It’s looking more and more like Class of 2011 commit James McAdoo may be coming to UNC a year early, which, as Bart mentioned below, turns Carolina’s current recruiting class from “great” to “just plain stoopid.” Additionally, SI’s Luke Winn and ESPN’s Eamonn Brennan each note that McAdoo could very well become the face of an early-entry trend should he decide to go to Carolina, as more recruits explore the idea. Winn also does a great job of disarming the basketball purists who might be crapping their collective pants at the idea of a bunch of high school juniors going to college, drawing parallels to McAdoo and Duke great Mike Gminski, who graduated high school in three years. Winn says ultimately, for players who already are competing at an elite level and are good enough students to warrant graduating high school early, there should be no concern for their futures:
During a week when the No. 1 obsession in the college hoops media is the high school transcript of former Kentucky guard Eric Bledsoe, and whether it was possible for him to go from a 1.9 GPA at the end of his junior year to a 2.5 by graduation, it doesn’t seem reasonable to fret about the future of a high school junior with a 3.9 GPA and a desire to expedite his final core courses in a transparent fashion. There’s a reason a wave of elite prep stars with NBA potential didn’t follow the Gminski route between 1976 and 2010: It required exceptional skills in the classroom more than it did on the court. If McAdoo can make the jump, we shouldn’t worry about him. We should praise him.
- In case you hadn’t already heard, Roy Williams recently sat some of his players down and gave them some guidelines on what is and isn’t appropriate to post on Twitter. The final straw may have been point guard Larry Drew starting up the hashtag #theyleftbecause after the Wear twins announced they were transferring, tweeting: “#theyleftbecause I still couldn’t tell them apart” and “because they found out they would have to room with (Tyler) zeller…again.” I hardly feel like that warranted censoring, but I guess it’s best to reign the kids in before they get themselves in real trouble - as several people noticed when this news came out, I shudder to think what Reggie Bullock would have done with a Twitter account at UNC given that he’s already called Coach K a ratface during the McD’s All-American game coverage.
- Benn Wineka over at The Rafters gives the most comprehensive summary I’ve ever seen on UNC’s shoe choices this past season, including a game-by-game breakdown per player of what kicks the Heels were sporting. I would make a joke about Benn having too much free time, but I read the article all the way through and clicked on a lot of the links to see pictures, so I’m pretty sure I have no room to talk.
- Former Duke commit Carrick Felix landed with Herb Sendek at Arizona State, who could make it back to the Big Dance with the talent he managed to land at the last second. Here’s hoping it goes better for Herb than the last time he managed to nab a highly-touted Blue Devil signee.
- The basketball world said goodbye to legend and icon John Wooden this week, and we at Blue vs Blue join in offering our condolences. There were so many good pieces written about him this week, but these 10 anecdotes you may never have heard before about Wooden was among the favorite things I read.
- Finally, as some of you may know (and even fewer of you probably care), the World Cup kicks off this week in South Africa. There may not be any Tar Heels or Blue Devils among USA’s 23-man roster, but we’ll be pulling for our boys all the same. If any of you care to join a Blue vs Blue bracket-picking group for the World Cup, just click here and enter the password “bluevsblue” to join.
