Any one know where Sam Young will be on draft night? I’m guessing with his family in Maryland, but he doesn’t advertise his plans.

Young has some interviews with the Sporting News. They had a question for various players about the perception reality of this being  a weak draft. Naturally, since these players are in the draft they disputed that. Except for Sam.

PF Sam Young, Pittsburgh: “Maybe there aren’t the five guys who you know are going to be All-Stars. They might not be great players right away. But there are a lot of good guys who can hold their own, and maybe just need a little time. That does not mean they’re not good, though.”

This is a role player, journeyman draft. The kind of draft where several years later there are conversations at a bar like this.

Guy 1: I can’t believe this stiff was the number eight pick!

Guy 2: [fiddling with his phone browser] Well… Oooh. There were slim pickings in 2009. Take a look at what was left.

Guy 1: [taking the phone] Wow! [scrolling down trying to find anything] Sheesh. Well, they should have traded out for a pick the following year.

Sam Young also does a Q&A. Yes, the poetry and piano comes up.

Q: How did spending four years in college help you?

A: Spending four years in college, and competing in the Big East for four years, you see a lot of defenses, a lot of different types of basketball. You’re able to recognize situations very quickly, because there’s really nothing you haven’t seen before. And you become a mature adult going onto the next level.

Q: But you’ll be 24 on draft day. Some scouts and GMs might think that hurts you.

A: It might help me, it might hurt me. It could possibly help me because, unlike some guys, I am mature. I am mature off the court and on the court. Some of the issues that might come up for other guys, as far as maturity goes, won’t come up for me. I think some people want to see that in the player they draft.

Young’s draft status has remained consistent as being somewhere in the 20-28 range. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a range of opinion about how he’ll do in the NBA. Some negative (Insider subs.).

Pitt’s Sam Young also graded out extremely poorly. He had the worst pure point rating of any wing player, and the other thing that hurt him is that he’s one of the oldest prospects in the pool. How old? He’s 19 days older than six-year vet Darko Milicic and a full half-decade older than Holiday.

Well, Gary Parrish and Mike DeCourcy don’t have the same problem the “Draft Rafter” did.

4. Which player are you most interested to see where he falls in the NBA draft?

DeCourcy: Easy choice: Pitt’s Sam Young. In my eyes, Young is the Josh Howard of the 2009 NBA draft. If he goes anywhere in the 20s, he will be this year’s best bargain.

Young is physically mature, has an NBA-ready perimeter game, will be able defend the shooting guard or small forward spots and has made big shots in his career. Some worry that he is 24 years old. I’d worry more if he played for someone else and was getting 20 against my team.

I also did a write-up on Young for the Atlanta Hawks blog. I don’t see him going there with the #19 pick. Simply, because they don’t have a crying need for another SF. Plus, they need a guy that is defense first.

I love Young, but his mentality is looking for offense. So, I just don’t see the fit with Atlanta at that spot.

If there’s one thing that is clear under Wanndstedt, it is that Middle Linebacker will get funneled a lot of opportunities to make tackles. The reason, in no small part, is that Coach Wannstedt loves speed on the edges and if you are a defensive end with speed, you will be given an opportunity to thrive and star on Pitt’s D-line.

New Jersey DE T.J. Clemmings appears to have recognized this and has verbaled to Pitt.

Clemmings, who is 6-feet-6, 266 pounds, chose the Panthers over a number of other scholarship offers, including most notably offers from Penn State, Notre Dame, Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina, Miami and Rutgers.

He is the type of athlete Coach Wannstedt loves on the edge. Raw and potentially explosive. His initial interest was in basketball and was a D-1 recruit in that sport, before recently coming to realize football was his future.

Clemmings has played only one season of high school football, yet is ranked the nation’s No. 24 defensive end prospect by Scout.com and No. 31 by Rivals.com.

Scout.com puts him a t 4-stars and Rivals.com says 3-stars. Considering the number of  and names of the programs making the offers, lots of coaches are seeing huge upside and potential in Clemmings.

Coach Wannstedt can point to both Romeus and Sheard as raw, inexperienced athletes he has quickly made prominent DEs. It apparently got Clemmings attention.

That’s a disappointment that Blair did not get an invite to sit in the Green Room at MSG for the NBA Draft. Something confirmed by a local article that confirmed he would be in Pittsburgh for the draft.

His final audition is Monday with Utah, followed by a trip to ESPN headquarters in Connecticut on Wednesday for some pre-draft appearances before returning to Pittsburgh for draft day.

“I’m glad I got through it,” Blair said.

I wonder where the draft party will be. You just know that he isn’t simply sitting in his family’s home for this night.

Mildly surprising that Blair did not get an invite. The rumors have been increasing that he would not slip past the 13th spot.

We have been tracking the DeJuan Blair situation pretty heavily over the last few week. Blair apparently may have a floor and that’s the Indiana Pacers. Blair has absolutely dominated at every stop he’s been at, but concerns about his knees are still very much front and center. The Pacers not so long ago took a chance on another player with supposed bad knees in Danny Granger, which worked out pretty good for the Pacers didn’t it? If Blair is still on the board at #13, don’t be surprised if it’s him rocking the Pacers’ draft day cap.

Blair, his agent and Pitt seemed to have done some damage control on Blair’s knee worries.

A pair of MRIs making the rounds amongst NBA teams appear to be easing some concerns about DeJuan Blair’s knees, according to his agent Happy Walters. Blair was red-flagged at the NBA pre-draft camp for the ACL tears he suffered in both knees while in college. He does not appears to have an ACL in either knee now, and there were concerns that he may struggle to stay healthy as his career moves on.

In response, Blair’s camp retrieved an MRI from November of 2008 done at Pittsburgh for doctors to compare with the MRI of his knees from the pre-draft camp earlier this month. The specialists found that there had been “no deterioration in the situation of his knees whatsoever over the course of the season,” which has been conveyed to the doctors of various NBA teams that are most interested in Blair at the moment.

Te MRIs were taken was after Pitt held Blair out of the Belmont game because of some swelling.

Going to Milwaukee with the #10 pick seems unlikely because they are still in fear of Blair’s weight. They ended up with the rights to Robert “Tractor” Traylor on draft night 1998 in one of the NBA’s worst trades: Traylor from Dallas for Dirk Nowitzki and Pat Garrity.

The Detroit Pistons website focused a piece on Blair mainly concerned with his weight.  I don’t see the weight as the big concern. In a piece I did for the Atlanta Hawks blog, the concern that is legit still remains those ACLs. I don’t think it should preclude teams from drafting him in the teens, but I could definitely understand the hesitation of teams in the top-10.