Florida International: Thomas Rattles Recruiting Scene With Commitment From Ferguson

Dominique Ferguson, a 6-8 forward ranked among the top 20 recruits for the class of 2010, announced that he will attend Florida International, according to FOX Sports.com’s Jeff Goodman. New coach Isiah Thomas pulled off a major recruiting coup, beating Indiana, Kentucky and Arizona, among others, in Ferguson’s recruitment. He managed to convince Ferguson to forgo a major conference team to play for a Sun Belt Conference squad.

“This is a huge get for FIU. It’s pretty unheard of for a mid-level program to go in and get a guy that’s currently ranked in the top 20 to 25. Huge get and another addition to an already strong class,” said Evan Daniels, Scout.com’s national recruiting analyst.

“I think the biggest thing that stands out is his versatility and the things he can do not only in the post, but also off the dribble.”

NCAA: Board of Directors Ponders New Academic Rule for Freshmen

The NCAA Board of Directors might require academically challenged incoming freshmen to attend summer school before they can play in the fall, according to an Associated Press report. The proposal under consideration would require such players to take six credit hours of classes during the summer, and they would need to earn at least three credit hours to be eligible to play in the fall. Another proposal would let players participate in athletic activities for eight hours per week while they attend summer school.

Old Spice Classic Has Tasty Slate of Thanksgiving Day Games

According to local12.com, the Old Spice Classic, taking place from Nov. 26-29 and featuring 12 games, has its field of participants: Alabama, Baylor, Marquette, Creighton, Florida State, Iona, Michigan and Xavier.

The first round will be played on Thanksgiving Day and will feature Creighton facing Michigan (12 p.m.), Xavier battling Marquette (2 p.m.), Alabama meeting Baylor (6:30 p.m.) and Florida State taking on Iona (9 p.m.).

The two teams who go undefeated through the tournament will meet in the championship game Nov. 27.

EA Sports Maui Invitational Field and Match Ups Set

According to an AP report, the eight-team Maui Invitational has its brackets ready, and it will be Arizona vs. Wisconsin and Colorado vs. Gonzaga on one side and Maryland vs. Chaminade and Cincinnati vs. Vanderbilt in the other.

Teams will play first-round games Nov. 23. The championship game will be played two days after. Division II Chaminade hosts the tournament, which is sponsored by EA Sports.

North Carolina won the event in 2008.

Florida: Israeli Guard Becomes Gator Student

Israeli guard Nimrod Tishman is officially a Gator student and might soon join the Florida basketball team, according to Kevin Brockway of the Gainesville Sun.

Tishman and the Gators are waiting for the NCAA Clearinghouse to verify Tishman’s amateur status after he made a name for himself in Israeli leagues. He recently averaged 18.6 points, 4.2 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game at the Under-18 European Championships.

As Brockway mentions, the Gators could use another guard in the backcourt after Nick Calathes left for the NBA and coach Billy Donovan struck out on the recruiting trail with the top prospects.

Florida has just one true point guard on scholarship, sophomore Erving Walker. The Gators failed on attempts to land point guard recruits John Wall, Eric Bledsoe and Lamont Jones this spring. Wall and Bledsoe both ended up at SEC East rival Kentucky. Jones went to Arizona.

UNC Greensboro: Spartans Hire Oleksiak as Operations Director

UNC Greensboro coach Mike Dement has hired Kevin Oleksiak to be his director of basketball operations, according to a university release. Oleksiak is a former Spartan and played in France last season. This position will be his first coaching job.

“We are excited that Kevin has agreed to join our staff,” said Dement. “He played some overseas but now has become interesred in coaching. I think he has a bright future. He certainly can be very valuable in that he can pass on many lessons learned from his recent playing days here and in the SoCon.”

A native of Abbington, PA, Oleksiak scored 1,015 points in his UNCG career, ranking No. 15 all-time on the Spartan career scoring list. He is in the top 10 in steals, three-point attempts, three-pointers made, and free throw percentage.

Louisville: Former Prosecutor to Represent Woman Charged With Extorting Pitino

A woman charged with trying to extort money from Louisville coach Rick Pitino was appointed a former federal prosecutor to defend her after her previous attorney quit her case because of “irreconcilable differences” with her, an AP report states.

Karen Cunagin Sypher, who pleaded not guilty to the charges, is accused of demanding college tuition for her children, her house to be paid off and $10 million. Her attorney, Thomas Clay, quit July 9 without citing an exact cause.

The ex-prosecutor and new legal representative of Sypher, James Earhart, used to work in the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Louisville.

East Tennessee State: Bucs Honor Bartow’s Success With Extension

East Tennessee State coach Murry Bartow has been given a two-year contract extension, according to a university release. Bartow’s deal now runs through the 2013-14 season.

Bartow has averaged almost 20 wins a year during his six seasons at the helm of East Tennessee State. He’s got an all-time best .621 winning percentage and has led the Bucs to Atlantic Sun Conference championships in 2004, 2007 and 2009. East Tennessee State also participated in the NCAA Tournament in 2004 and 2009 and in the NIT in 2007.

“We’re looking forward to Coach Bartow guiding our program for a number of years to come,” ETSU Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Dave Mullins said. “He has taken our program to a level of national recognition with multiple trips to postseason tournaments including two trips to the NCAAs, and he has reached a level of consistent success that we believe should be rewarded. As our team showed with its play in the NCAAs against No. 1-seeded Pittsburgh, Coach Bartow has recruited the type of skilled players that can allow our program to compete against the nation’s elite teams.”

Kentucky: Calipari Ditches Walk-ons

Kentucky coach John Calipari said he will reduce the number of walk-on players returning to the team for the upcoming season, according to an announcement on his Web site Friday.

In my 17 years of college coaching, I have very rarely had walk-ons and when I have it’s usually been another student-athlete, who could help us in practice or game situations because of his size, speed or skill level. I find my practices run at optimum performance when there are 12-13 players. Any more than that and we’re not able to accomplish what I want in each practice.

Believe me, I appreciate the work and effort that goes into being a walk-on.

In meeting with the most recent group of walk-ons, we let all of them know how much the UK family appreciated their hard work and dedication to Wildcat basketball. Any of the former walk-ons who want to transfer and try and play elsewhere will have my staff’s full cooperation in helping them.

According to Calipari’s message and a blog post by Chris Diggs at the Courier-Journal in Kentucky, Calipari will not bring back Adam Delph, Matt Schebenske and Dwight Perry, while Mark Krebs might remain with the team as the lone walk-on player.

Calipari arrived as Kentucky’s new coach in spring after leaving Memphis.

The move has generated varying, strong reactions among Wildcat fans.

An anonymous commenter on the Courier-Journal said:

It is Unfortunate for these guys, but the reality of it is that Coach Cal has a much different way on running his practices than BCG. School teachers will tell you that better quality teaching happens with smaller class sizes. And basketball coaching is no different. Calipari has been honest about it since the beginning (“I am not here to babysit anyone”…”My history is of having one walk-on if any”) so I have no problem with it.

I wish these men the best and I hope they cherish their past experience with the program.

jimlowe7 said:

Another anonymous commenter said:

Part of playing at Kentucky is realizing the players whose hard work made the program one of the top if not the top basketball program in the country. You need guys whose passion for Kentucky shows day in and day out REGARDLESS OF TALENT and remind some of the scholarship guys what a PRIVILIGE it is to play basketball at the University of Kentucky. If he Calipari treats UK as if it is a NBA Developmental League, UK won’t be hanging up to many banners. I think Calipari does not truely understand the passion of Kentucky Basketball Fans.

maria offered an indictment of the fans criticizing the move:

All things being equal if these current walk ons had to play if would not make Big blue Nation happy for long.

Yes they would be scrappy but they would not excel.

Just another thing that had to change to actually get to were the fans keep wanting to go.

What do you think? Is it wrong to dismiss hard-working players in the name of competition? Submit a comment below to weigh in.

Air Force: Reynolds Taps Air Force Prep School Assistant

Former U.S. Air Force Academy Prep School assistant coach Capt. Tom Bellairs will join the staff of Air Force head coach Jeff Reynolds as an assistant, according to a Mountain West Conference release.

Bellairs is a former Falcon and No. 3 on the team’s all-time rebounding list with 694. He graduated in 2003. After college, he joined the Prep School for a season, helped them to a 31-3 record and was selected to the All-Air Force and All-Armed Forces teams. He then moved on to work for the Los Angeles Air Force Base for the next five years.

Marist: University Sues Former Coach for Breach of Contract

Marist officials have filed a lawsuit against former coach Matt Brady, now James Madison’s coach, for breach of contract related to the recruitment of former Marist players, according to USA Today’s Brent Foster. In Brady’s contract with Marist, signed in 2007, the university required:

If the contract were terminated for any reason (including going to another school) he would have to turn over all basketball records and files, end all contacts with Marist recruits, not offer a scholarship to current Marist players or any player he or his staff visited or recruited.

Brady left Marist for James Madison in 2008, and the lawsuit alleges that he recruited four Marist players to join him. Three of those players were on James Madison’s roster this past season.

A legal expert said this case is unusual and could be difficult to win for Marist.

Gary Roberts, dean of law at Indiana, said he had never heard of a clause in a contract causing this kind of dispute before, but said such a case lcould set the stage for similar situations.

“It’s possible,” Roberts said. “I think a lot of people will see how this turns out.”

Roberts said it will be hard for Marist to prove its case because the school has suffered no financial loss. Sullivan said the university is seeking monetary damages of “no set amount.”

East Tennessee State: Coy Dies in Car Crash

East Tennessee State rising sophomore Seth Coy died July 29 in a car crash in Kentucky when his car hydroplaned and flipped, according to a report on Cincinnati’s WCPO Web site. A police report states that Coy was not wearing a seat belt and was ejected from the vehicle in the crash. Coy averaged 2.9 points and 2.0 rebounds in 10.8 minutes per game as a freshman last season.

Atlantic 10: New Logo for New Tournament Format

The Atlantic 10 has unveiled a new logo for the conference’s tournament, and the Press of Atlantic City’s Susan Lulgjuraj posted the image on her blog. Atlantic City, N.J., hosts the Atlantic 10 conference championship, which will run from March 12-14 in 2010. Unlike past years, the tournament’s opening-round games will occur on campus. The top four teams of the 12-team field receive byes to the quarterfinals, which is the first round played in Atlantic City. The other eight teams will play at the home court of the better-seeded team.

California Mandates Part-Time Coaches

California officials and an employees union accepted a proposal to institute furloughs for all public university faculty and staff members to help close the state’s $584 million deficit, according USA Today’s Jack Carey. Furloughs — or mandatory unpaid days off — will affect coaching staffs of all public university teams, such as California, Fresno State, UCLA and USC. Faculty and staff members will take a furlough day twice a month, and universities plan to rotate the days to accommodate team needs.

University of California spokeswoman Leslie Sepuka said some flexibility is likely: “This is not going to be a one-size-fits-all program due to varying local needs.”

NCAA Joins Lawsuit to Block Sports Gambling in Delaware

The NCAA has joined the major professional sports leagues — MLB, the NBA, the NFL, the NHL — in a lawsuit that strives to prevent Delaware from allowing single-game bets, according to the Associated Press. In the lawsuit, the groups assert that betting would:

“Irreparably harm professional and amateur sports by fostering suspicion and skepticism that individual plays and final scores of games may have been influenced by factors other than honest athletic competition.”

Delaware hopes to start offering single-game sports betting in September with the start of the NFL season. State officials decided to institute the betting plan to help fund state programs. The state’s plan looks to take advantage of a loophole in a 1992 congressional ban on sports betting. Congress allowed Delaware, Nevada, Montana and Oregon to continue sports betting program that were already in place between 1976 and 1990. The NCAA and professional sports leagues object to Delaware’s plan because the state never offered single-game sports betting during that period and is basically starting a new betting product.

Memphis: Former PG Burks Shot in Stomach 

Former Memphis Tigers point guard Antonio Burks was shot in the stomach during a robbery July 20, according to ESPN.com news services. He was said to be in critical condition after undergoing surgery that night.

Burks, who also played for the Memphis Grizzlies, had internal bleeding after he and four other men were robbed in the backyard of a Memphis house where he was reportedly watching a dice game. Another man, Vincent Williams, was also shot in the stomach and in critical condition. Burks is 29.

Memphis police arrested a 16-year-old and charged with him accessory after the fact, according CBSsports.com. Police officials said they are close to closing the case.

St. John’s: Mason Jr. Cleared to Return for Fifth Season

According to a St. John’s release, swingman Anthony Mason Jr. has been granted a medical hardship by the Big East Conference and will be part of the team during the 2009-10 season, his fifth and last with the Red Storm.

Mason Jr. averaged 14 points in three games during 2008-09 before an MRI revealed a torn peroneal tendon in his right foot. In early June, after surgery and rehabilitation, he was cleared to return to the courts. He averaged 14 points per game during 2007-08.

“I am really grateful to the Big East and St. John’s for granting me another year to play,” Mason Jr. said. “Having been out for almost the whole year, I watched and learned a lot. I can’t wait to go out and perform with my team on the court this season.”

Memphis: Prize Recruit Skips College for Foreign Pros

Another skilled high school player is skipping college and going pro overseas instead, according to a FoxSports.com report. The “victim” of the decision this time: Memphis.

Latavious Williams, a 6-8 athlete, will not be joining a Tigers team he still wasn’t academically qualified to play for in the first place. Instead, the 19-year-old will be looking to sign with a team in another country. Williams was ranked No. 17 by Rivals.com. Scouts.com, however, dropped him out of its rankings altogether partly because of academics.

There’s no imminent deal yet although there’s been conversations with several teams, said Williams’ adviser, Trey Godfrey. Williams expects to command a six-figure salary that will give him a chance to help his family out.

“He made the decision when taking into account his family situation,” said Godfrey, who is a certified agent. “He wants to put himself in a situation where he can help out and he saw this as a good opportunity.”

West Coast: Success in Vegas Makes Everyone Want to Come Back

The West Coast Conference men’s and women’s basketball championships will keep their location of the Orleans Arena through 2012 after the conference and the venue reached a three-year contract extension last week, according to a conference release.

The 2009 WCC championship, the first-ever at a neutral site, set conference records for total championship attendance (33,320) and single-session championship attendance (7,845). It’s no wonder the WCC wasted no time in making the deal with the Las Vegas arena.

“I am very pleased that the West Coast Conference and The Orleans Arena have agreed to extend our partnership for the next three years,” said Jamie Zaninovich, Commissioner of the West Coast Conference. “Thanks to the efforts of The Orleans management and staff, our 2009 basketball championship was an overwhelming success and we expect to improve upon the experience for our student-athletes, coaches and fans with this contract extension.”

Buffalo: Wolfley Joins the Bulls

Rising sophomore Derek Wolfley has decided to transfer from Iona to Buffalo and will have three years of eligibility starting in the 2010-11 season, according to a university release. Wolfley averaged 1.0 point and 0.9 rebounds per game as a freshman with the Gaels. Coach Reggie Witherspoon said he’s glad to bring in Wolfley, who played high school basketball in western New York.

A Western New York native, Wolfley is a 2008 graduate of Attica Central High School where he was a four-year standout for the Blue Devils. He is Attica’s all-time leading point scorer, with 1,474 career points. He added 932 rebounds, dished out 260 assists and recorded 233 career blocks. As a senior, he averaged 23.8 points, 15.4 rebounds, 4.1 assists and 3.4 blocks leading his team to a 15-6 record and the No. 3 seed in NYSPHSAA Section V.

“Derek is a hard-working Western New York kid,” Witherspoon said. “We’re glad that after he decided to leave Iona, he wanted to join our program.”