Archive for May, 2009

Next season's SEC

The SEC will be better in basketball next season. And not just because of John Calipari.
That’s the gist of a Friday column by John Adams of the Knoxville News-Sentinel. Adams does a good job of touching all the bases, with good supporting quotes by SEC coaches attending the league meetings in Destin this week. (USC [...]

Kentucky makes room

Considering the number of recruits the Kentucky basketball programs is brining in, some have wondered how the Wildcats would make room for them.
We’re finding out.
The school announced Tuesday that three scholarship players would not return next season. The most prominent is sophomore forward A.J. Stewart, who averaged six minutes and two points per game last [...]

Katz on Downey/Archie

ESPN’s Andy Katz discussed the situations of Devan Downey and Dominique Archie in his latest blog. Katz talked with South Carolina coach Darrin Horn about the sensitive balance between his desire to have two of his best players back and not politicking for their return.
“I’m just going through the process,” said Horn, who didn’t have [...]

Recruiting class rankings

Unlike football, which has one signing day when pretty much everything can be wrapped in a bow, basketball recruiting can be an ever-changing process that takes months to evaluate. See Kentucky, John Wall, etc., this year as an example.
But the smoke has apparently cleared enough for one expert, Michael LaPlante of ESPN.com, who offers up [...]

Calathes leaves Florida

For the past few months, the assumption was that there were just two options for Florida’s Nick Calathes:
1. Stay in the NBA draft and hire an agent.
2. Return to Florida for his junior season.
Well, the decision is in, and Calathes will …(drumroll) … do neither of the above. The guard instead will sign with a [...]

Kentucky gets Wall

When John Calipari was hired at Kentucky, there was a lot of big talk from media and Wildcat fans about all the players that were about to end up there: Memphis’ elite recruits would follow Calipari to Kentucky, more elite prospects would sign up, Patrick Patterson and/or Jodie Meeks would stay, and so on.
Normally this [...]

Another Downey/Archie update

Dominique Archie and Downey Downey are back from their first workouts with NBA teams, which occured this past weekend. Each player was at a session organized by the Oklahoma City Thunder, while Archie also attended a Houston Rockets workout that was also scouted by the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The workouts will continue over the next couple weeks, [...]

More SEC stuff

few quick notes from around the SEC:
- Another player has withdrawn from the NBA draft: Arkansas forward Michael Washington, a junior, becomes the third SEC player to opt out. (Kentucky’s Patrick Patterson and Mississippi State’s Jarvis Varnado did earlier.)
Interesting quote from John Pelphrey in the Northwest Arkansas Times:
“We worked with Michael and the NBA [...]

Downey/Archie updates

While some SEC players are already pulling their names out of the NBA draft, the two South Carolina players who entered are still going through the process.
Dominique Archie is set to work out with two teams this weekend, according to sources close to the player. Archie is going to Houston, where he’ll audition for the [...]

Mitchell Carter era is over

A few quick hitters from Darrin Horn’s availability this morning:
- The big news (probably big only in the sense it involves a 6-foot-10 man) is that Mitchell Carter is no longer on the team. Horn said he met with Carter Tuesday night, and presented it as kind of a mutually-agreed upon parting.
Carter rarely played in [...]