A few items...

Just a couple news items...just click on the lines to see the links..

In a premium column available only by subscription, Illini assistant Jay Price gives a long interview about the GSA Tour team to Europe and sheds some light on how things went for Dyricus Simms-Edwards....

Since most can't get the article, I will cite a few lines...

"Fighting Illini assistant basketball coach Jay Price just returned from a three country tour with a basketball team that won all five games...
"We visited England, Belgium and Germany. We played five games in about eight days. It was a fantastic trip. It was well organized, it was put on well, we were treated with a ton of hospitality by all the countries and all the clubs that we played.
... the team did well, winning all five games. He normally substituted groups of five at a time to give everyone an equal opportunity. He couldn't do that one game.
"The closest game was 81-79. We actually had three guys foul out. So we had to throw the substitution pattern out and play it like a real game."
players with such diverse backgrounds as Illinois, Purdue, Drake, Wisconsin and Missouri State melded quickly into a functioning team.

"It was fun getting to coach those guys. One thing about this team was that they really bonded. They did everything together. You don't know when you put ten guys together with different personalities what will happen. It was amazing to me how much they bonded. ..we had some real good players, we had some unbelievable kids. It was a lot of fun."


Houston Rockets are adding UNI's Jordan Eglseder to their preseason roster.


WIU's Jim Molinari had a fine recruit signed for this year in Mario Redmond from Crete-Monee, however....
now it appears Redmond will not qualify and will head to prep school. In this case it's a new prep school in Iowa.


Indiana State (#131) and Southern Illinois (#127) are the first two Valley teams that appear in CHN's Top 144 countdown...
Is Fay really a "dynamic scorer"?


Team USA coached by Mike Kyzyzewski barely edged Spain 86-85 Sunday night...looks like the rest of the world caught up!


John Wall's inspiration shot dead..




I guess this is appropriate -- since the guy has become a complete joke and a comic book character!


Remember the little town in California whose mayor and top pols were all hauling down half a million dollars or more and ripping off the taxpayer??
Well...just who was really responsible for this cheating scandal...
looks more and more like it is the California Attorney General...formerly disgraced ex-Governor Jerry Brown!!
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2010/08/brown-cooley-announce-coordination-on-bell-investigation.html
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_15736202
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=70255
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9HLSSC80.htm

and, uh,oh....don't look now but Bell, CA isn't the only town where the city officials are ripping the he** out of taxpayers...
Here's yet another small California town right next door that maybe got the idea from the greedy jerks in Bell......
Vernon, CA -- where the mayor/city administrator is skimming the civic funds for more than $1 million!!
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15836167?nclick_check=1
http://laist.com/2010/08/20/vernon_bells_neighbor_also_has_sky.php

I half wish I lived in California so I could sue these jerks for making a mockery out of civic duty....but, nawww, I guess I really wouldn't want to ever live in California....