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?

Today’s not-so-savory news comes to us courtesy of the case of The Drowsy Chaperone:

A year ago, the Toledo Rockets were thrust into the most unfortunate of spotlights, when former football player Scooter McDougle was implicated in a point-shaving scandal.

But, as everyone knows thanks to the Tarkanian years at UNLV, point-shaving is the preferred method of cheating on the hardwood, not the gridiron. Which made it practically no surprise at all when the U.S. Attorney’s continued investigation of point-shaving at U of T led them to former Rockets guard Sammy Villegas, who was formally charged in Detroit yesterday.

But the prosecutor’s bill of information seems to, well, get its information wrong. The feds claim that Villegas’ intentionally missed two free throws to fix a game against Central Michigan on February 4, 2006. But when Villegas missed those free throws, Toledo had already covered the published spread. So, unless there is something going on here that we don’t understand - and, since we don’t gamble on sports, we admit that the universe of shit we don’t know here is HUGE - we’re not quite sure how that game represents any kind of smoking gun against Villegas.

The bigger indictment against him (hardy har har legal wordz) might be the rapid decline in his play cited by The (Toledo) Blade - Villegas was the MAC Freshman of the Year in 2003, but his play deteriorated so quickly that his coach publicly wondered what happened (registration required for link).

We’ll let the U.S. Attorney do his own investigation, but … and we can’t be the only ones wondering this … doesn’t the federal prosecutor for Detroit, named only last year as the most vulnerable point of illegal entry into the U.S., have bigger fish to fry than a two-bit guard in a Mid-American Conference RICO scheme?

(HT: It’s MAC news, so you knew it had to be Chuck.)

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.

Brandon Jennings, the all-world recruit of Arizona slated to serve as a one-year replacement for one-year star Jerryd Bayless, made headlines last week by stating that he might play in Europe next year if he can’t qualify academically for NCAA play. Now, to the delight of the pro-labor opponents of the “one-and-done” rule, Jennings says that he might go to Europe regardless of whether he qualifies, since he only planned on spending a year in school anyway.

But as thousands of liberal arts majors learn the hard way each year, running away to Europe doesn’t solve all your problems stateside. As DeCourcy points out, why would a European club that won’t even play its own (read: controlled under multi-year development contracts) young players give big cash and PT to a one-and-done American kid?

If he chooses the European route, Jennings is essentially choosing to stand pat on his 2009 draft position, hoping that no one playing stateside - getting significant minutes and against better competition - passes him in the process. Seeing as how DraftExpress has him as next year’s #5 pick right now - maybe that’s not his worst choice.

But come on, Brandon - go to Tuscon for a year. If not for yourself, do it for Lute, who we swear is one more piece of bad news away from officially going batshit crazy (and, frankly, that piece of bad news could be a bad prune in his tapioca). And if you can’t even do it for Lute, for God’s sakes, do it for us. We were banking on getting at least a couple of jokes out of your stylin’ flattop.

Comic gold, Brandon. Don’t leave us hanging.

“Michigan” plays “Indiana” in Mangalore, India as part of the NCAA’s pilot outsourcing program.

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - In an announcement that shocked the world of college athletics and sent pundits scrambling for their keyboards, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) revealed today that it is considering outsourcing its sports programs to other countries, and has already started pilot programs in college basketball to test the move.

“Outsourcing has been on our agenda for over four years,” said Brand, noting that the NCAA undertook extensive studies of the topic before starting the pilot programs this year. “In the beginning, we were really just thinking about merchandise and information management, but the more we explored the issue, the more we thought: why not the sports themselves?”

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WINNAR.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Dear Cancer: Die. Love, Coaches

We normally struggle to make light of potentially fatal diseases - even we have depths to which we won’t stoop, much to the surprise of our wife - but we do call the lede “the story everyone is talking about,” and the news late Friday that UConn coach Jim Calhoun once again had cancer qualifies for such title.

Calhoun had already beat cancer twice - prostate cancer in 2003 and skin cancer in 2007 - by catching it early (good for cancer and chicken pox; bad for gonorrhea). This time, he alerted his doctor to a growth on his neck that was determined to be squamous cell cancer. Growth removed, radiation administered, and four weeks later, scans show his lymph nodes and skin to be cancer-free.

Upon hearing the news, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski expressed relief - not only that his colleague was safe and would return to the sidelines, but also because Cancer’s third consecutive loss to Calhoun in a championship round gave it a slightly worse record than Coach K’s own 0-2 against Calhoun in games that count. (Not that we’re bitter.)

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