Note: I’m off to Greece this week, trying to catch up with Josh Childress and maybe Travon Bryant.  Look for Patrick’s triumphant return soonish.

So, the season is really underway.  What the hell do we know?

1.  Heehee.

2. My-T-Sharp: In case the comment threads at Uni Watch have always been a bit much for you, Michigan and UCLA are both all-adidas schools.  While Herr Dassler’s basketball shoes have been fail lately (patent leather shell-toes?  really?)  I think we can agree that if these two programs were OMG SWOOSH schools, we wouldn’t have been treated to this:

Seriously, making it work.

3. Ew: The SEC, she’s not so good.

3b. Not Ew: Tennessee is not on basic cable enough for my liking.  It’s hard to imagine how they could be.  I may have developed a soft spot for these guys.  Stay tuned.

4.  A Broken Watch is Right Twice a Day: S.A. Smith is very, very right about Dave Robbins.  Send him (Robbins, not Smith) to Springfield.

5.  If You Don’t Go to U.Va., Please Please Please Go to a Major Media Market: Fairfax (CA, somehow) senior Renardo Sidney’s dad is, ahem, quotable: “They [MAH HOOS] understand the difference between a Big Mac and a Whopper with cheese . . . Big Macs are good for resumes, Whoppers with cheese bring home gold balls.”  I love it.  I just . . . I love it.  Please please please be a Hoo.  Someone in C’ville: find this kid’s dad a sinecure and some blogging software RIGHT GODDAMN NOW.

BONUS!!!!!oneone11!!twelve!!exclamation!!!!

6. GITCHA GUNS UP WOOOO!!!

See you fools Sunday.

We know, we never post.  But seriously, nothing is going on right now.  It’s like exam week without the eligibility crises.

A STORY YOU MIGHT BE TALKING ABOUT: Oregon State Beaver fans: Help/Hope is on the way! this is a change you can believe in: Beavers coach Craig Robinson has landed what SI calls a “program-changing” recruit in Roberto Nelson.  Nelson turned down UCLA, Florida, tOSU and others to go to Corvallis.  How did Robinson land the kid?  After piquing Nelson’s interest by signing a Compton Magic teammate, Robinson used what some might call an unfair tactic: he acted like a decent human being.  Just speculating here, but Gary Williams is probably not impressed.

I’ve fired my assistants THIS MANY times since halftime!

OTHER THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED:

HE RECRUITS? ARP ARP ARP: Tommy Amaker has been cleared of recruiting violations at Harvard.  This is important, as he can now get back to the important business of making excuses and not getting anything out of those recruits.

NAMELESS RICHMOND ASSISTANTS NOT SO LUCKY: Some Spiders coaches have resigned due to text-y recruiting violations.  Former UR President Bill Cooper called the former assistants “mush” and recommended that the school deal with the problem by raising tuition 31%.

THIS IS AN ACTUAL MAJOR-CONFERENCE BASKETBALL STORY.  APOLOGIES.  Former Tarhole Alex Stepheson is a USC Trojan, and could play as early as this coming season.

UNC-ASHEVILLE WILL NOT BE MAKING A CLOVERFIELD SEQUEL: Reigning Big South Defensive Player of the Year (and just gigantic dude) Kenny George is probably out for his senior season with an infected foot.  While you and I might get an infected foot and spend some time off work playing Halo, neither you nor I are 7 feet 7 inches tall, so our feet are under considerably less stress.  This must be an infection of the Michael Crichton variety; 35S wishes a speedy recovery to George.

In closing: Don’t say there’s nothing to do in the doldrums.  It’s just. Not. True.

The mood music for this week’s final post, courtesy of Violent Femmes:

Sure, this might be a month old, but if Gary Williams lives by “better late than never”, then so shall we. While most teams are finalizing their recruiting Class of 2009 and getting started on 2010, Williams is still scrambling to find 12 guys to suit up for this season. Seems like he could just walk the streets of Baltimore with a pack of Cluck-U Chicken certificates, but what do we know?

Speaking of additions to the ACC, Raleigh jock-talk host Joe Ovies looked at the five-year results of the ACC’s expansion to 12 teams. Basketball? Meh. Profit? ¡Sí! Thanks to new football revenue, the nine pre-existing members of the conference can’t hear your complaints about the drop in basketball quality, what from all the money they are bathing in.

In a much more sad development, Jamar Smith has been kicked off of the Illinois basketball team after violating his probation. Eamonn reported Smith’s off-court woes with proper due diligence, but we’ll chime in to say that Smith appears to have a problem of some variety – might be booze, might be mental, might just be a case of incredibly immaturity. Whatever it is, we hope he gets help.

Meanwhile, his departure leaves the Illini in rebuilding mode for another year. Somewhere at New York’s offices, a emo-banged gentleman is crying in his drink.

Gin-and-tonic, or pure tears? Also, we actually believe he wears a tux to work now.

Wondering if a zebra is on the take? Our friends at A Sea of Blue point out that, with so many off-court relationships between refs and teams, you might be right – and the NCAA might be a-OK with the relationship. Nico Bellic doesn’t see what the big deal is.

Finally, Matt Smith at Bleacher Report believes he has found the evil among us, and it is a 17-year-old at a prep school in North Carolina. John Wall, previously known to college football fans as Mitch Mustain, is the number 1 point guard in the Class of 2009 – which makes his decision to attend Baylor make oh-so-much sense. Oh, wait, they hired his AAU coach as the “director of player development”? Must have been a coincidence.

Have a great weekend, folks, good to be back.

Working for a Fortune 500 company can be a drag. Sure, once you get to the top level you get money, perks, and fame*. But until that point, work can be a drag. Go to the office, sit down in your cubicle, keep your head down and hope that the paychecks keep coming.

But then comes the day that every corporate worker bee hopes for – the day that the the CEO of the company reaches out to you personally to say that you are doing a great job not just as an employee, but as a parent. So impressed is he, in fact, that he hopes that your child will attend his alma mater – all the way across the country.

Wait, wait – sorry, doesn’t that happen to everyone? You could have fooled Oseye Gaddy, since the customer service rep for FedEx got just such a phone call earlier this week from company CEO David Bronczek.

We share Gaddy’s joy in the well-deserved praise, and we’re certain that Bronczek’s choice to reach out to her personally had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Gaddy’s son, Abdul Gaddy, is a highly sought-after point guard in the recruiting Class of 2009, and that one of his top pursuers is Memphis, which happens to be Bronczek’s favorite local team**.

But just to be sure, those boy scouts in Memphis reported the phone call to the NCAA just the same – seems that boosters calling recruits is kinda-sorta-maybe a NCAA rules violation. Bronczek claims he was unaware of the restriction, which just shows that he didn’t watch very much college football in the early 1980s.

Meanwhile, Oseye will keep living the work-a-day life with her head held high. When you know that if you live right, work hard, and happen to parent an athletically gifted young man who becomes the (only slightly creepy) fancy of older, richer men, everything will work out just fine.

For Bronczek and his Memphis colleagues, though, they might want to figure out other ways to push Gaddy towards the Tigers – seems that a certain contingent on the interwebs already has him headed for Tuscon. Because we know how well young point guards mix with Lute Olsen.

* – By fame, of course, we mean “the ability to walk around with your d*** out in the office and the country club locker room, even if no one on the street knows who you are”.

** – Did we say “favorite local team”? We meant “chosen recipient of over $500,000 in athletic donations from Bronczek, and likely much more”.

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.

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.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Wait a second … that doesn’t seem right after several days off … let’s try that again:

ALL THE CRAP THAT’S HAPPENED IN THE LAST WEEK

That’s better. Quick roundup of the biggest stories, with a little link love for our brother blogs:

Paul Hewitt Stands Tall, States the Obvious

At last week’s meeting of the Knight Commission (the body studying academic standards for NCAA athletics), Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt earned a lot of press by voicing controversial, even shocking, opinions about all that is wrong with the current student-athlete model. Radical stuff, like “Eligibility rather than academic growth has become our biggest concern”, and “Agents are turning college campuses into the Wild West.” Whoa, whoa, Paul … drop one bomb at a time, baby, we weren’t prepared. Hang on, we’ll sit down. OK, go on:

“While I like to see everyone who reaches college earn a degree,” Hewitt said, “we need to find more effective ways to achieve our goals. I do have a problem with putting numbers out there, saying ‘Meet these numbers or else. You’re turning education into a race.”

Phew … radical, radical man. You’re lucky you didn’t lose your job for saying crazy stuff like that.

Of course Hewitt is right, and we all know he’s right – it’s just that no one in the powers that be care, since they can’t hear him over the sound of cash registers. And Hewitt had some thoughts about that as well:

[Hewitt] said he’d like to see basketball become a one-semester sport and that coaches overall would like to see a shorter schedule, but he admitted it’s “not going to happen” because of the lucrative television money that comes from playing more games, even in early November.

Whoa, Paul – we were with you right up until you suggested cutting games. We have a habit to feed, you know. Crazy talk like that will get us back on the harder junk.

Emmanuel Negedu, the last top-level recruit available for the Class of 2008, faced the same difficult choice as other top recruits: which major program will he give his soul for the next four three two some indefinite period of time?

After commanding the full attention of four top programs for the last month, Negedu finally made his decision yesterday, committing to play in Knoxville for Bruce Pearl and the Volunteers.

For Memphis and Arizona, two of the programs Negedu jilted, the news makes this week bittersweet. Both programs went 50-50 with players leaving early for the pros, and both could have used the services of the small-in-size but big-in-game power forward. For Indiana … Tom Crean’s search for any bodies willing to throw on an IU uniform continues.

But for Pearl, it’s celebration time, and for the media’s favorite coach, you know that can only mean one thing:

Time to hit the lake! Where’s Pat? Call Erin!

Is nice!

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Late Recruits Give Ringing Endorsements

With the draft intrigue now long passed (well, unless Mbah a Moute doesn’t hire an agent, then goes undrafted, then returns to school … [sigh] … ), we return our attention to the players who actually want to play college basketball.

With the recruiting season all but finished, only a few big names from the juco ranks remained up for grabs – and boy, they all committed to their new schools with unbridled joy! Just look at these statements:

From Charles Garcia, Jr., the newest member of the Washington Huskies: “I just didn’t want to deal with the whole recruiting process,” he said. “I wanted to get it out of the way.” That’s the spirit! Go UW!

From Roburt Sallie, now a Memphis Tiger – which isn’t too bad considering that the only reason he was available now was because Nebraska – that’s right, NEBRASKA – was forced to boot him under Big XII rules due to an administrative error. “For some reason, God didn’t intend me to play for Nebraska. I was dedicated to them and I still wish today I’d have the opportunity to play for them because they’re great.” See? A Tony the Tiger reference! He’s gonna love Memphis! And it’s natural to be pining after your homely ex after you start dating the cheerleader!

Finally, Kentucky transfer Derrick Jasper finally determined where his new home would be – and it will be in the desert, playing for Lon Kruger’s squad in Vegas. His supporters say he wanted to be closer to his Cali home. UK fans think he might have been too soft for Lexington. We think, given the destination, the reason behind the transfer is more basic:

Four more headlines, including plenty of legal action for the week, after the jump.

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