News of recruits, violations, and more violations...

Here's a little info from a premium article covering some of the top recruits in our state...
http://illinois.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1125624
http://illinois.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1124831

Some highlights about recruits of interest to BU...
"Zak Irvin will take in the action on September 11 when he comes to town to run with the players. The 6-foot-4 Irvin is a coveted 2013 shooting guard from Hamilton (Ind.) Southeastern that sports an Illinois offer. As a teammate of top 2012 guard Gary Harris Irvin has been overshadowed recently, but made a name for himself this summer with the Eric Gordon All Stars 15U squad.

2012 point guard Antonio 'Bobo' Drummond has left Peoria Central and is now at La Lumiere Academy in Indiana as he tries to get his academics in order, but will be back in Illinois on Saturday at the Illinois vs. SIU football game. Illinois has a limited number of scholarships in the 2012 class, but are keeping tabs on the development of Drummond.

2014 point guard Larry Austin of Springfield (Ill.) Lanphier has been a regular at the Illinois basketball games and he will take in the football game and get a run in with the Illinois players on Saturday, September 11th. Austin is one of the top prospects in an already strong freshman class in the state of Illinois.

Illinois commitments and Illinois Wolves teammates Tracy Abrams and Nnanna Egwu are planning on taking their unofficial visits to the Illinois campus the weekend of September 17th. Egwu is coming off of back surgery, but is progressing nicely and plans to be ready to go when the high school season begins. Abrams has battled some ankle injuries, but now seems to be healthy and ready to go.

Chasson Randle will come to Illinois for his unofficial visit the weekend of October 15th for midnight madness. The 2011 guard has long been a target for the Illinois staff, and the visit to Illinois will be his last visit. He will visit Purdue September 25th and Stanford October 8th."



Here's something of relevance to the Missouri Valley...
There's a big time Creighton fan named Matt Perrault - who does a sports radio show, now in Des Moines and a lot of blogging and stuff on the Bluejays' message boards.
He created a little controversy....he posted on the Creighton board that fans can help Creighton basketball recruiting by contacting all the CU recruits (and he listed them BY NAME) and requesting they accept them as friends on Facebook. He insisted it was not an NCAA violation for fans to do this.

HOWEVER -- this exact same type of fan & booster activity has already caused some schools to be cited for NCAA violations (UNC and Kentucky both turned themselves in when their fans did this in an orchestrated fashion) and the NCAA agreed it violated the rules about contact from agents of the schools.
CLEARLY it creates a nightmare for schools if their fans are doing this in an organized fashion, and the way the NCAA seems to be on a witch hunts for anyone nowadays committing violations, then any fans or boosters who are doing this had better be very careful. Even if they ARE careful, I have been told personally by representatives of Bradley University, that they DO NOT want their fans and boosters doing this, as it clearly creates the HUGE worry of what's being said and by whom....quite possibly causing numerous undefendable illegal contacts by people that the NCAA would view as representatives of the University.
In other words.... don't contact them unless you are doing so as a properly certified and authorized member of the university coaching staff or athletic staff!!!
(And it's pretty unlikely that your are or ever will be!)

Obviously, as I would have expected, someone from Creighton took offense and asked that he remove the post. Since he runs the CU Rivals site, they had to ask him to remove it. Apparently he did remove it and now is acting like it never happened, including deleting anyone's posts who even asks about it.
But he can't control other boards, and there is this thread on another site, which is otherwise quite dead-
http://mvcfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=141

It is very likely that Perrault just caused Creighton to have to do a review and submit a voluntary self-report to the NCAA citing this sequence of violations!



More on Bruce Pearl -- I just don't know how anyone couldn't have seen this coming.
Here's a couple links highlighting all the drug arrests, bad apples, DUI's, and thugs Pearl had consistently recruited, re-instated, and played. I think it's wonder he didn't get burned up to this point...given that there's been rumors of his ethics or lack thereof for years...

Here's a local Tennessee columnist who calls it like it is, tying all Pearl's issues together...
"For some reason I believe marijuana and guns and shootings and cheating and lying are all connected in some sort of sinister way and, seemingly, the common thread here is colored a certain hue of orange.

I also believe that never has there been a time in Tennessee's glorious history for anyone who truly loves the university, and all it stands for, to firmly demand that the university's board of trustees finally clean it up. They've talked about it, talked a lot. Now is the time to start doing whatever it takes.
If not, the stench of hypocrisy that now lies so heavily in Knoxville may well overwhelm us all."
http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_183895.asp

And a little more on all that's happening...
http://www.bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=16304

Funny, and ironic, that a little while ago BradleyFans had a thread about who was the college coach ever - the one who had done the MOST damage by cheating...it was a poll and Dave Bliss got a number of votes. So did Bill Self and so did Jim Harrick...but Bruce Pearl also got quite a few votes, while simultaneously some posters argued that Pearl didn't even belong in the same discussion since he was such a great coach and never did anything wrong.
But in the end, we now see who was and IS right on this topic. Bruce Pearl is right up there with the worst of them.

Now, many others now calling for Pearl to be fired..
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/campusrivalry/post/2010/09/how-can-bruce-pearl-still-have-his-job-as-tennessee-basketball-coach/1

Here's a surprise -- Jimmy Collins is one of them!!
"What goes around comes around," Collins.. said..
"Bruce was holier than thou," Collins said. "I knew Bruce and
had talked to people about Bruce. Everyone knew what he was about.
"Now that Bruce got caught doing what he was probably doing all the time,
he thinks it's OK to say, 'I made a mistake.'
But for me to say..I feel bad for Bruce, my nose would start growing like Pinocchio."
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/mensbasketball/2010-09-12-jimmy-collins-bruce-pearl_N.htm

Here's a really funny column..........
"Bruce Pearl (should be)..suspended by the NCAA for at least the upcoming basketball season..
Tennessee is so outraged by Pearl’s conduct, the school cut his $2.3 million annual income by 13 percent.
I mean, how do they expect the guy to live in Knoxville on $2 million per year .."
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/sep/11/moulton-ncaa-tennessee-bruce-pearl-nfl-predictions/



Still very, very little coverage of the early events, schedules, and previews for the 2010-2011 college basketball season via any of the various "blogs" in the local media...
As I noted, they have bunch of blogs, but almost all of them are dead, and the ones that are supposed to be giving some Missouri Valley or Bradley basketball coverage, have had essentially NO entries since last year. Nothing...like a vacuum.
It's not even very easy to navigate the local paper's website to even find the various blogs -- but you wouldn't miss anything anyway.