Where have we been?  Minding our own business, and you?  We’ll try to make sure it doesn’t become a habit.

THE STORIES MOST ARE TALKING ABOUT

Coach K won a medal (with players who openly accept money for play, how gauche), Tom Crean got money (and cried himself to sleep), San Antonio got money (from the Final Four) and STOP THE PRESSES THE NCAA IS ON THE CASE!  Fire up the sirens and ready a perp walk!  Someone put a body on Jerry Tarkanian!   The NCAA is considering cracking down on “package deals.” This has nothing to do with calendars of your school’s water polo team, nor with East German Olympians*, it’s about the not-the-end-of-the-world-but-more-than-a-little-icky practice of hiring a kid’s coach as an inducement to get him to sign with your school (something we’ve touched on nyeah).  Now that the NCAA is on the case, I’m sure ACC and Big 12 schools will continue this practice without feeling any heat, and eventually an HBCU or a school in the Northeast with “St.” in its name will be put on probation when a coach puts his son on the team.  We can also be sure that Bob Ley is going to be deeply disappointed in someone.

What’s so bad about welding?  URI got to take Lamar Odom, fer chrissake!

THE STORIES I CARE ABOUT

Lars got dooced (impact: meh, for everyone but fans who only like sweaty white guys, and the bartenders at The Virginian, for whom this is an unmitigated disaster).  Tunji’s back (impact: yay, now that Lars is gone).  Will’s going to tranfer (impact: dammit, I liked that guy).  Jeff Jones gets money (the former coach, not the guard; that would be a much bigger story).  Dave Leitao plays golf, which is disppointing.  Golf’s nice and all, but let’s not confuse it with something men do.

*For my next post: what’s the deal with airline food? and how WASP-y is Vice President Bush?

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.

In the meantime, we offer this insight to how the weekend went:

Not to go all LiveJournal on you fine people, but it’s a hectic week for us here at 35S headquarters, as we adjust our life clock from “lazy country-dwellin’ bachelor law student” to “slavishly studious urban married bar examinee”. And we mean adjusting our life clock quite literally – we were used to having no responsibilities before 1pm at the earliest, and now we actually need to … ya know … work. With wifey looking over our shoulder to boot, making sure we don’t slack off, which leads to epic fail, which leads to her to seeking annulment before the ink dries on the certificate.

This is all a very long way of saying that we need a day to adjust to getting up at 6am to write the morning roundup. So, no roundup today. Sorry.

Today, we buckle down to finish the final paper of our academic careers. Unless we don’t finish it by 5pm, in which case … well, there will be a lot more cursing on this site on Thursday.

In lieu of actual content, we provide you with a compilation of every Sunday night from our childhood. All that’s missing is the warm glow of the television, a hot cup of tea, and a burning desire to kick my sister’s ass at the perfect moment to make my way to stardom.

See you on Thursday.

Smile while you can, Johnny.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
If You Love Something, Set It Free

When word first broke that Johnny Dawkins would be the new head coach at Stanford, we wondered when the weather changed in Durham. Dawkins has long been considered Coack K’s consigliare and logical successor when he retires. Had something changed? Had Chris Collins or Steve Wojchichowski passed him in the eyes of their shared mentor? Was Johnny taking a graceful exit while the gettin’ was good? Not according to Stanford’s AD Bob Bowlsby:

Bowlsby said one of the first people he spoke to about the open job at Stanford was Krzyzewski and that he asked Krzyzewski about both Dawkins, who was Krzyzewski’s right-hand man for 11 seasons, and Duke assistant Steve Wojciechowski.

“At that time, Coach Krzyzewski said that Johnny was a likely successor to him [at Duke],” Bowlsby said. (HT: Fanhouse)

That’s right – the Pac-10, where ACC assistants are sent to gain head coaching experience before they take real jobs back home in the Cackolack!

Some people on the Stanford beat don’t think this is such a great match for either party, and we understand and even second their concerns. (Color us nervous about another Duke assistant flopping as a head coach, especially the presumptive heir to the throne.) But Johnny D is a talented Xs and Os guy who is used to working under academic restrictions, so Stanford could have done a lot worse.

SLIPPING OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
Screw You Guys, I’m Going Home

Homesickness? Frustration with a coach? Inability to find decent eats or trim in the D.C. Metro Area? Whatever the reason, two perplexing transfers over the last week – Vernon Macklin leaving Georgetown, and Shane Walker leaving Maryland. While neither player put up monster stats this past season, both were poised to become major contributors in their respective front courts in 2008-2009 – if they had the stones to deal with a little competition from incoming freshmen. To be fair, though, Walker is British, so we can forgive him for being frustrated and confused by a meritocracy – or, for that matter, for wanting to get the hell out of College Park.

TWIDDLING THUMBS
Because It’s a Long Offseason

Even though the national championship game was only three weeks ago, we already feel the cold, dead hand of summer touching us in all the wrong places. Midnight Madness won’t start for another five months, and until college football kicks off in August, all we have to keep us warm are the NHL and NBA playoffs and, after June, nothing but baseball. (Unlike Orson, we actually enjoy baseball, but in the same way we enjoy hummus – fine as a small bite before a real meal, annoyingly bland as the only offering on the table. Needless to say, we don’t enjoy the summer months.)

We’ll do our best to keep busy around these parts – humor pieces, draft coverage, maybe a little bit of recruiting news if we are feeling particularly evil, and plenty of hate mongering. Got a tip, question, or snide remark? Email us here. (We’ll add a link to the sidebar soon.) Right now, though, we’re preparing for the last set of final exams we’ll hopefully ever take – which, of course, means we’re trying to figure out what to do with all of our newfound free time. Which leads to debates like this:

Pardon our delays yesterday afternoon and this morning – let’s just say that travel is abso-fucking-lutely miserable, and leave it at that. Kansas and UCLA previews up momentarily.

The latest exhibit – the Big Sky conference suspended three officials late Monday for “misapplication of rules” in a game between Montana and Idaho State on Sunday. Their particular bone-headed move – not calling a technical foul on the Grizzlies when they attempted to call a timeout they didn’t have in a tie game. The correct call would have given Idaho State a few shots to take a lead with 1.2 seconds left. The actual call let Montana win in overtime.

Officiating a sport at a top level – bear with me that Big Sky is “top level” basketball – is hard work, and I do not come to bury these men. I mean, it’s not as if there is some really famous example of how that rule is supposed to be applied or anything …

… but seriously, folks. This isn’t a matter of getting a split-second call wrong, or abuse of discretion. They FORGOT something – either the rule itself, or that they could check the replay. So, suspend away, Mr. Big Sky Commissioner … and Mr. Donaghy, next round is on the house.