Throwdown of the Day 4-1-08

Throwdown Posted from Takkle.com

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Does Lil' Romeo deserve a scholarship??

A lot has been made of Southern California’s decision to give a scholarship to 5-11 Beverly Hills High School guard Romeo Miller. Miller is better known as Lil’ Romeo, son of hip-hop impresario Percy Miller, who himself is better known as Master P. A recent story in the Wall Street Journal called USC coach Tim Floyd’s decision to award a scholarship to Romeo, saying that the reason why Floyd made the offer to Miller was in order to secure a commitment from highly-regarded swingman DeMar Derozan. Derozan is currently rated as the sixth best player in the country according to the TAKKLE.com/Sports Illustrated rankings. Miller and Derozan are friends and have been teammates on the summer circuit.

The names involved have made this into a controversial story, but the fact of the matter is these kinds of package deals happen all the time. Years ago, St. John’s signed marginal point guard prospect Tristan Smith hoping that this might persuade then top-rated power forward prospect Jason Fraser to play his college ball in Queens. Smith and Fraser were friends and teammates at Amityville (N.Y.) High back in 2002. The ploy didn’t work, as Fraser ended up signing with Villanova and Smith soon transferred from St. John’s. Similarly in 2000, in its efforts to land then highly-regarded guard DaJuan Wagner, Memphis coach John Calipari made his father Milt his director of basketball operations and signed Wagner’s best friend Arthur Barclay to a scholarship. Both Barclay and Wagner ended up at Memphis. And now, there is some speculation that top-rated junior guard Xavier Henry may make his decision as to where to go to school based in part on whether his brother C.J. decides to give up baseball and play college ball. If C.J. does quit baseball, Xavier’s star may be bright enough to garner him a scholarship as well. Kansas appears to be in the lead to land Xavier’s services.

But as unseemly as this may appear, this is largely a victimless crime. Major college teams all have in the neighborhood of 13 scholarships to award each year and who receives them is solely at the discretion of the head coaches. If Tim Floyd feels that it is in the best interest of his program to sign a player like Miller, who is not likely to make much of an impact on the court while at USC, that his prerogative. The fact that Miller’s family would be able to afford to send Romeo to USC regardless of whether he was awarded a scholarship is immaterial. There is a lot of smoke here, and the smoke may smell pretty fishy, but there is no fire.

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Devin Ebanks future at Indiana: Up in the air

According to published reports, highly-touted senior shooting guard Devin Ebanks had a provision in his letter of intent that would allow him to decommit from Indiana in the event that now-former head coach Kelvin Sampson were fired or resigned. With Sampson now out of Bloomington, Ebanks may decide to take his talents elsewhere.

"I did have something in place that allows me to be released if Coach Sampson wasn't there," Ebanks told Fox Sports’ Jeff Goodman. "I'm going to use that to explore other options and I still want to wait and see who Indiana hires full-time, but I am going to talk things over with my mother and my coaches and go from there."

IU Interim coach Dan Dakich is not considered to be a serious candidate for the full-time gig, so the first priority for the next head man in Bloomington will be convincing Ebanks to honor his commitment and also reassuring the other recruits Sampson landed to make a go of it at IU. Stay tuned on this one.

- Playoff time around the country is always bittersweet as players throughout the nation will play their last games for their high school squads. USC-bound forward Demar DeRozen, the number 6 ranked player in the country according to TAKKLE.com/Sports Illustrated, scored 25 points in his last game for Compton High, as the Tarbabes fell to Santa Margherita High School in the CIF quarterfinals. Santa Margherita got 27 points from forward Klay Thompson, who will see DeRozan next year in the Pac-10, as Thompson will play in Pullman for Washington State next year.

- In other playoff news, McDonald’s All-American Kemba Walker and Rice High of Manhattan topped St. Raymond’s of the Bronx 78-59 in Saturday's New York Archdiocesan title match. Next up for both teams: the full city Catholic League playoffs.

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