Several little things to get out.
A story on incoming freshman Talib Zanna’s journey from Nigeria to the United States. Go figure, it was not an easy thing. Even coming from a well-educated family, Nigeria is a mess and his father passed away this past year.
A nasty mess brewing at the Kiski school where 2010 verbal commit Isiah Epps might prep (unlikely now).
A coach hired to take the basketball program of an Indiana County private school to national prominence sued Monday in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, claiming he was forced out for recruiting too many black players.
Anthony Cheatham, 31, of Edgewood claims administrators at The Kiski School told him they would not tolerate fielding an all-black lineup.
“He was told to recruit scholastic, highly talented basketball players,” said Cheatham’s attorney Sam Cordes.
Cheatham was an assistant at Robert Morris and also trains future and present NBA players including Sam Young. Messed up stuff.
I really don’t think Coach Dixon is sweating his annual NCAA Recruiting exam.
“You can’t recruit until you pass it,” Dixon said hours before the Erie Chapter of the Panthers Club’s annual sports banquet at the Kahkwa Club on Tuesday.
With college basketball coaches being able to start summer recruiting next month, passing the test now is a must for them.
“I’ve never failed the test,” said a smiling Dixon, whose team won a school-record 31 games in reaching the Elite Eight last season before losing to Villanova.
Dixon said the coaches have 90 minutes to take the test and must score 80 percent.
It’s an open book test, but the rules are lengthy and not so easy to figure out.
“Open book” being the key aspect.
To help pass the time of the offseason, one of my colleauges at FanHouse has prepared a list of the top-25 college basketball coaches.
He places Jamie Dixon at #17. I only quibble that Dixon should be about one spot higher, because he has overrated Matt Painter of Purdue. Painter is good and may merit being up there in a few years, but not yet does he rank #14.
By the time the Tim Floyd and the USC mess is finished, the Trojan job will be one of the most unattractive spots out there. Thus making the inevitable rumors that will occur after Floyd is fired regarding Dixon just silly. Really, shedding players and recruits at an epic pace. Floyd just seems clueless to his culpability.
“Kansas has two players who would have been NBA lottery picks, Cole Aldrich and Sherron Collins, and they are returning to school,” USC Coach Tim Floyd said late Monday night, only hours after hearing about Johnson. “Good for them.
“Our guys get an offer from Islamabad and they’re gone.”
Let’s see. Collins and Aldrich are at Kansas where they have a shot at winning the national championship in 2010. They are on a stable team with a coach that has won and put players in the NBA.
Floyd and USC recruit hoping the glamor and location will get the kids, and the main promise seems to be that they will be able to get a future paycheck for playing basketball. The team has little shot at even contending for the Pac-10 next year.
Then there is that whole NCAA investigation hanging over the program; a coach that nearly bailed for Arizona — after previously telling a recruit that he wouldn’t like it if the recruit looked at other schools after giving a soft verbal; to say nothing of that the kids that want to bail ASAP were the ones the coach recruited and presumably knew what they were looking for.
On the downside, Pittsburgh’s DeJuan Blair has to be bummed. Blair looked solid in the drills and really impressed teams with his weight loss and tone. He also measured short, but his wingspan, standing reach and his athletic abilities made up for much of it.
However, the news became much grimmer for Blair when the results of the medical testing came back. Multiple NBA teams are saying Blair’s knees have been red-flagged.
Blair tore both of his ACLs in high school, and the preliminary word from the physicals is that his knees aren’t in great shape.
How bad they are depends on who you talk to, but the range wasn’t good. I heard everything from “devastating” to “troubling.”
Blair’s agent, Happy Walters, doesn’t feel words like “devastating” are accurate in describing the report he saw.
“From what I saw, it’s not that bad,” Walters told Insider. “People tend to get overexcited about this. Some teams will make a big ado about it and draft him anyway. It’s all a game. Some teams want him to slide.”
“He had ACL problems in high school. Everyone knew that. He’s never missed a game in college from his knees. It hasn’t affected his play at all. We’ll look further into it. We’ll check it out and have other specialists look at it, too. But it’s something you can’t do anything about. We’re not hiding anything.”
Whether the concern ends up being a small or large factor in Blair’s draft stock, it’s a shame when you consider the momentum he has had since the season ended. With so few bigs in the draft, he was looking at a potential late lottery pick. That now seems less likely. While being red-flagged isn’t necessarily a death knell to your draft stock (remember all the concerns about Greg Oden two years ago) it could deter a team in the lottery from taking the risk.
Blair has already had one workout in Phoenix before the NBA draft combine. He heads to Oklahoma City on Friday, Sacramento on Saturday, Detroit on Monday, Milwaukee on Wednesday, Chicago on Thursday and Charlotte next Friday for individual worko
What kind of examination shows potential trouble in a knee? I’m curious how the medical staff(s) make this determination.
I still follow Kiski School and it’s doings somewhat closely and don’t hold the same opinion as you do.
You sound like you’ve a bit of an agenda with that post.
It sits on the bluff above where Loyalhanna Creek meets the Connemaugh River, forming the Kiskaminetas River. The borough of Saltsburg is on the other side of the Connemaugh/Kiski River and is in Indiana County.
I would hate to see inner city kids become corrupted by the high income coke-heads that populate The Kiski School student body. Kiski anymore is the George Junior Republic for the wealthy and maladjusted. (pretty campus, though).