8/20 - Some Links, Some News

-Bill Self was rewarded with a 10 year, $30 million contract after bringing a national title to Kansas. Tom Crean was rewarded with a 10 year, $23.6 million contract after, well, bringing a clean image to Indiana? I'm not really sure what Indiana is doing adding those two extra years. Maybe, given the fact that they lost every single talented basketball player off of their team from last year, and will be led into the Crean era by Kyle Taber, the school wanted to give Crean some extra time to earn his $685,000 national championship bonus. One thing the school did change was make it much more strict in terms of recruiting violations - apparently IU can fire Crean for the slightest infraction. Side Note: Crean hired former Duke star Roshown McLeod as an assistant.

-Bad news for Mike Cook and Pitt, but good news for the rest of the Big East - the NCAA denied his request for a medical redshirt after a knee injury cut his senior season short. In order to be eligible for a redshirt, you must play in less than 30% of your team's games. Cook played in 11 of 32, or 34%.

-Ty Lawson has plead guilty to underage drinking and driving. Lawson will be sentenced to 26 hours of community service.

-Gary Parrish with an interesting piece on Oregon State coach Craig Robinson and his brother-in-law, Barack Obama.

-6'9" junior-to-be Alex Stephenson has decided that he will transfer to USC which is close to his North Hollywood home. Stephenson averaged 4.3 ppg and 4.5 rpg for UNC last season, but with Tyler Hansbrough and Deon Thompson returning, and UNC bringing in two Mickey D's freshman in the front court, Stephenson's playing time will be severely reduced.

-Lars Mikalauskas, the 6'8" Lithuanian center, has been dismissed from the Virginia basketball team by Dave Leitao. Neither will comment of the cause of the dismissal, but Leitao and Mikalauskas have had flare-ups in the past, including the coach suspending the player for an exhibition game. 6'11" Tunji Soroye will, however, return for another season.

-After Xavier landed Indiana transfer Jordan Crawford, further crowding their back court, guard Adrion Graves has asked for a release so he could pursue playing somewhere else. Graves averaged just 1.9 ppg in 34 games for the Musketeers.

-South Alabama guard Dominic Tilford, the only one of the Jaguars three talented guards returning from last year's 26-7 team, has been suspended indefinitely from the team following a cocaine possession charge he received last week in Louisville.

-Markieff Morris, an incoming freshman at the University of Kansas, has been arrested for underage drinking and, get this, shooting a BB gun out his window and hitting a woman in the arm. What a moron. I guess it probably isn't a surprise he and his twin brother (also a Kansas recruit) are still not eligible for this season.