The Sock 'Em, Bust 'Em Board Because that's our custom

Out.

May 22, 2014 by Mike Casazza

As much as I’d like to hang around and talk baseball and evaluate managerial decisions — it’s like Wagyu beef … we’ve never have it before, but we seem to really like it now that we do — I’m going to walk around the block for a few days during the long weekend. I’ll be back here Wednesday. (What? I said long weekend.)

Nothing will happen between then and now. Nothing. Nothing ever does. So good luck with that, in which “that” is actually “static.” Right?

I don’t suspect to miss any big basketball news. We’re in a dead period now, so you most likely won’t witness any additions. Subtractions? Of course that’s possible, and we still don’t have a label for the possibly prodigal Parisian Remi Dibo. That’s a scholarship in limbo right now, and maybe that’s why someone hasn’t yet pulled the trigger.

As for the “big news!” I mentioned almost parenthetically last week, sorry, but I don’t know what it is. Honest. But two people I spent some time talking to after the Terry Henderson thing both thought, or thought that Bob Huggins thought, the headlines and the mood were both going to change. Again, no offense to Beetle Bolden or Jaysean Paige, but I wonder if those are the acquisitions described to me. It’s not a slam dunk, if I may.

But yesterday, the Esa Ahmad thing was interesting. I was almost positive I saw him on campus before I saw the tweet. I kind of wanted to go up to him and stare up and say, “Got a minute?” But that’d be breaking NCAA rules. And it was probably also ambitious to expect a top 2015 recruit who’s from Cleveland and who just got an Ohio State offer to commit in May, but with yesterday being the last day of a fertile part of the recruiting calendar, I was curious.

I do think there’s a lot to the idea Justin Martin may make the move from Xavier as a postgraduate player who will be eligible for his final season in the fall. There are connections. He was at Mountain State Academy in 2009-10 when Rodney Crawford was the coach there, and Crawford is a Huggins guy.

Now, he’s also Jeff Neubauer’s assistant at Eastern Kentucky, but Martin isn’t going there. I think Florida State is the other top option, for now. Anyhow, Huggins has a great character witness in Martin’s former prep school coach. When Ron Everhart needed an assistant at Duquesne in 2010, wheels were greased and Crawford, with no college experience, was hired.

(Smaller world? WVU had and lost Eron Harris. He attended Lawrence North in Indianapolis. Lawrence North had and lost Martin to West Virginia, the state, when Martin left Indy for Mountain State.)

Oh, and congrats to Pat White and Rebecca Durst on the birth of their daughter. If Kicking Nikki or Jason Butts or Jill Kramer or Mike Carey or Sean Cleary or Vic Riggs or Miha Lisac or Jimmy King isn’t putting the finishing touches on a promissory scholarship for Daphne (!) Ruth, something is wrong with all of us.