A few articles relating to the Big East that caught my eye.
UConn trying to reload, anticipating not just the seniors but the underclassmen who will leave early.
The Huskies already know four seniors will be gone next May — wings Rashad Anderson and Denham Brown, forward Ed Nelson and forward/center Hilton Armstrong. Add the probable NBA departures of underclassmen Rudy Gay, Josh Boone and Marcus Williams and the Huskies will have a far different look in 2006-07.
Ultimately, it’s why Calhoun and his two primary recruiters, assistant coaches Tom Moore and Andre LaFleur, have combed every corner of the country the last 10 months: UConn needs blue-chip help at every position.
And geography is no limitation.
A generation later, LaFleur and UConn are courting several point guards, including 5-11 playmakers Sherron Collins of Crane Tech in Chicago and Eugene Harvey of St. Benedict’s in Newark, N.J.
At shooting guard, the Huskies are involved with some of the best prospects in the country, including 6-7 ½ Earl Clark of Rahway High in Rahway, N.J., and 6-3 Ramar Smith of King High in Detroit.
At small forward, UConn hopes to add top-10 recruit Paul Harris to the mix for the 2006-07 season. Harris, a 6-4 wing from Niagara Falls, N.Y., is also considering Syracuse, Villanova and Pittsburgh, among others.
At power forward, top-five standout Darrell Arthur is high on UConn’s list. The 6-9 Arthur, who plays at South Oak Cliff High in Dallas, also counts Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Georgia Tech among his suitors.
At center, UConn’s top two targets are 6-11 Spencer Hawes from Seattle (Wash.) Prep and 6-9 Alex Stepheson from Harvard-Westlake in North Hollywood, Calif.
That is why no one refers to UConn as having a pipeline from a specific place.
For Cinci to get into the Big East, it wasn’t just having a good basketball program, they needed to severely upgrade their facilities. The longtime UC athletic director, Bob Goin, was the man behind that. With his looming retirement, however, he hasn’t been able to hold the peace between UC President Nancy Zimpher and Coach Bob Huggins. That led to this at Big East day in Cinci.
She had been booed once and she surely would have been booed again – louder, no doubt – and the question was whether to step up to the microphone and face another jarring refrain. Nancy Zimpher opted not to.
To be fair, she wasn’t in the script. To be fairer, she certainly could have been if she had so chosen. The University of Cincinnati president had addressed the faculty and staff on campus in the morning, and had been well-received, but for the noon rally at Fountain Square – the centerpiece of the public celebration over UC’s official entry into the Big East – her part was restricted to the acceptance of Charlie Luken’s proclamation.
That went something like this:
“As the University of Cincinnati goes,” declared the mayor, “so goes the city of Cincinnati.”
Then he called up Zimpher.
Then the booing started.
Then Zimpher started. Then Zimpher started shouting, just to be heard.
Then she sat down and Luken, feeling badly for her, said to the crowd, “I’ve been booed a lot, but you’ve made your point. Let’s be polite.”
And as long as she didn’t speak, there was no booing.
And while everyone looks at Cinci as the “thug” problem, it would seem the Big East has just ridded itself of the true thug team. Read the entire, very long article, and you may never be able to view Al Skinner the same way. A man who seems to carry himself with class, and represent BC very well just gives his players free passes until it gets to felony level. There is also one of the more bizarre passages to read.
No sooner did Watson heal from the fall, however, than McLain ran into trouble. On his first full day home for the summer, the 6-7 forward was arrested in a McDonald’s parking lot in Penn Hills, soon after he and Ely passed the counterfeit bills. Police said McLain and Ely initially denied having been in the Dollar Tree store but conceded otherwise after they were shown receipts and merchandise recovered from their vehicle.
Ely’s case became more problematic when police discovered three counterfeit $10 bills in his rectum. Police also said video surveillance cameras at the stores appeared to show McLain and Ely distracting the cashiers in part by asking for job applications. Officers said one of the clerks may have failed to properly screen and mark the counterfeit bills because of the distraction.
McLain’s lawyer, Wendy Williams, said in an interview that a person knowingly committing a crime would not ask for a job application. She said McLain, who had no criminal record, had no idea the bills were counterfeit or how he obtained them.
[Emphasis added.]
The players managed to get the charges reduced because of some, uh, “evidentiary problems” for the prosecution. Coach Skinner, then characterized it as essentially the same as a traffic ticket.
Finally, perennial “sleeping giant,” Rutgers may be making some noise in basketball. Armed with an ace recruiter, hired away from Villanova, they are actually getting their foot in some doors.
