University of Kentucky offers eighth grader a scholarship

Kentucky made news this week when it announced that coach Billy Gillispie had offered a scholarship to California 8th grader Michael Avery. Gillispie saw Avery play at a LeBron James sponsored event in Akron, and decided to offer the guard, who is yet to decide which high school he will attend, a spot on the Wildcats 2012-2013 squad.

"We're taking things one day at a time," the player's father, Howard Avery, told the Lexington Herald-Journal last week. "Right now, (Gillispie) is there and he's a terrific coach. Without a doubt, Kentucky is a terrific program. Factors change. I'm not going to worry about 25,000 different things when I'm trying to get through this day."

Last year, USC coach Tim Floyd offered a scholarship to Illinois forward Ryan Boatright, a move that drew criticism from the media and outraged some in the recruiting community. University of Kentucky president Lee T. Todd expressed surprise when told of the commitment.

"An eighth-grader?!" he blurted out, according to the Herald-Journal. "Not that you'd tell people not to ever do it. But I'd hope there aren't very many eighth-graders thinking of playing at a specific college.”
But the question remains as to whether this is an aberration or the wave of the future. I, for one, hope that this trend does not continue. But we’ll see.

- Tom Crean and Indiana have started the process of cleaning up the mess left behind by the Kelvin Sampson affair. Highly-touted Class of ’08 guard Verdell Jones announced his intentions to go to IU this week, choosing the Hoosiers over Minnesota, Kentucky, and Illinois. Jones, who is from Champaign, Ill., may be called upon right away to start for an Indiana club that has only three returning scholarship players remaining on the roster. Jones joins guard Nick Williams (Mobile, Ala.), forward Tom Pritchard (Lakewood, Ohio), guard Matt Roth (Washington, Ill) and junior college guard Devon Dumes (Vincennes University) in the Hoosiers 2008 class. Indiana also got a commitment from Class of ’09 shooting guard Maurice Creek of Temple Hills, Md.

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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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