9/9 - Some Links, Some News

-This probably won't surprise anyone, but Derrick Caracter isn't actually attending Oklahoma City University of the NAIA. It appears that Caracter will be enrolling at Southern Mississippi, where he will have to sit out a year before he is eligible to play. While I'm happy that Caracter has a chance to play D1 basketball again, I don't see how he is going to put in the effort of working out, staying in shape, and going to class when he is not playing for a year when he could barely do that while playing.

On the other hand, Southern Mississippi is coached by Larry Eustachy, a guy who knows a thing or two about second chances. He was the coach of Iowa State that was caught drinking at a frat party after playing a road game at Missouri. Well, he landed at Southern Mississippi and hopefully he can get through to Caracter. If he does, Southern Miss could be pretty good in 2009-2010, as they also landed Angelo Johnson, a transfer from USC.

-Look at this amazing piece of investigative journalism (sarcasm alert): college athletes that play big time sports for big time schools get (gasp) accepted into schools as "special admits" (kids that are expected to need tutoring and extra attention to graduate) at higher rates than normal students. Seriously though, look at this chart, the numbers are pretty crazy. In 2004-05, 95% of the freshman football class at California were special admits, 94% at Texas A&M.

-Kansas's Morris twins, Markieff and Marcus, were both declared academically eligible for the season, and will begin taking classes this week (class officially started August 21st). Hopefully, Markieff's legal troubles will be solved by then.

-VCU's Eric Maynor had an infected toe, which kept him out of the teams three exhibition games during their trip to the Bahamas. He'll be healthy by the time the season starts, but Maynor sitting out allowed his two sophomore backups to get experience playing with the first team.

-Adam Gore, a senior starter and returning all-Ivy performer for Cornell, tore his acl and will be out for the season, which is a huge hit to Cornell's chances of repeating as Ivy League champs. Gore did the same thing to his other acl in the first game of the 2006-07 season.

-UConn recruit Ater Majok, a 6'9" athletic, power forward, will not be eligible until at least December. Apparently, his high school, the American International School in Sydney, Australia, will not release his transcript until the rest of his classmates finish their semester as well, which means that UConn could not turn over all of his paperwork to the NCAA Clearinghouse. Since it is already the third week of classes in Storrs, it is very unlikely that Majok will be able to get eligible and enroll in classes in time to start the season with the Huskies.

-Texas point guard recruit Dogus Balbay was suspended for the first game of the upcoming season. From 2004-2006, he played in 11 games for a professional team in his native Turkey. The NCAA suspended him on a 1-for-1 basis, and he was deemed eligible in March of last year and sat out the team's final 10 games.

-Southern Illinois junior guard Josh Bone has decided to transfer, and will leave the school in December at the end of this semester.