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

Devin deciding soon … if not already

For numerous reasons, there seems to be a quiet confidence inside the Coliseum that WVU has a good shot at Devin Ebanks. A bunch of conversations and e-mail with people involved with different schools in the hunt lead me — and others — to believe it’s down to the Mountaineers and a Big East rival. The catch is that it’t not UConn or Syracuse, Pitt or Villanova.

Try Rutgers.

Well, Ebanks, who plays at Connecticut’s St. Thomas More, but is from Long Island, N.Y., visited Rutgers this past weekend and it looks like things went pretty well.

Former Indiana University signee Devin Ebanks, who was released from his letter-of-intent, is serious about Rutgers. One source has told me that he expects Ebanks to even perhaps end up with the Scarlet Knights. But he still has to visit Memphis.

Ebanks, who visited WVU on the second weekend of April and then Texas two weeks later, is off to Memphis this weekend for his last official visit. He probably won’t wait very long to sign his letter-of-intent.

Bill Stewart never leaves his wingman

You’ll recognize the title from Stewart’s pregame speech at the Fiesta Bowl. What happens in the locker room does not stay in the locker room. No, it transitions to real life.

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Gobble-gobble

Pacman Jones is officially uprooting and ridding himself of Tennessee — and vice versa, of course — by putting his mansion up for sale for a cool $1.8 million. Not to say this is a big deal for the realtor, but the company handling this actually lists “Pacman Jones’ Home” on the menu on the left side of the home page. The listing’s title is also — I kid you not — “30 Acres and a Lake.” Marv Robon could not be reached for comment.

Not surprisingly, this is quite a place, though the choice of artwork is peculiar.

Boy, oh Boyd

It is unlikely fans will ever have their affections replaced for the indefatigable Ryan J. Boyd, but I’m going out on a limb here to say Tajh Boyd will give RJB a run for his money. Not only has his mom produced T-shirts saying “Boyd to Heastie” — a reference to WVU’s future pass-catch combo with receiver Logan Heastie — but he’s spending this summer more or less recruiting other stars to WVU.

Actions, of course, speak louder than words and Boyd was both active and loud at the weekend’s Nike Football Training Camp.

Party of One

While the camp had a fairly deep pool of overall talent, the quarterbacks were not a great group. One clearly stood out, West Virginia commit Tajh Boyd (Hampton, Va./Phoebus); the ESPN 150 Watch List prospect took home MVP honors for his position.

He displayed many of the things we had seen on film when evaluating him. He was smooth in his drops and quickly got set. He had a fairly compact, quick release. He threw a tight spiral and had good velocity. The obvious knock on Boyd is his lack of size, as he seems to be just pushing 6-foot-1. He is athletic though and showed good feet and ballhandling skills going through the agility drills early in camp. During one-on-ones, he displayed good touch accuracy.

Good Monday to you

I can’t find anyone who is of the firm belief that the lifetime contract Bob Huggins signed Friday wasn’t a dynamite deal. Speaking of dynamite…

It’s a great deal for both sides — and one that would have been done sooner than later anyway. That’s no political spin.

At $4.9 million over five years in the agreement of 56 weeks ago when Huggins returned to his alma mater, WVU was getting a sweet deal considering the coach’s stature and accomplishments, which include just about everything except an NCAA championship.

Yet, the deal was a surprise even to some who shouldn’t have been stunned.

That’s because WVU’s administration — continuing to be battered by the Heather Bresch bogus degree scandal — did this deal behind the backs of its athletic leaders. It was a spin move right out of a Joe Alexander post-up.

The WVU athletic staff had no knowledge of the “lifetime” contract talks until WVU Athletic Director Ed Pastilong finally was informed about it 24 hours before the dog-and-pony show to announce it.

Hugg Life

Here’s your look at Friday’s press conference announcing the unprecedented-at-WVU lifetime contract for men’s basketball Coach Bob Huggins. Give it a listen. Please. Commit many parts to memory because you’ll be asked to remember them again soon.

Additionally, it’s a good listen. The good, tough and relevant questions were asked. And answered.

The basics: 11-years (he’ll be 65 at its conclusion) for about $1.5 million per season, plus incentives and annual increases and a $4 million buyout.

I’ll let you digest the curious shoutout to the Daily Mail 2:15 in because more — so much more — will come to light soon. The highlight comes at the 5:55 mark when the Bob Hertzel asks how Huggins has gone from a coach the University of Cincinnati could not rid itself of fast enough to a coach West Virginia University wants to keep around forever.

“We have a much more intelligent president here. It’s very obvious, Bob.”

Very! Let’s meet again on Monday, yes?

Friday Feedback

WVU’s men’s basketball team had its end-of-the-year awards banquet last night at Waterfront Place and as I walked from the parking garage across the street toward the hotel, I rounded a corner and came to an intersection with Joe Alexander and his roommate, Jamie Smalligan, who traveled to the gala together.

Joe Alexander, NBA Draft prospect, was not happy to see me.

It wasn’t anything personal — I don’t think — but you could tell by the look on his face and the change of the pace with which he walked that he was caught a little off guard. It was very subtle. I doubt it was anything intentional and he’d surely say he showed no signs, but, in truth, I’m used to such responses. They’re easy to spot now.

Maybe he didn’t realize the media was invited. He did, after all, make light of that with a quick, characteristic one-liner. He also said I wouldn’t be allowed in because I was wearing jeans. So maybe it was Joe being Joe, the dry-witted-though-still-witty kid who deadpans good quotes and makes jokes sound dead serious. More than likely, his brain fired quickly and, to me, it seemed that whether he knew beforehand the media was going to be there or not, he suddenly realized the media was there and he was the reason why.  

For the first time since he told FoxSports.com – (strumming fingers on keyboard…strumming…strumming) — he was entering the NBA Draft April 9, he’d meet with the local media. To discuss his decision. He’d been careful to maintain a low profile and speak to no one but his inner circle about the process, but that chosen path was about to reach a dead end.

He was more glib and deceptive than normal and only once seemed interested in the discussion and that was when someone suggested he was simply curious to see where he stood. “It has nothing to do with being curious,” he said sharply. “I’m not curious. I have a good idea where I stand.”

A moment later, assistant coach Erik Martin interceded to dismantle the meeting and Alexander went off to mingle with the rest of the crowd, which was basically more groups of assembled strangers who, one couldn’t help but notice, were asking a lot of the same questions he was so uninterested in answering for the media.

So I’m mad at Joe Alexander, right? Can’t believe he’d stiff us, elude us, deprive us of the ability to do our jobs, right?

Nope. Actually, I can’t blame him for a moment. Too many people are too concerned about how Alexander’s decision affects them and not him. Don’t get me wrong. His teammates are remarkably neutral and even though they make no secret that they want him back because the team will be so much better with him, you sense they know he can — will? — be a high pick and they want him to go and grab that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity if it’s within reach.

Yet there are a lot of people who want him to stay for WVU. Period. They want to cheer him, want their team to do well, want to say he is theirs.  

I admit I’m curious about what he’ll do. He’s a great player, a great kid and, to be honest, he makes my job really simple. I wouldn’t mind at all if he stayed because I know I’m getting good material for another year, but I’ve also seen how hard he’s worked, how greatly he’s improved and how much he deserves a shot if he believes it’s there for the taking. Last night, the only thing I wanted to ask him was how he was doing. I sensed, even before all of this, that he was bothered by it all and I was curious to see how a composed kid like himself kept his composure in a time like this. Who does he talk to? How does he get away? Why don’t people respect his privacy?

Yet he was asked repeatedly if he was staying or going. Well, how the hell is he supposed to know? It was terribly irresponsible and it’s sadly common. He hasn’t done anything toward the process other then enter into it and stay in it so that he appeared on the official early entry list released yesterday. Yet for some odd reason, he and his teammates were asked again and again if Joe would be back or be in the draft. Madness.

Off the soapbox and into the Feedback. As always, comments appear as posted. In other words, I demand no retraction! 

Mack said:

If I gave you a year, would you be able to come up with four more Hawley Field plays to round out a Top 5 of all time? I doubt it.

I really tried to win this challenge, but I couldn’t do it. It was my belief last Saturday’s game-ending inside-the-park home run was an all-time moment at Hawley Field. Also in the top five was the Billy Biggs lights-out no-hitter in 2002 and … well there’s … ah, screw it. Where’s Coach Greg Van Zant?

“No question it’s up there and we’ve had several great moments at home this year. But that was something special because we’d controlled that game. We were up 10-5 and I thought we were in really good shape. Then all of a sudden we go into the eighth inning and Connecticut scores a bunch of runs and jumps ahead. But we kept our confidence and we knew we were going to score a run in the eighth or ninth inning. And fortunately for us, Austin Markell hit a ball off the top of the wall to win the game for us when right now, every win is really important.”

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Pacman not quite cleared yet

Pacman Jones was traded from the Tennessee Titans to the Dallas Cowboys during the draft weekend and it would reason that since the NFL approved the trade, the NFL was giving an indication it might one day soon reinstate the former first-round pick who played cornerback at WVU.

Well, maybe not.

Documents uncovered by NewsChannel 5 reveal Jones told detectives a man he had never met before, Edwards, told him he would take care of things. Then, Jones witnessed Edwards opening fire.

Jones told police Edwards extorted $15,000 from him, telling him he needed to pay for “services rendered.”

“I definitely didn’t receive no $15,000,” Edwards said. “I definitely didn’t extort nobody out of no money.”

Instead, Edwards said Jones “paid somebody to shoot that club up.  Now, if he wants to tell on somebody he needs to tell on himself and tell them what he actually done.”

Edwards is compassionate for the victims because “I’ve been shot before. I know how it feels.” Awww. It’s one man’s word against another’s, but one thing is pretty interesting, and perhaps worrisome, because it suggests P might not be out of trouble … and not just with the law.

Edwards said Jones knows the shooter well. Edwards said the shooter is part of a crowd Jones hangs out with in Atlanta.

“He knows they name,” Edwards said. “He knows they street name. He needs to tell on them instead of trying to put this on me when he knows I didn’t do this and he know I never met him before and he know he don’t know me and I don’t know him.”

So, how did Jones pick Edwards out of a lineup? 

Edwards said a good description from the real culprits made it easy. Edwards has distinct tattoos and an amputated arm.

And, fingering him, Edwards said, was no real threat.   

“He’s doing that on purpose so he don’t get them caught up,” Edwards said. “Now, those people will come get him.”

What’s the rush?

WVU President Mike Garrison won’t be deposed for the WVU v. Rich Rodriguez lawsuit for quite some time.

In another delay to the Rich Rodriguez lawsuit, a key deposition — West Virginia University president Mike Garrison — has been postponed to June 12.

The university’s tactics are “dodge and delay,” Rodriguez’s attorney, Marv Robon of Maumee, Ohio, said Wednesday.

Good news for Garrison, of course, as he’s guaranteed to be in office for another 42 days. In all seriousness, it’s not a tactic and WVU’s lawyers have presented Rodriguez’s lawyers with a list of dates when Garrison — and others — would be available for his deposition. June 12 just so happens to be the first date that works for both sides. No one’s fault, really, so the “dodge and delay” talk is nonsense.

Let’s take a closer look at what really matters.

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Not to get all Ron Burgundy here — “I’m very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.” — but I have many e-mail addresses. I went through a delinquent phase when I tried to see which was the best service and in the process I ended up with two or three or sometimes more accounts with what had to have been a half-dozen or so providers.

I’ve since pared things down a bit, but I do admit I have different accounts with different providers for different uses: commercial usage (online shopping, online registration, etc., basically for anything you have to give an e-mail address for and is going to result in spam or updates) work usage (the Daily Mail account), social usage (casts a large net and injects me into a large network) and what I like to call Personal A (similar to, though more exclusive than social usage as it’s for people I like to keep in touch with regularly) and Personal B (very much the opposite of personal A, but you still give them an address at which you can be reached).

I sometimes struggle to keep up with them all since Personal A and work are the ones that keep me most busy. I hit up the social usage account the other day and was delighted to see this.

From: **** 
Date: Apr 27, 2008 8:56 PM
Subject: An interesting gaffe

I just came back from dinner at my mom’s, where I still get a little bit of mail sent. There was a fundraising letter there from the Mountaineer Athletic Club signed Larry Aschebrook. How sloppy! For one, hasn’t the guy been gone for a few months? Second, obviously, his is not a name you want to use as your pitchman these days.

I could see if they used a nonprofit mailing indicia — we use one for the magazine I run, which means you get a steep mailing discount but it moves slower than molasses. But it says it was sent standard. Granted, I haven’t been over there for two weeks or so, but hadn’t that story already broken? WVU really needs to put a new name — any name — at the bottom of these letters. 

I agreed and he sent me a copy of the letter with instructions to note the date as well as the tone of the message

If nothing else, it’s good for a chuckle. You’d think by reading it that Larry A is pretty excited to be in Morgantown.

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