Don't feel bad for Marquis Teague, he wanted this pressure

Rick Bozich has an interesting column up over at the Louisville Courier-Journal today.

The point of the column is that, essentially, Marquis Teague is getting an unfair amount of pressure put on him as he deals with competition from Calipari guards of the past. In case you just started watching college basketball this year, Calipari's last four point guards have spent a grand total of four years on campus, with each -- Derrick Rose, Tyreke Evans, John Wall and Brandon Knight -- ending up being pick somewhere in the top eight.

As a result, Bozich argues, Teague loses his transition period. Kentucky fans are expecting the point guard John Calipari has repeatedly referred to as a "pit bull" on the court to be just as dominating as his four predecessors from the second he steps on the Rupp Arena floor the first rime:

So far the procession has been flawless. But in fairness to Teague, please remember that “The Next” thing is risky business. Ask Curtis Hunter and Kevin Madden.

Who are Curtis Hunter and Kevin Madden? They were North Carolina recruits who were supposed to be The Next Michael Jordan. I won’t even touch the lengthy lists of the next Larry Birds or Magic Johnsons.

That’s where we are in college sports today. Players aren’t guaranteed an adjustment period, although they should be. As supremely talented as Teague is, he will likely need one. Most guys do.

On the one hand, Bozich does have a point. Since the one-and-done era kicked off with some magical freshman performances, every fan in the country is expecting the top recruit on their team's roster to develop into a star. It puts quite a bit of pressure on those players, and that pressure can manifest itself as early season struggles. Take a look at Harrison Barnes. There was so much hype surrounding his arrival to campus last season, but once he started off slowly, it took him until mid-January to finally gain back his confidence.

So yes, in general I agree with Bozich's column.

But in regards to Marquis Teague, Bozich couldn't be more wrong.

Teague knew exactly what he was getting himself into. As a junior is high school, the Indianapolis native was committed to play basketball at Louisville. But once he realized that there was like going to be an opening at Kentucky's point guard spot, he decommitted from the Cardinals and became a part of Big Blue Nation. No one forced him to make that decision. No one held a gun to his head and told him to leave one side of the UK-UL rivalry to defect to the other side.

He made that decision on his own, and he did it fully knowing the kind of pressure that gets put on Kentucky's players, particularly their freshmen point guards.

I don't feel bad for Marquis Teague at all. This is what he wanted.
Continue reading...

Shabaka Lands is out at Louisville

Anyone remember the name Shabaka Lands?

Anyone?

He was an assistant coach at Pike High School in Indianapolis -- the same high school that produced talents like Robert Vaden, Courtney Lee, Chris Thomas (Notre Dame), Jason Gardner, and Jeff Teague -- before being hired by Louisville as a program assistant. Pike's current star is Marquis Teague, a top ten talent nationally. Lands just so happened to get the job with Louisville at a time when Teague was deciding whether he should go to Louisville or Kentucky.

Pitino whiffed on Marquis Teague, so he got rid of Shabaka Lands.
(photo credit: Strait Pinkie)

Quite the coincidence, if by coincidence I mean package deal. And if by package deal, I mean legal-then-illegal-now package deal.

But there was a problem. Teague didn't want to go to Louisville. He committed to Kentucky in April, putting Lands in what had to be an uncomfortable position with the Cardinals.

A position, apparently, he no longer has. According to John Clay of the Lexington-Herald, Lands is no longer with Louisville, which comes as no surprise. Also not a surprise is the reaction of Kentucky fans to this news.

But that's not the most interesting part of the story. Rick Pitino tried to utilize a loophole -- a loophole that has since been closed -- to land a talented recruit. It didn't work, so he cut his losses and dropped his mistake. Pitino broke no rules, and did what any intelligent human being would have done. I believe they say that's being a businessman.

No, the most interesting part of this story is that the scoop goes to some random Kentucky fan named Jacob Kiper. Kiper emailed a whole bunch of bloggers and reporters (including Clay and Matt Jones of Kentucky Sports Radio) until someone took the bait and wrote about it. I think its fair to say that Kiper wanted to smear Pitino, which doesn't exactly correspond with the idea of unbiased "journalism" (That was journalism in the Twitter era, right?), but whatever.

Nice work, Jacob.
Continue reading...

Marquis Teague to announce tomorrow

Marquis Teague, a consensus top five talent in the class of 2011 and the younger brother of former Wake Forest star and current Atlanta Hawk guard Jeff Teague, will be announcing his college decision tomorrow (Thursday) at 1:30 pm.

And it is a safe bet that the entire Commonwealth of Kentucky will be eagerly awaiting Teague's decision.

Where is Marquis Teague headed?
(photo credit: IndyHoops)

The general consensus is that Teague will be choosing between Louisville and Kentucky tomorrow. He was long considered a virtual certainty to suit up for Rick Pitino. He father played for Pitino at Boston University. Pitino hired Shabaka Lands, a former assistant at Pike High School (where Teague plays) last summer. Hell, Pitino even scheduled a trip to Butler in December of 2011, meaning that Teague would be headed back to Indianapolis for what could very well be his first road game at Louisville.

But then Coach Cal got involved. And as he is known to do, Cal made enough of an impression that no one has any clue where Teague is headed.

If Pitino lose Teague to Kentucky, it could be a very bad sign for Louisville, particularly since it would be coming on the heels of five-star center Michael Chandler's decision to re-open his recruitment. And don't forget that last summer, Pitino lost Fab Melo -- a kid most believed was headed to Louisville -- to Syracuse.

Pitino has built his class around Teague, pursuing hard since day one. He has connections to the kid's family. What kind of signal would it send if he lost Teague to his school's biggest rival and the coach he has a personal rivalry against?

"Rick Pitino and his staff need [Teague]," Scout.com's Evan Daniels told the Lexington Herald. "In fact, Teague is one of the most important prospects he's recruited since he's been at Louisville. Teague's father and uncle played for him, he's spent over two years recruiting him, and his blockbuster class in 2011 was built around Teague."

If Teague commits to Louisville, the Cardinals -- who struggled this past season and may have just lost Samardo Samuels to the NBA -- would return to the top of college basketball.

If Teague joins Big Blue Nation, I think it is safe to say that John Calipari has taken over the Bluegrass State.




Continue reading...

Louisville hires Shabaka Lands

Earlier this summer, Louisville hired Ralph Willard, formerly the head coach at Holy Cross and a close friend and confidant of Rick Pitino, as their new associate head coach.

This was on the heels of Pitino's son Richard leaving for Florida (Louisville also lost two other members of their staff during the off-season).

A lot of people, including myself, questioned the intelligence of this hiring. Essentially, the thought process was that Louisville was losing one of the best young recruiters in the game with the younger Pitino leaving. The elder Pitino is an x's-and-o's mastermind, and while hiring an experienced coach like Willard to bounce ideas off of is something any coach would dream of, the consensus seemed to be that it was more important for the Cardinals to sign a coach that would bring top-tier talent into the program.

Because, when it comes down to it, having a roster full of talent is the most important aspect of coaching a college team. Great coaching will win a game, a talented roster will put banners in the rafters.

On Monday, the Cardinals may have solved part of that problem as they hired Shabaka Lands as a special assistant to the head coach.

This isn't just any ordinary signing. Lands' (who has no college coaching experience) previous job was as an assistant coach at Pike High School in Indianapolis. That just so happens to be the high school that guys like Courtney Lee, Robert Vaden, Notre Dame's Chris Thomas, and Arizona's Jason Gardner went to. Their current star: Marquis Teague, Rivals #2 recruit in the class of '11 and brother of Wake Forest star and NBA lottery pick Jeff Teague. Louisville is currently in a recruiting battle with Indiana and Kentucky, among others, for Teague's services.

Sounds a bit shady, doesn't it? Common sense would say that hiring the high school (or AAU) coach or a family member of a recruit they are targeting would in some way violate an NCAA rule, wouldn't it?

Yes.

But the practice of package deals is not only legal, it is commonplace - there are too many examples to name (starting with Kansas hiring Danny Manning's father in the mid-80's all the way up to Baylor signing John Wall's AAU coach last summer). It is just another example (in a summer full of them) of how shady and corrupt the basketball recruiting process is.

The interesting part about the situation is that Louisville may not have even needed to try and gain this edge. Teague's father, Shawn, played for Pitino at Boston University.

The signing comes of the heels of Marquis taking an official visiting Kentucky. He is expected to visit Louisville sometime in the coming month.
Continue reading...