Kansas
Indiana now has an open date with the Kentucky series dead and Kansas wants to fill the Hoosiers schedule with a game. One Kansas official said the Jayhawks would gladly start a home-and-home with Indiana, beginning next season in Lawrence. Indiana would have gone to Kentucky if the series had continued. Kansas and Indiana were in initial discussions of playing a game after the Final Four, but those talks were shelved. Memphis wanted to play Kansas in a home-and-home series and was willing to start on the road but the Jayhawks weren’t interested. Now, Indiana will have to make a decision as to how high profile a game it will put in Kentucky’s place on the schedule.
ESPN Andy Katz
Kentucky is looking to add one more neutral site game against a power opponent(Texas or UCLA?), with locations for the game to be determined. Nashville is a strong possibility depending on the team. In addition, the possibility of a Home and Home series is still being looked into as well (Kansas is a team that has been discussed), although it can only be done if the first game is in Rupp Arena.
http://kentuckysportsradio.com/?p=111124
5/3/12 3:00 PM
Winning a second national championship RT @klog11: @CoachBillSelf whats a goal you haven't accomplished but want to
Bill Self (@CoachBillSelf)
Kansas forward Kevin Young will try out for the Puerto Rico Senior National Team later this month. The Puerto Rico national squad will vie for one of three final spots for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London by competing in the FIBA Olympic World Qualifying Tournament July 2-8 in Caracas, Venezuela. A total of 12 teams will be in the competition.
"I'm totally on board for Kevin to get the opportunity to try out for Puerto Rico," Kansas head coach Bill Self said. "We are still a ways away from knowing details to see if he has a legitimate shot."
Young, who will be entering his senior season at Kansas in 2012-13, was a top reserve for the Jayhawks last year appearing in 38 games and averaging 11.4 minutes, 3.4 points and 3.0 rebounds. The 6-8, 195-pound, Perris, Calif., native's mother's (Alicia Morales) parents, Young's grandparents, were born in Puerto Rico, hence qualifying him to try out for the team.
"I got a phone call that workouts were going to be soon and if I wanted to come out and try to earn a spot I could," Young said. "I want to finish up exams, then go home for a little bit and see my mom and my brother and sister, then on to Puerto Rico. It's a good opportunity to get my face shown over there so if I don't make it this time, I can be there on the next try. It's always fun to go back to Puerto Rico."
Young is no stranger to representing Puerto Rico. He was a member its national team which competed in the FIBA U19 World Championships in Auckland, New Zealand, in July 2009. Young averaged 7.7 points and 5.0 rebounds in the U19 games where Puerto Rico went 5-4. Led by former Jayhawk Tyshawn Taylor, Team USA won the gold medal at the 2009 FIBA U19 World Championships.
"I'm really excited," Young said of his tryout. "It's a great opportunity and a chance for me to get better at basketball."
KU AD
Damontre Harris, a sophomore transfer from South Carolina, began a campus visit at KU on Thursday. Harris, 6-foot-9 forward, will likely choose between Florida and Kansas, according to Rivals.com. Harris, who visited Florida earlier this week, averaged 6.8 points and 5.5 rebounds in 25.9 minutes per game as a sophomore. He also recorded 2.3 blocks per game.
KC Star
LJW: Damontre Harris' stats at SC show promise
CBS Top 25 and one updated KU #4
#8 Kansas Jayhawks
The Jayhawks, like the Buckeyes and, higher up on this board, Louisville, will be decidedly in the defense-first club. Center Jeff Withey, with his volleyball-swatting pedigree, finished this season No. 1 in shot-blocking percentage -- at 15.27 percent compared to Anthony Davis' 13.75. If Withey can stay on the floor for longer minutes (he averaged 24.8 per game), he should be able to battle Craft and Kentucky's Nerlens Noel for national defensive player of the year honors, and KU's perimeter duo of Elijah Johnson and Travis Releford is athletic enough to defend any opposing guards. Role concerns are what keep the Jayhawks out of my top five; they had one of the country's most imbalanced scoring attacks, heavily favoring Thomas Robinson (who used 29.7 percent of possessions) and Tyshawn Taylor (27.7 percent), and for the first time in recent memory, there is no natural next-in-line offensive leader.
SI Winn
Don't panic, KU sports fans. Clint Bowyer hasn't abandoned you.
It's just that Aaron's is sponsoring Bowyer's Alabama National Championship Toyota for Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway, and Emporia's favorite son has to do his share.
So Bowyer will don a crimson and white Alabama fire suit, surround himself in a special 'Bama paint scheme and wear a helmet depicting iconic Crimson Tide football coach Bear Bryant. But his heart will remain with the Jayhawks.
"I'm a pretty big KU fan," said Bowyer, who attended the NCAA basketball tournament's championship game last month. "Everybody knows that. But the Alabama partnership came along with Aaron's ... and the national (football) championship.
"I'm certainly a KU fan, but I respect all athletics and certainly respect what they've accomplished in the past years. It's going to be fun to have the Alabama colors for one day."
KC Star
Big 12/College News
Official NBA Early Entry List
Rick Barnes was recruiting in Connecticut, trying to find guys for his then-boss, George Mason head coach Joe Harrington, when he spied Jim Calhoun sitting in the bleachers.
This was back when Calhoun was making a name for himself as a head coach at Northeastern and Barnes was in the infancy of his coaching career, helping Harrington build Mason from the ground up.
"I walked up to him and said, 'I'm Rick Barnes. I'm an assistant coach at George Mason,' and then I just asked him, 'Why do your teams rebound so well?'" Barnes remembered. "He told me to sit down, and he talked to me and actually answered the question."
Two decades later, including years when the relationship between the two was at times contentious with Barnes as head coach at Providence and Calhoun at UConn, Barnes and his Texas team beat Connecticut in the Sweet 16.
A few days later, a letter arrived addressed to Barnes. It was from Calhoun.
"He said that he never likes to lose, but if he had to, he was glad it was to someone like me," Barnes said. "I'm not sure how much of that goes on now."
…Friendships and relationships still exist, particularly among the generation that came up in the 1970s, and you can still walk into a gym on a sticky July day and find coaches who don't necessarily fit together joking and chatting. I sat between Providence coach Ed Cooley and North Carolina coach Roy Williams for an entire game's worth of banter in South Carolina a year ago.
But as time passes and the generations shift, the relationships are becoming more insular and less trustworthy.
"I think guys like me, Bill Self, Jay [Wright], Tom Izzo, we were brought up by those old-school guys," Notre Dame coach Mike Brey said. "The next phase of guys, I'm not so sure. There's such a ruthless charge to move up in the business and the money is so big now, so I'd question whether it's as strong there. I'm not sure, and that would be disappointing."
ESPN
One of the great laments among people in college basketball circles is that the sport is gradually eroding in national relevance for all but the six-week sprint from middle of February to the end of the NCAA tournament.
Alas, with shortsighted decisions like the one administrators at Kentucky and Indiana made this week, can you blame many fans for choosing to ignore the majority of the regular season?
Indiana announced Thursday that it will not renew its series with Kentucky next season due to the Wildcats' insistence the games be moved to neutral sites rather than rotating between the two campuses. That means the series will take its first hiatus since 1969 in a year when the Wildcats are coming off their eighth national championship, the Hoosiers are likely to be next year's preseason No. 1 team and interest in both programs is at its zenith.
Uh, brilliant decision, guys.
…At a time when conference realignment is already robbing college basketball of some of its premier rivalries, it's a blow to the health of the sport when two of its top programs can't figure out a way to compromise. Kentucky and Indiana will thrive with or without this game, yet it's absolutely idiotic for them to throw away a showcase game revered by fans of both sides at a time when both programs are finally strong.
Yahoo
"I don't think he [Kentucky coach John Calipari] was really thrilled about going back to Bloomington, to be honest with you," Barnhart said.
Indiana is a projected No. 1 team and Kentucky should be in the top 10 with another top-five recruiting class coming off a national title.
"We're not going to play," Calipari told ESPN.com Thursday. "We're not going to do a home-and-home. That's out. They don't want to play two games in the state of Indiana, which I'm fine with. There are a lot of people who want to play us."
Calipari said Kentucky has the date for Lucas Oil Stadium and will still try to schedule an opponent next season.
"We were willing to play them both in the state of Indiana and they said no to that,'' Calipari said. "That means they don't want to play us."
Indiana coach Tom Crean said in a text message that the Hoosiers never wanted to move the game.
"We couldn't have gotten our students up there," said Crean. "Prices would have been too much to get them there. We will have around 8,500 students.
"The bottom line is that they didn't want to play home-and-home and we did. We looked at it hard but it belongs on campus."
ESPN
More than seven years later, Wangmene's smile remains. His English vocabulary has expanded exponentially, but “yes” remains his favorite word. And he has never stopped thinking about presents — particularly the ones he wanted to give to the countrymen who couldn't travel to America with him.
Next summer, if everything goes according to Wangmene's grand plans, a library will open in Maroua, Cameroon. It will be filled, Wangmene said, not only with the books he and his friends didn't have growing up, but also with opportunity.
In 2004, at an NBA “Basketball Without Borders” event, Buford discovered Wangmene, was won over by his outgoing personality, and agreed with his wife Beth to adopt him. But now that his college playing days at Texas are over, Wangmene said, he's sure his journey was never really about putting balls through hoops.
Instead, it was about putting printed pages where they had never been seen before.
“This is exactly why I'm here,” Wangmene said. “This is why basketball brought me to the United States. One book can change a life. I want to give people the books.”
For Wangmene, a 6-foot-7 forward known primarily for his rugged defense in four years with the Longhorns, this isn't a mere whim. Even when Wangmene was first getting to know the Bufords, who treated him just like one of their natural children in their San Antonio home, he stressed his desire to not forget his roots.
As a UT freshman, he told a peer about his idea to build a library. The classmate's mother, a teacher, presented him with his first donation — an old copy of “Winnie the Pooh.” Wangmene still has that book, along with more than 3,000 others.
“It's been his plan all along,” Buford said. “From the moment he got here, he's always had a strong commitment to returning to Cameroon and being a part of not only his country, but his family.”
Even if the goal seemed overly ambitious, few doubted Wangmene's ability to pull it off. This was, after all, a kid with the courage to leave his beloved parents as a sophomore in high school, with the personality to immediately earn scores of friends at Central Catholic despite speaking almost nothing but French, and to completely win over UT coach Rick Barnes on their first meeting.
Wangmene never had the skills to be an NBA draft pick. But he worked hard, and someone who Barnes called “the most humble kid I've ever met.” Clint Chapman, a UT forward who roomed with him, said Wangmene had an easier time adjusting to college than he did.
“I was actually surprised how acclimated he was,” Chapman said. “It was like he'd lived here his whole life.”
Wangmene earned his degree at UT, but his education continues.
SA Express
North Texas will leave the Sun Belt to join Conference USA, a source close to the program said Thursday.
The source also said Louisiana Tech and Florida International will be joining the Mean Green in Conference USA, along with Texas-San Antonio, whose move was approved by the University of Texas System regents Thursday morning.
Charlotte also appears set to join the C-USA, scheduling a news conference on Friday to discuss conference affiliation.
ESPN
For those following the former ESPN "writer" scandal, here's a bit more
2012-13 Early Season Events List
Recruiting
S/O to Clark Walker for getting up out his bed this early to let me in the gym and putting me through some drills. #CoachesTHATcare
https://twitter.com/#!/AndrewWhite_34/status/198353113286062082
5/3/12 12:12 PM
Along with his teammate Joel Berry, Kansas has offered 2014 E1T1 (FL) big man Dakari Johnson.
Alex Kline (@TheRecruitScoop)
Often times, a big decision is made in an unprompted spark of clarity or whimsy. Those coaches who move on to bigger jobs or opt to stay at their current ones? It could be something a wife says during pillow talk or a simple glance at their kids over dinner that seals the decision.
You've probably encountered this in your life, too, whether it was over a hundred-miles move, a new job, a college decision or that dreadful stare at the wall of cereal in Aisle 4 of your local grocer. (It's been three minutes. Just grab the Cocoa Pebbles and move on with your life.)
For all the mulling, it's the mundane moment that can frequently provide the tipping point for a person's future.
So who knows what was going on inside young Sam McLaurin's head early Thursday morning, at 2:20 a.m. Whatever it was, I'm thankful for it, because it birthed a style of transfer/recruiting decision we don't often see. I'd love to embed the actual tweet, but since it's got the four-letter curse of the "F" variety, I can't. Simply put, McLaurin spat out a six-word declaration that could and should very well be meme'd on T-shirts in Champaign in due time.
"F--- it im going to Illinois," McLaurin tweeted, quite possibly becoming the first human to string together those six exact words in English in the history of the language. He also added the #illinination tag, and soon thereafter crassly asked his followers to "stop texting me and s---"
CBS
Some of the top boys basketball players in the Midwest are returning to Fort Wayne, and this time, fans can watch the action on the Internet.
Part of the 19th annual Bill Hensley Memorial Run-N-Slam All-Star Classic at Spiece Fieldhouse and other city gyms this weekend will be shown on www.gymratsbasketball.tv. The Sunday semifinals and finals of the gold brackets will be filmed and shown later on the website.
…Highlighted by ESPN’s No. 1 player in the nation in the 2013 class, Chicago Simeon’s Jabari Parker, some of the teams are loaded with talented players. Parker, a 6-foot-8, 220-pound forward, has yet to make a decision among suitors that include Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan State, Ohio State and North Carolina.
Parker’s Mac Irvin Fire team includes Chicago Whitney Young teammates Jahlil Okafor (No. 2 player in 2014 class) and Thomas Hamilton Jr. (No. 42 in 2013). Both players are also undecided on their college future.
Also in the field will be the Spiece Indy Heat, which includes local and state talent. Northrop twins Bryson Scott, the No. 45 player in 2013, and Brenton Scott play on a team that includes Park Tudor’s Trevon Bluiett and two top-15 players in the 2014 class in Indianapolis Tech’s Trey Lyles and Evansville Bosse’s Jaquan Lyle.
The tournament will offer four brackets, with seniors- (64 teams), juniors- (64 teams), sophomores- (64 teams) and freshmen-to-be (24 teams).
There’s also Danny Granger’s D1 Ambassadors with Bryce Alford, son of former IU star and current New Mexico coach Steve Alford; and The Family, which has James Young, the No. 10 player in 2013; and Kendall Stephens and A.J. Patty of the Illinois Wolves.
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Spring/Summer Event Schedule
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