Posted: Ted Conroy
Syracuse recruit¬†Tony Wroten has an active Twitter account. When I say active, I’m talking serious tweetage. Way more than I could possibly muster. One tweet from the other day really stuck out:
“To be honest. My top two schools r Uk and Washington. Uconn, nova and cuse r still involved but uk and Uw are my top schools right now”
Well, you may be able to cross one of the schools off the list if we follow history.
Reports say coach Cal is interested in the Bulls job, which became available after Vinny Del Negro couldn’t get along with management (read: physical altercation).
Normally, you would shrug things off a report like this. But with Calipari’s track record, it is always within the realm of possibility. After jumping ship from UMass and Memphis in the wake of trouble, he’s leaving a team that loses John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins. Not to mention he could coach Derrick Rose again, for whom he both took the SATs and took to the national championship game.
For the record, he says he isn’t after the Bulls job. But isn’t it interesting the UK athletic director now wants to work on a new deal for him? (He’s one year into an eight-year megacontract.)
This has huge implications for Syracuse in the short-term should Chicago look to make a hire quickly. Let The Fizz play what-if for you.
If he ends up leaving for Chi-town, props to mama and papa Knight. Brandon made the best decision ever by signing a financial aid offer sheet rather than a letter of intent, thus not locking their son into Kentucky whether Cal is there or not.
It would re-open the recruitment of Knight. Jim Boeheim said on recently his policy is to stop recruiting kids once they announce their college choice. But if Cal is gone, the Orange may have to change its stance.
Josh Selby played through the Knight puzzle and chose Kansas. Could Knight take a u-turn back to the Jayhawks and ball alongside another Top-5 guard? Or would he want his own backcourt to star in?
As Connecticut stands with it’s recruiting issues,¬†thoroughly documented by The Fizz, the Huskies seem like less and less of an option.
That leaves the ‘Cuse, one of Knight’s top choices in the late stages of the process. It also means the Orange could move up on Wroten’s list if Kentucky is no longer desirable.
This series of dominos is all predicated on Calipari leaving for the Bulls, so it’s nothing to get our hopes up for at this point. However, it’s gonna be something that everyone watches from the sidelines. Let’s hope that John Paxson never tried to challenge Cal to a fight.
