Mid-week recap (today's theme: jaded)

Gary Parrish chimes in on the Mike Montgomery firing. My two cents: I wonder if any college will now fire its current coach so they can get Mike Montgomery. Of course this type of behavior would cause uproar at the college level since it is more about education (at least in theory), while the NBA is all business and all about winning rings.

The 144 previews continue at CHN with Rice, Miami-Ohio, and Fresneck State

Vance Wahlberg and the Pepperdine Waves continue to generate buzz with their style of play. No doubt the Mike D'Antoni offense and George Karl's decision to switch to a similar offense will help generate even more buzz for Pepperdine. It looks like Gonzaga may have found a nemesis at the PR-level :-)

DeCourcy dishes on text messaging My two cents: The NCAA, comprised of people who are probably afraid to touch modern electronics, has been painfully slow in dealing with the text messaging bombardment of recruits. But when the NCAA gets its paws on text messaging, they are surely going to come up with convoluted, possibly impractical, legislation. Unless of course the neo-NCAA attitude of Myles Brand rubs off some common sense on the frozen-in-evolution committee members who historically come up with all the Orwellian "crapola" rules.

Tyrone Nelson gets reinstated to New Mexico State. If you can score and rebound, you get reinstated. If you can't, then you transfer to a Division 2 school the next day and a week later they use your scholarship to sign a JuCo or a 20 year old prep-school freshman. (jaded is today's theme)

Day 7 of Pitino practice-blogging. On top of that, there's more coverage at the Cardinals CSTV-branded web-page with audio clips (Real Audio player format) from Pitino, Palacios and T-Will (Terrence Williams). But back to the blog: In today's episode Rick Bloggino talks about his offense, the freshmen's defense (or lack thereof), Brad Gianiny's turnovers, recruiting goals (2-3 players, starting Sept 9), and a whole lot more.

Speaking of the media, USC's Tim Floyd was featured in a recent episode of Comcast Sports Net (CSN)'s Out of Bounds. He had a whole segment to himself (7 minutes) where he talked about NCAA tourney expansion. He also said that he will kick NBA first rounders out of college and into the NBA Draft if they are guaranteed first rounders because of the financial security of such a move. Is he talking to OJ Mayo and Billy Walker via the media? :-)

Speaking of whom, OJ Mayo returns to his native Huntington West Virginia for the 2006-2007 high school basketball season. I'll take a wild guess here and predict that Billy Walker will follow. I wouldn't be surprised if some of their HS or AAU teammates follow along :-) And assuming this goes through, will this put the Mountaineers back in the hunt (no pun intended) for Mayo and Walker?