In Kentucky, a much heralded Freshman Guard, Joe Crawford, wants released from his letter of intent to transfer to another school. The kid is a Michigan native, and it is assumed that Michigan State is his destination. However, there are six other schools that asked for his release from Kentucky (subs. only):

Arizona, Oklahoma, Kansas State, Pittsburgh and Clemson also asked for a release.

If Crawford isn’t released from his NLI by Kentucky, he would be a second-semester junior when he’s eligible next December, even though it will be only his second year of college.

Kentucky spokesperson Scott Stricklin said the school doesn’t want to start a trend of allowing freshmen to come to Lexington and then leave, treating the early season essentially as a tryout. Crawford’s decision to leave doesn’t fall under extenuating circumstances, since it’s just a playing time issue. Crawford was averaging 13.3 minutes a game but played only four minutes against South Carolina and only three against Kansas. He hadn’t scored in the last three games as he got squeezed out of the guard rotation.

[Emphasis added.]

Yoni, over at College Basketball Blog has more on this story. My impulse is that while the kid is a talent, I don’t see him being happy at Pitt. If it’s right away playing time he wants, he will have a hard time getting that much at Pitt. Pitt hasn’t exactly rushed anyone on to the floor. Ronald Ramon is the only freshman seeing significant playing time at this point, and at first that was mostly because Graves has had issues with his ankle.

Selfish head cases with interfering parents make me nervous anyways. I suppose if he has some interest in Pitt and he is a talent, Pitt has to at least ask for his release. It seems unlikely, though, that Kentucky is going to back down. There is no reason to, and I actually agree with their position.

Ray Fittipaldo of the P-G has his Pitt basketball Q&A posted. As has been constant in all the Q&As there has been the steady stream of questions that boil down to, “why does Coach Dixon play Demetris so much?”

Q: I think Pitt is missing a solid small forward. Pitt was blessed to have Jaron Brown for three seasons. He could play against guards and he could play against bigger guys too because of his super long arms. I don’t think Yuri Demetris can fill the role Jaron Brown did. Also, why does Dixon continually pull Demetris and Ronald Ramon out of games when they’re getting on a roll. Ramon hit two 3s in a row and then Dixon pulled him out of the game. He has to let these guys get into a rhythm, especially Ramon because he is the best outside shooting threat Pitt has.

FITTIPALDO: I don’t think Pitt coaches expect Demetirs or anyone else to take Jaron Brown’s place. Brown was too good a player for anyone to think they could step in and do as a good a job as he did. I think they look to Demetris for certain things and then either Ramon or Graves for certain things when they play the small forward spot. Demetris is an OK shooter, but is an excellent passer and a decent defender. Graves and Ramon are two of the team’s best 3-point threats. Brown wasn’t a good shooter, but he got a ton of rebounds and made all the dirty plays no one else would make. In that sense he is irreplaceable. Whatever player is playing the small forward spot this season pales in comparison to Brown. When Alex Galindo chose Kansas over Pitt last spring, I think that was a crushing blow. Galindo is contributing as a freshman with the Jayhawks and would be starting here by now. Pitt’s inability to recruit a comparable replacement for Brown could come back to haunt them by the end of the season if Demetris does not improve greatly.
…
Q: Obviously, this is no time to panic, but my question is this: Is Jamie Dixon playing the right players? Mark McCarroll has clearly taken a step backward. Yuri Demetris is playing too much for a program of Pitt’s stature. It seems to me that Benjamin, DeGroat and even Levon Kendall are more dynamic players or at least will be, if given more playing time. Remember during Troutman’s freshman year when Ben Howland admitted that he probably should have played Troutman more earlier on. Could this be a similar case with at least one of the aforementioned players?

FITTIPALDO: I don’t think any of us outside the program really know what DeGroat or Benjamin can do because they haven’t received ample opportunity in games to prove their ability. I would like to see more of DeGroat. Even if he is a defensive liability, he might be able to give you more scoring, and I believe that is something this team is going to need more of in the Big East. You are not going to get by scoring in the high 50s and low 60s against ranked teams such as Connecticut and Syracuse, especially when your defense is average at best. I agree that McCarroll doesn’t seem to be the same player as last season, but he is getting about four minutes fewer per game. Maybe with more time he would produce more. Kendall is third-string behind Troutman and McCarroll. We’ll find out next season if he is a player or if he was a recruiting miss.

I realize it was only the Under-21 Canadian national team, but Kendall was a star player for them over the summer. I guess the coaches feel he doesn’t have the mobility or outside shot to play small forward.

I’m not sure if missing out on Galindo was a “crushing blow.” He became available at the last minute when there was a coaching change at UTEP. It would have been nice, to get one of the best recruits in the country, but it’s not like Pitt spent all their efforts and pinned their hopes on getting him. Rutgers also went at him hard, and since he was NJ native it probably hurt them from many more angles.

Nothing regarding Pitt once more. Off for the week and Black & Gold is all the Pittsburgh papers care about at the moment, and in New Jersey they don’t care about covering college basketball unless they know the teams are winning.

So despite my general disgust when sports columnists mail it in with a “…” type column, I’m just going to get a couple things out that have nothing directly regarding Pitt.

Stanford Coach Walt Harris is looking for an offensive coordinator. Guess, Stanford is giving him enough of a budget to afford one.

College Football coaches are raising their voices against the dangerous proposals to make their poll votes public. Transparency for all, except them. Right. Truth is they don’t want people finding out that they barely have time or inclination to pay attention to other games outside of their next opponent or perhaps their conference.

The banner on top of the latest SI, blairs “College Hoops Bounce Back.” There’s an article on how college basketball is having a “rennaissance” (subs. only). Personally, I don’t think it ever went away. If pressed though, my feeling as to why some might think that is the large number of great non-con games that took place. That meant a lot of great games earlier in the season, rather than waiting for conference play to begin. There were great games on weekends, during the week. Match-ups even I, in my limited free time to watch sports (as opposed to yet another Elmo video demanded by my daughter), made me interested and intrigued.

Television has certainly noticed the difference. At a time when the Nielsens for many major sports are declining or flat, college hoops ratings are up 12% on CBS (compared with this time last season), 10% on ESPN and 25% on ESPN2. “In our world double-digit growth is more than significant. That’s a major change from one season to the next,” says Burke Magnus, who has coordinated ESPN’s college basketball programming for the past five years. The ratings are up despite a proliferation of games: The ESPN family plans to televise 303 men’s games this season, including 18 that have been added on Wednesday nights in place of locked-out NHL games. And that doesn’t take into account the 510 additional games available on ESPN’s Full Court satellite and digital-cable packages for the most addled of hoopheads.

Meanwhile, thanks to prodding from the TV networks and the NCAA tournament committee’s increased focus on strength of schedule, coaches now have more incentive than ever to arrange the kind of marquee intersectional matchups that fans want to see. Back in the 1980s John Thompson’s Georgetown teams would load up on cupcakes like St. Leo and Hawaii-Hilo. Now even notorious Syracuse fraidy cat Jim Boeheim is willing to take on Oklahoma State and risk an early-season loss. (The Orange fell to the Cowboys 74-60 on Dec. 7.) “I’m finding more teams are willing to play anybody,” says Mike Aresco, the senior vice president for programming at CBS Sports. “We’ve never had so many good nonconference games, like Kansas-Kentucky and Connecticut-North Carolina [on Feb. 13], scheduled in January and February.”

Three of the most electrifying games this season have been No. 16 Gonzaga’s takedowns of No. 8 Georgia Tech, Oklahoma State and No. 14 Washington, prime contenders, respectively, for the ACC, Big 12 and Pac-10 titles. Such matchups might not have happened in years past. “As a coach you control a certain number of games, so you’d better do something to show you’ll schedule the way the committee wants,” says Zags coach Mark Few. “In the end you’ll be rewarded, either by getting into the tournament or drawing a high seed.” Even better, the tournament committee’s recent changes to the Ratings Percentage Index — which will reward teams more for road wins than for home wins — should only increase the willingness of powerhouses to venture into the lairs of other heavyweights, as Georgia Tech did on New Year’s Day when it dropped a 70-68 overtime thriller at Kansas.

Of course Pitt missed out on that — again — with its schedule.

A big thanks to one of our readers, Jamie, who is a student at Pitt and attended the Oakland Zoo Meeting at the Pete. Jamie was good enough to respond to my offhand request for an e-mail report on the event from anyone who might attend. So, other than some minor corrections for spelling here it is, as is:

Hi guys,

I am a Junior at Pitt. I went to the Oakland zoo meeting tonite at the Pete. It went really well. Lots of kids showed up. There was a line out the door when I showed up, at 5 minutes to eight. They gave out Zoo shirts to the first 300 people. They ended up getting more because there were so many more people than that, probably 400. The shirts are made by Adidas now, and are nicer quality, a sure sign of the Athletic Dept becoming more involved in running and assisting the group than before. This means no more ads on the back, also. They bought lots of pizza and drinks, more than enough.

Orlando Antigua introduced Jeff Long who spoke about a lot of things, thanking the students and giving ideas for more Zoo features. He said among other things, he’d like to get Zoo members show up for women’s games, and mentioned one this Sunday that will “be on tv”, whatever that might mean. He says they will be putting up signage within the next few days in the lobby designating the “Oakland Zoo Entrance”. He wants to make the group more prominent. He’d like to get more cheers together and to be more in sync.

Coach Dixon then spoke and thanked everyone, reminiscing about when the group started with 3 people six years ago, and all the meetings that took place with ‘big ideas’ that are finally coming to fruition. He mentioned the Georgetown game, and how our support helped Pitt rally back from a big deficit and take the lead. (no mention however in how we might be involved in the final collapse, though I imagine that’s his team’s fault.) He says that while other schools have intense crowds (citing Rutgers, and Syracuse’s 30,000), no one else in the Big East has a student section that is as good or respected. He loves how our game atmosphere is getting more attention nationally and by ESPN and Dickie V of course. He thinks its an important part of a powerhouse program.

They had shooting competitions for the students, with Dixon and Long also taking their attempts. Many of the players attended and hung out with everyone, taking pics and signing autos, but mostly just talkin’ and hangin’ around. Carl Krauser, Chevy Troutman, Keith Benjamin, Ronald Ramon, and most interestingly Darrelle Revis, who was acting like a new part of the team. Ramon got the biggest cheer, however, when he walked in.

The co-founders of the Zoo (and President and VP) Matt Cohen and Jon St. George spoke last. They said they are looking for new leadership to take the reins next year. They mentioned the perks of the job which apparently includes going to every Big East and NCAA tournament game for free, through donations. Glad to hear they are spreading the dough around… Anyway, they want to get the Zoo to make appearances at all the big road games, busing everyone in to create a mini Zoo. Obviously that would be very intimidating to a home crowd, who they mentioned all know of us and respect us. They also passed out the first edition of the “Zoo News”, which they say will be passed out to students at every upcoming game. It will include the upcoming games, info, opposing rosters and player info, and Cheers for that game.

Overall the event was very successful, everyone seemed to have a great time, not just the fans. It was very encouraging from an administrative standpoint. The athletic dept obviously put a lot of time, effort, and money into putting this event together. It bodes well for the future and their ongoing support.

Thanks for reading, and for the great job you guys do with the blog. Keep it up, we’ll keep reading.

Once more, thank you Jamie. Anyone else attend and have thoughts? E-mail or leave them in the comments.