Weekend rewind

CSTV Recruiting reports that Bob Knight beat out Huggie-Bear and Matt Drama of SMU for the services of a touted 2007 Texan. Others getting new verbals: Charlotte, New Mexico State, Temple and new coach Fran D, Tulane, UCLA (2008 recruit) and UNLV. Meanwhile Oregon State is trying to become Serbia-West with two more Serbian recruits :-) For all the details visit the Bill Hodges daily report at CSTV

Gary Parrish of CBS Sports is becoming another good source of recruiting information. His latest post has a paragraph on the new Charlotte 49ers committment. Also talks about Billy Donovan trying to impress super-forward Patrick Patterson by inviting him to watch the Gators receive their national basketball championship rings in front of 90,000 people. Patterson is considering Florida, Wake Forest, Duke, Kentucky, Virginia and instate power West Virginia. Anything but Duke please!!! And journeyman prepster Roburt Sallie trying to become eligible (now at Nebraska)

Daily Recruits

Big story at CBS Sports! Gary Parrish delves into the glamorous world of sneaker camps. The Godfather hates the Pumps. As Reebok and Adidas merged, they will eventually merge their grassroots branches, and that can be trouble as the Godfather and the Pumps have to co-exist under the same umbrella.

InsideHoops has a couple of updates on Kyle Singler, expected to visit Kansas, Duke and Arizona in the next few days. I have this bad feeling Duke is going to grab this player, despite them having signed Taylor Queen. More stories linked there: Oregon State's comings and goings, Paul Hewitt's pipeline from Memphis (the city).

CSTV Recruiting reports a series of transfers/dismissals, some may be surprising such as Nate Minnoy. Others affected by such moves: Iowa State, Tennessee, and USC.

The New York Post has a story on former Carzodo star Theo Davis ending up at Gonzaga. Will he be there by next April? :-)

Sports Magazines!

A great way to catch-up with sports while away from the TV and the Internet, while at the same time supporting this blog:

Sports Magazines

Hoops Magazines

RSS feed for this blog

The RSS feed for this blog is right here :-)

Talent by State (Sportings News/Rivals)

Sporting News in collaboration with Rivals.com has some 2006 rankings available. Not only they post the Top 150 players of 2006 and 2007, but they also break them down by position and by state. For example, here are the Top California recruits of 2006 according to Rivals.com

Looking at that list reveals a few things:

UCLA was desperate for big men these year, but Roy Williams was able to take TWO So.Cal big men from under the nose of Ben Howland. A Final Four apperance later UCLA managed to strike back with Kevin Love but nobody else (they lost Marco Spica even)

In-state schools continue to struggle against the national and regional powers with the exception of the Lopez twins.

Mid-week Recap

CSTV reports the latest recruiting news. Well, the rich get richer as Texas gets two more, Steve Alford grabs one, with three ACC teams also getting a 2007 verbal. Meanwhile Iowa State plans ahead with a 2008 verbal. And two "old" faces at new places: Well traveled forward Theo Davis (once coached by Clark Francis's radio show sidekick Ron Neclario at Cardozo) is ending up at the ZAGS and will play this upcoming season. Yes, Theo Davis to Gonzaga!. The Zags need bigs to deliver this season, especially since Burgess and Downs won't be eligible until the 2nd semester. Marco Spica thought he was heading to UCLA but academics got in the way. Now he is heading to Central Michigan. New Orleans rebuilds with six new players, a variety of transfers. Two more players take advantages of the graduate-senior "free agent" transfer rule, Vance Walhberg's son joins him at Pepperdine (from St Mary's) and Tim Tillman (Drexel to New Orleans).

Gary Parrish rounds up the latest recruiting news as well. He also talks about the next target for Texas, forward Anthony Randolph (no relation to the former Duke whiner/flake). Among others chasing him are LSU, Georgetown, Bill Self and the new Cincy. Also covered is the visit of Derrick Rose and Eric Gordon to Indiana last weekend. Bad news for Bruce Webber who may have thought he had his next great great guard duo (D. Rose/E. Gordon; Dee Brown/Deron Williams). If Gordon is indeed as good as gone, Webber will have to rebuild/rethink and the fans won't be very happy.

Some more recruiting coverage thru local newspapers at InsideHoops

TV alert Fox College Sports will be showing a Wisconsin all-star basketball game at the HS level in the next few days. Not sure when this was recorded but it may have some Division 1 recruits/prospects. Check local listings.

Weekend Update

Gary Parrish thinks that Kelvin Sampson punishment had something to do with in-state star Jeff Teague verballing at Wake Forest instead.

CSTV has a report on the Elite 24 Hoops Classics by Bryan Graham held at the world famous Rucker Park in NYC. This was sneaker-camp-agnostic, so lots of high profile recruits played. MVP honors were shared by Huggins-bound Michael Beasly, Arizona-bound (sort of) Jerryd Bayless, SoCal AllStar Brandon Jennings and JJ Hickson out of a total of 24 players (which explains the Elite 24 name!).

Ken Cross at Lindy's Sports has a story on Big East recruiting, including Calhoun, Pitino, Nova, W.Va and the rest of the 200-team Big East :-)

Also at Lindy's, Victoria Sun has a story on a battle between Florida and Kentucky, Tubby -vs- Billy-the-Kid for two talented forwards of 2007: JJ Hickson and likely OJ Mayo teammate Patrick Patterson.

Also at Lindy's, a summer recap of Pac 10 recruiting

Gary Parrish of CBS Sports talks about whether the current process of Verbal Commitments should be changed

Gary Parrish of CBS Sports is a very busy writer! His latest story is on Recruiting at a BCS school.

Bill Hodges and CSTV have more updates: ironically a back-to-back update on OU and IU, both getting a player, an East Carolina transfer finding a new home, and a series of mid-major commits for 2006 and 2007

Just updated with a post on the Top 600 (!!!) juniors (Class of 2008) is the freebie section of Hoop Scoop.