College Basketball "off-season" Thread (players leaving/coaching changes/recruiting)

[seymore cake]

Originally Posted by lnMyMind

Josh Selby literally told one of Maryland's assistants that he'd never play for Gary Williams. They stopped sending him mail after that. He also never wanted to play for Georgetown because the Princeton offense masks alot of his talents.

OUCH!!!

 

[lnmymind]

Gary is an @*$ hole...NOBODY likes him. I guarantee once he gets the boot...and they hire a guy with area ties...that program will be back.

 

[bigmike23]

So maryland won't be good for like another 5 years then

 

[seymore cake]

Damn shame. And to think at one point I looked forward to beating them as much if not more than UNC

 

[ricardo malta]

And to think at one point I looked forward to beating them as much if not more than UNC

 

[ThaxbyChamblis]

Originally Posted by Seymore CAKE

Damn shame. And to think at one point I looked forward to beating them as much if not more than UNC

 

[bigmike23]

Blhahahahahahhhahahahahah

 

[bigmike23]

Blhahahahahahhhahahahahah

 

[seymore cake]

Originally Posted by dreClark

Originally Posted by Seymore CAKE

Damn shame. And to think at one point I looked forward to beating them as much if not more than UNC

UNC wasn't a challenge during those yrs, plus I was dating a girl who was from Maryland, Landover to be precise... that come back game, that they showedKenny highlights of got me some good head

 

[ricardo malta]

Guess Syracuse! Ya'll still suck!

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) -- Syracuse guard Eric Devendorf has been given an additional year of athletic eligibility.

Devendorf, a key member of the basketball team who missed 25 of the Orange's 35 games last season with a knee injury, has been granted a hardship waiver by the Big East Conference.

The school applied on Devendorf's behalf after he suffered a torn ACL in a game last December against East Tennessee State and missed the rest of the season. Devendorf had started the first 10 games of 2007-08 and was averaging 17 points a game.

For the 2008-09 season, Devendorf will be classified as a senior academically and a junior in athletic eligibility.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

 

[ricardo malta]

[h1]The Next Step For Steph[/h1] [h2]Davidson's Stephen Curry was the breakout star of the Big Dance, but even after hobnobbing with LeBron, he's still adjusting to his sudden celebrity -- and to his new position

By Grant Wahl[/h2]
DANICA AND ANNIKA may sound like a Saturday Night Live duo on the order of Hans and Franz, but during a midsummer night in Los Angeles they induced schoolboy panic in Davidson guard Stephen Curry, the baby-faced breakout star of March Madness. When Danica Patrick and Annika Sorenstam, glammed-up for the ESPY Awards, stepped into his hotel elevator on their way to the show, they instantly recognized their fellow nominee and said hello. Betraying little of the cold-blooded shooter who lit up Gonzaga, Georgetown, Wisconsin and Kansas for 128 points during the NCAA tournament, Curry melted like, well, a starstruck college kid.

"Here are two great-looking ladies I'd seen on TV," says Curry, a five-handicap golfer who'd admired Sorenstam for years. "But I started stuttering because I was all nervous. My dad was laughing at me."

Welcome to the new life of Wardell Stephen Curry II -- or simply Steph, if you'd like -- who still can't grasp that now he's one of them. After deciding against turning pro so he could prove his bona fides as a point guard, the 6'3", 182-pound Curry returns for his junior season with his size-14 feet planted in two worlds. In one he plays for Davidson, a small Southern Conference school in a North Carolina town so old-fashioned that students gather at The Soda Shop on Main Street. In the other he visits New York City to appear on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. In one he snaps surreptitious fan-boy photos of Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning eating breakfast at a buffet in L.A. In the other he's fast friends with his new supporter, LeBron James, who made a special trip to Detroit's Ford Field to see Curry play in the tournament.

"I love basketball, and I'm a fan first," says James, who also hung out with Curry at James's skills camp in July. "Anytime you get an opportunity to see somebody who's very talented, you want to reach out to them. I'm looking forward to seeing him more this year and welcoming him to the league next year."

Nobody would have expected that endorsement three years ago, when Curry was a 6-foot, 160-pound senior at Charlotte Christian School who didn't receive any
scholarship offers from major-conference schools. (The snubs included one by Virginia Tech, where Curry's father, Dell, set the career scoring record before embarking on a 16-year NBA career.) But the big boys' loss was Davidson's gain. Under coach Bob McKillop, Curry set an NCAA freshman record for three-pointers (122), and as a sophomore he was the nation's fourth-leading scorer (25.9 points per game). But that was only a prelude to the storybook run last March, when the 10th-seeded Wildcats knocked off the champions of the West Coast, Big East and Big Ten conferences and came within a missed buzzer-beater of toppling Kansas, the eventual national champ, and reaching the Final Four.

Curry's mother, Sonya, can't forget her own shock after Davidson's comeback from a 17-point deficit against Georgetown. As her son turned to look at her in the stands and shrugged, "It hit me: He was truly that good," says Sonya, who became a favorite of CBS cameramen. "We'd heard so much about how he needed to be bigger. But then he made those shots and looked at me, and I thought, What in the world is going on?"

"Daddy," Curry's 13-year-old sister, Sydell, told Dell, a former NBA Sixth Man of the Year, "Stephen made you famous again."

ONLY THREE of the six ceiling fans are functioning on a boiling July afternoon in the upper gym of Roanoke College. The youngsters at this small basketball camp in Salem, Va., are getting a special treat: Their celebrity counselor, Steph Curry, is playing in a five-on-five scrimmage. Working at quarter-speed on a small-fry defender who's wearing a T-shirt bearing his autograph, Curry throws a pass that sails over a teammate's head. "C'mon, man!" jokes a fellow counselor. "He's 4-foot-2 with a two-inch vertical!"

Everyone laughs. Over the summer Curry attended high-profile camps hosted by NBA A-listers -- James, Chris Paul, Paul Pierce, Steve Nash -- but here in a sweltering gym in the glitz-free Shenandoah Valley he's in his element. "I used to come to this camp when I was in fourth through sixth grade, but this is the first year I've worked it," says Curry, who spent two weeks at the camp run by Page Moir, the respected coach of Division III Roanoke. "It's cool to be at the other end of the experience."

Curry's unassuming nature is of a piece with the Davidson Way. A college of 1,700 students 23 miles north of Charlotte, Davidson is the kind of place where almost nobody locks their doors, and (shock of shocks) the basketball players take all of their classes with the rest of the undergrads. "If you had a roster of every student, I probably would know a little something about each one of them," Curry says. "After a game we'll go to the student union and just walk around. Everyone will be talking about the game, and it's not random people you've never seen on campus. You know their names. That's a special thing."

Rarely has such a high-profile player operated out of such a low-profile locale. One day in July, Curry and two teammates attended a 15th birthday party at the home of Jackie Pitzer, a Davidson mail-room worker, and stayed to play pickup hoops in the driveway for three hours. When freshmen arrived for Orientation Week in August, that was Curry -- a likely first-team preseason All-America -- helping them move into their dorms. "I didn't know about him being a Wooden Award finalist [last season] until I'd read it two days after he'd found out," says teammate Bryant Barr. "I'm like, 'Steph, I'm your roommate.'"

The sources of that humility, by all accounts, are Curry's folks. "There's no entitlement whatsoever in the family," says McKillop, a coach's coach who spent 19 years at Davidson before breaking through with his first NCAA tournament wins last season. "If we had parents like Dell and Sonya in every household in America, we'd be in paradise."

Although Dell was busy during the NBA season for much of Stephen's childhood, he'd spend summers helping coach the AAU teams of Stephen and his younger brother, Seth, now a freshman guard at Liberty. It was Dell, a famously accurate shooter, who overhauled Stephen's release on the family's backyard court in Charlotte during the summer before his junior year of high school. "He was shooting from the waist," recalls Dell, a 6'4" guard who hit 40.2% of his threes as a pro. "I'm like, Son, if you want to play in college, you have to move your shot up. For two weeks I wouldn't let him shoot outside the paint, and he probably was ready to quit. But by the end of the summer his form looked great."

Yet the family's day-to-day disciplinarian was Sonya, who became the headmaster at the Christian Montessori School at Lake Norman, a private elementary school in Huntersville, N.C., that was founded by the Currys in 1995. "She laid down the law, and you didn't want to cross her," says Stephen, who had his brother as a classmate, his aunt India Adams as a teacher and his grandmother Candy Adams as the school cook. Nor did Sonya stop keeping close tabs on Stephen when he graduated after sixth grade. In one classic family story, she called his middle-school coach to tell him Stephen couldn't play in the next game because he hadn't done the dishes.

Sonya brings the same intensity to cheering at Stephen's games. ("She's the most vocal person out of anybody: parents, fans, students, anyone," he says.) And look out if you ask her about his being snubbed by Virginia Tech, where she met Dell and starred for the volleyball team. "It's disappointing because it would be nice to see our children play in the gym where we played and Dell's banner is hanging," Sonya says. "But we knew Bob McKillop could bring out in Stephen the things God had put in him and would challenge him but still nurture him on and off the court to be a good, godly man. A lot of Division I schools were supposed to have a great ability to assess talent, but they missed his. We prayed about it. We said, 'Father, close the doors you don't want him to go into,' and Tech's door was closed. Then -- bam! -- He said Davidson!"

The Currys, who still have a Virginia Tech pinwheel in the front yard of their house in Charlotte, used to attend Hokies basketball games regularly. But since Tech balked on offering Stephen a full scholarship, they haven't been once.

CURRY AND DAVIDSON are aware they'll have plenty of challenges this season as they try to top last year's Elite Eight run and 23--0 record against SoCon opponents. But they don't shy away from talk of a return to Detroit, the site of the 2009 Final Four. A week after the loss to Kansas, the 11 returning players composed a five-page manifesto -- titled Let's Get Better -- in which they spelled out their off-season plans to improve their skills, diets and academics. "Right then you knew: Wow, we've got something special," says McKillop. "We talk all the time about our quest to be a shining star, not a shooting star. Gonzaga is the one clear example for us: They have been consistent for a decade."

Curry, too, faces a major adjustment as he shifts from shooting guard to point guard following the graduation of NCAA assist leader Jason Richards. At Nash's camp Curry probed the two-time MVP's brain about how he reads ball screens, and he drew raves at LeBron's camp -- not least from NBA scouts -- for the way he ran the point and continued drilling outside shots. (In one scrimmage Curry hit a three-pointer to beat a team that included James and Paul.) The goal was to show he's capable of being an NBA playmaker, even if he'd prefer to be known as a hybrid. "I like combo guard better, just because I'm not strictly a point guard," Curry says. "I think I'll play a lot of quality minutes at the point, just in a shooting guard's way."

If you ask LeBron, though, he thinks Curry can do just fine as a two guard in the pros. "He never stops moving on the offensive end. That's the key," James says. "In our league there's a lot of standing around, but guys like Rip Hamilton who can keep moving it's hard to guard them. [Curry] can shoot the lights out, and his basketball IQ is really high." But what about Curry's wiry frame? Can it stand up to the rigors of the NBA? "If you can play, you can play," says James. "It's as simple as that."

Then again, isn't that the lesson we've already learned from Wardell Stephen Curry II? That blanket assumptions and first impressions aren't everything? McKillop likes to tell the story of Curry's freshman debut, when the coach kept him in the game against Eastern Michigan despite his 13 turnovers. "I was a double double machine back then," cracks Curry. "But that was probably the best thing Coach did for me, to stick with me and give me more confidence."

The next day Curry torched Michigan for 32 points. He hasn't stopped scoring since.

 

[jamesonnt]

Deve is nice .. at times.

Most of the time he's $$+%$*$ outta control though

 

[allen3xis]

Selby was never gona stay in the area. Everyone knew it.

..and I think it'll be interesting how recruits take to things when the offense is opened up this year.

..I want Gary at UMD as long as possible. Hopefully that title buys him more years....cause lord knows a good coach could pull some serious talent their way..

..Devo

...best left hand in hoops.

 

[wildkycat]

 

[allen3xis]

The oldest looking HS Sophomore ever


September 22, 2008
[h1]Wilson picks up second Big East offer[/h1]
Jerry Meyer
Rivals.com Basketball Recruiting

Talk about it in Hoya Premium Court
One of the nation's better 2011 guard prospects Derrick Wilsonof Lakeville (Conn.) Hotchkiss School has picked up another Big East offer.

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[/td] [/tr][tr][td]Wilson is a physical guard.[/td] [/tr][/table]Wilson, who has already received offers from Rutgers and Xavier, picked up a second Big East offer from Syracuse according toHotchkiss head coach Fred Benjamin.

Coach Benjamin also noted that St. John's, Stanford and Texas are showing strong interest in the 6-foot-1, 185-pound point guard.

With Wilson and five-star 2010 prospect Jason Morris on the roster, theHotchkiss School has had some heavy traffic for open gyms. So far Clemson, Stanford, Syracuse, Georgia Tech, Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, UConn, UMass,Brown, Stony Brook and Holy Cross have attended an open gym.

Boston College, Texas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Memphis, Wake Forest, Duke and Penn are expected to attend open gym in the coming days.

Wilson, who ran with the New York Gauchos 16-under squad, averaged 14 points, seven assists, five rebounds and four steals per game during his


...

And guess what....Duke and G'Town on a recruit..

September 18, 2008 - Not long ago, Quinn Cook was featured onHoyaReport.com (see Mending Cook Poised For Huge Year), anarticle that detailed the Class of 2011 guard's rehabilitation from a meniscus injury to his left knee. Cook, who stands 6'0" and 165 pounds, alsoshared the status of his recruitment.

This evening, Quinn provided updates on the above, as well as detailed a recent unofficial visit to Georgetown.

"It was real good" said Cook, of his trip to The Hilltop last weekend. "I liked it all. We got up there around 10:30 (am), they showed usaround. I saw the guys workout, and then we went back home".

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[/td] [/tr][tr][td]i95Ballerz.com[/td] [/tr][tr][td]

[/td] [/tr][tr][td]Quinn Cook in DC Assault gear.[/td] [/tr][/table]Accompanying Cook was his coach at DeMatha Catholic High School, Mike Jones, along with fellow Class of 2011student athlete Mikeal Hopkins; a classmate at DeMatha, the 6'10" Hopkins is an emerging pivot player with good shot blocking instincts. He is someoneto watch going forward.

Before his sophomore season begins, Cook plans more 'unofficials' (visits that are not financed by the college being toured), specifically "UNC,Duke, NC State, and Virginia Tech".

That group more or less mirrors Quinn's list of favorites, a grouping that includes not only G'Town, but "Duke, Virginia Tech, UNC, Tennessee, andTexas".

Having just returned to his family's Bowie, MD home from a DeMatha workout, one he indicated was attended by coaches from "Texas, Virginia Tech,Marymount, Wyoming, Fordham and Jacksonville" Quinn's knee seems to have healed. "It's good" he noted of the injury. "My firstworkout back (earlier), I was killing (dominating)".

That's bad news for DeMatha's opponents, and sweet music to the ears of colleges recruiting him.

Note: Previously, it was revealed Cook enjoys golfing, though basketball prohibits it in high school. Quinn shared he "went to the driving range the otherday, me and my Mom (Janet Cook) and my sister (Kelsey)". Though he enjoyed hitting the ball, the reason for going wasn't athletic-based, as Kelsey, atalented young lady in her own right, will soon attend the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. "Wewere spending quality time with her before she left" recalled Quinn.

 

[ricardo malta]

Jerry Meyer
Rivals.com Basketball Recruiting

Talk about it in Hoya Premium Court
One of the nation's better 2011 guard prospects Derrick Wilson of Lakeville (Conn.) Hotchkiss School has picked up another Big East offer.

[table][tr][td]

[/td] [td]

[/td] [/tr][tr][td]

[/td] [/tr][tr][td]Wilson is a physical guard.[/td] [/tr][/table]Wilson, who has already received offers from Rutgers and Xavier, picked up a second Big East offer from Syracuse according to Hotchkiss head coach Fred Benjamin.

Coach Benjamin also noted that St. John's, Stanford and Texas are showing strong interest in the 6-foot-1, 185-pound point guard.

With Wilson and five-star 2010 prospect Jason Morris on the roster, the Hotchkiss School has had some heavy traffic for open gyms. So far Clemson, Stanford, Syracuse, Georgia Tech, Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, UConn, UMass, Brown, Stony Brook and Holy Cross have attended an open gym.

Boston College, Texas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Memphis, Wake Forest, Duke and Penn are expected to attend open gym in the coming days.

Wilson, who ran with the New York Gauchos 16-under squad, averaged 14 points, seven assists, five rebounds and four steals per game during his
I'll get a chance to see dude a bunch this upcoming season.

 

[ThaxbyChamblis]

Originally Posted by Ricardo Malta

I'll get a chance to see dude a bunch this upcoming season.

In the Lakeville 30 and up rec league?

 

[allen3xis]

PC's Curry ready to run revamped Friars

Monday, September 22, 2008 | PrintEntry

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Sharaud Curry heard the rumblings that his Providence College coaches were in jeopardy of losing their jobs.

But there was nothing Curry could do about it. He was hurt and he couldn't come back soon enough to make a difference for the 2007-08 PC team that wasin dire need of a point guard.

"I couldn't help, it was real tough, I wanted to help, but I couldn't, it was a tough time to watch all of it," Curry said.

Curry played 36.4 minutes a game for the Friars in 2006-07. He averaged 15.3 points per game, dished out 120 assists and had 97 turnovers and 34 steals. Hewas named All-Big East honorable mention.

He sat out the first nine games of last season with a stress fracture in his right foot. He finally tried to play against Sacred Heart on Dec. 19 but lastedonly eight minutes. He didn't play again the rest of the season.

"I just kept playing on it and then I broke it," Curry said. "I tried to let it heal on its own. We thought I could do that and then comeback [later in the season]. But it was too painful for me to play. So we shut it down.

"I was working out and then it broke again and so I had to have surgery. I was told I should have had the surgery right away but I didn't have ituntil March."

At that point it was too late to save coach Tim Welsh's job. Not having an experienced point guard for a team of shooters made it extremely difficultfor the Friars to get any real flow last season.

"It was tough because I felt a big responsibility for this team and our goals were set beginning the season [to make the NCAAs]," said Curry, whohas two seasons of eligibility remaining. "I was trying to rush back to play and it was just frustrating to see your friends, my brothers, and see themafter losses. It hurt me. I wanted to be there to help then."

Curry had surgery in March around the time that Welsh was fired. He was anxious to find out who the next coach would be. He thought it would be GeorgeMason's Jim Larranaga but then was thrilled when he heard it was Drake's Keno Davis. Curry said he followed the college basketball season and was wellaware of Davis' success at Drake, especially his reliance on 3-point shooting and scoring plenty of points.

Teammate Geoff McDermott said having Curry back makes a huge difference and is the reason the Friars are confident they will contend for a top spot in theBig East. But Curry is being cautious.

"We have a lot of talent, but it's raw talent and [Davis] still has to develop [us] to where we should be. We have a lot of work to do," Currysaid. "We want to be at the top of the Big East this year and I think we have the talent to do it. We have the experience and now it's about us comingtogether and doing it."

Curry had been participating in individual workouts this month and found himself just "running around" a lot. He said he's anxious to play buthe needs to take it easy over the next month.

"It was a very humbling experience getting hurt and sitting out and I don't want anything freaky to happen," Curry said. "I'm morehungry now. I just can't wait to play."

In their nonconference schedule, the Friars are loaded with eight home games. But there are a few potential traps, like CAA co-favorite Northeastern to openthe season Nov. 15 and dangerous but must-win rivalry games against in-state Brown (Dec. 3) and Rhode Island (Dec. 6). The one true road game is at BostonCollege (Dec. 20).

But the Friars' nonconference schedule will be scrutinized by what happens at the Anaheim Classic on Nov. 27-30. The first-round matchup against Baylor,a possible preseason top-25 team, could be one of the most important pre-conference tournament first-round games. PC will need that one to advance to possiblyplay Arizona State (which plays Charlotte) in the second round. The rest of the field includes possible NCAA teams Saint Mary's, Wake Forest and UTEP (CalState-Fullerton is in it as well) -- and it could provide plenty of critical power-rating points. This is a classic case of how playing the right teams in thisevent could prove to be important come March.

In Big East play the Friars face Villanova twice, but didn't catch a break in having to go to Connecticut and Louisville for two of their conferenceroad games. That's why picking off at least two quality wins among four games away from the Dunkin' Donuts Center (three in Anaheim and one at BC) willbe critical to a possible NCAA bid as long as there aren't any embarrassments at home.

 

[rellbettablues]

I don't think anyone can argue about 'Cuse having a weak OOC schedule this year. They will play Florida in the O'Reilly CBE Classic and if they winthey will play the winner of Kansas/Washington.

Eric Devendorf was granted another year of eligibility.

No date has been set on the sexual assault trial of Rick Jackson and Scoop Jardine.

 

[allen3xis]

How has Scoop not been kicked out yet?

It's not like he's much of a player.

 

[allen3xis]

'Hoops' Weiss Wooden candidates..

Here's a list of the names I just submitted to the Wooden award committee for its pre-season Top 50 list:

Blake Griffin, Oklahoma; Damion James, Texas; Austin Daye, Gonzaga; Wayne Ellington, UNC; Tyler Hansbrough, UNC; Gerald Henderson, Duke; Stephon Jackson, UTEP;Robert Vaden, UAB; Jerel McNeal, Marquette; Conner Atchley, Texas; Curtis Jerrells, Baylor; Lee Lyons, Missouri; Lorenzo Wade, San Diego State; MarcusThornton, LSU; A.J. Abrams, Texas; Jimmy Baron, Rhode Island; Jon Brockman, Washington; Derrick Brown, Xavier; DeJuan Blair, Pitt; Jeff Adrien, UConn; EarlClark, Louisville; Stephen Curry, Davidson; Tyrese Rice, BC; Taj Gibson, USC; Sherron Collins, Kansas; Chase Budinger, Arizona; Sam Young, Pitt; HasheemThabeet, UConn; Jordan Hill, Arizona; Patrick Patterson, Kentucky; Tyler Smith, Tennessee; DaJuan Summers, Georgetown; Scottie Reynolds, Villanova; JeffPendergraph, Gonzaga; A.J. Ogilvy, Vanderbilt; Patrick Mills, St. Mary's; E'Twaun Moore, Purdue; Raymar Morgan, Michigan State; Eric Maynor, VCU; JackMcClinton, Miami; Ty Lawson, UNC; Luke Harangody, Notre Dame; James Harden, Arizona State; Darren Collison, UCLA; Nick Calathes, Florida; Antonio Anderson,Memphis; Jerome Jordan, Tulsa; Dionte Christmas, Temple; Terrence Williams, Louisville and Grievis Vasquez, Maryland.

 

[rellbettablues]

Originally Posted by allen3xis

How has Scoop not been kicked out yet?

It's not like he's much of a player.

I guess there is a 3 strike rule. Surprised he hasn't been brought in front of Judicial Affairs yet.

I guarantee he gets kicked out before the year is over. Moron. I wish I had the opportunity to play ball and go to a top 50 university for free.

 

[seymore cake]

(Mike Lowry) #*%+ _ You Atleast 40!!! (Mike Lowry)

 

[ricardo malta]

In the Lakeville 30 and up rec league?
Nah, the CO-ED league with Mrs. Clark.


I'm puttin' her on the blocks where she can go after loose balls.

 

[allen3xis]

Nah, the CO-ED league with Mrs. Clark.