman speculates that recent delays by Jennings may have been a little disingenuous, and Lute Olson seemed more than glad to throw yet another person under the bus in the process. (But, in this case, who could blame him?)

Regardless, Jennings’ decision, combined with Jerryd Bayless leaving for the NBA, leaves a point guard sized hole in the Wildcat lineup. We’d hope that the Wildcats would bounce back from this loss, but frankly, over the last couple of years, the Arizona squads have shown that they have a lot of quit in them. So, we wonder if the ‘Cats should save everyone the trouble and follow Jennings across the pond.

Lute Olson? Can chase more crazy tail in his homeland of Norway.

Listen, honey - it’s lutefisk or Lute’s fist, one or the other.

Chase Budinger? Pro ball in the Netherlands, natch.

Somebody get that kid some Visine.

We’re not sure what is in the water in Lexington, but something about ties to Kentucky makes a coach yearn for the company of barely adolescent boys. After current UK coach Billy Gillespie’s child-chasin’ forced the National Association of Basketball Coaches to “strongly” encourage college coaches to stop seeking and accepting commitments from players before they finished their sophomore year, current Florida coach (and former UK assistant) Billy Donovan accepted the commitment of a player who just finished his freshman year.

In fairness to Donovan, the newly-tagged Gator in question is hardly the type of spring (swamp) chicken the recruiting covenant was meant to protect - he is Austin Rivers, the youngest son of one Glenn Anton “Doc” Rivers of Boston, Mass., formerly of JustwontheNBAtitle-ville. Still, Donovan essentially pooped in the hat of the NABC by hitting the candy store recruiting trail only two weeks after the NABC’s decision came down.

But because he’s Billy Donovan and has won two national titles, and you are not, no criticism for the blatent flimflamming has come his way. Needless to say, the Kentucky faithful are less than pleased at the double standard, after taking more than their fair share of crap for Billy Clyde’s junior high skeeziness.

It’s really too bad that the NABC has no teeth whatsoever. We would have paid good money to see JTIII enforcing the new policy in a very NSFW fashion upon Messr. Donovan.

I’m thrilled, just thrilled, to announce that I’ve signed a contract extension to stay at UCLA through the 2014-15 season. It’s a real honor to be able to stay on here in Westwood, even after three straight Final Fours, given the way things started out here. And yes, before you can ask … they did right by me with the figures. I’ll be financially secure while remaining a Bruin, and that’s very comforting for my family and me.

But, frankly, $2 million a year was just frosting on the cake. Rich, delicious frosting to be sure, but that wasn’t why I signed the extension. I could get money coaching on the street. (And I have!) But what really made this deal special for me, as a native Californian, was that UCLA showed that they truly want me to feel like a part of the community here in Los Angeles.

And offering me my own gang - well, that was just a special, make-you-feel-at-home offer I couldn’t refuse.

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