Center Karl Towns has committed to Kentucky and announced he plans to reclassify to the 2014 class and graduate from high a school a year earlier than planned.

Florida, Duke, Michigan State, North Carolina and North Carolina State were all in the mix for Towns. But Kentucky has long been considered the team to beat for Towns.

“Kentucky is such a great school,” Towns said. “I felt like Kentucky was just the right school at the end of the day.”

Towns should have an idea of what kind of coaching he’ll see from Calipari. Towns played for Calipari this past summer on the Dominican Republic’s National Olympic Team.

Man, is the ol’ MrSEC.com inbox filling up this week.  Questions galore are coming in — and they’re appreciated — but it’s been tough replying to everyone (something we normally try to do).

So in the interest of answering your questions and saving some time, here’s a rundown of several questions we’ve been getting over and over and over again from fans all across the league:

What’s taking so long with my team’s coaching search?

The only folks who can legitimately ask this question are Arkansas fans.  And even they should be a bit more patient.

Kentucky fired Joker Phillips on November 4th.  By November 27th, Mitch Barnhart had hired Florida State defensive coordinator Mark Stoops.  That’s a 23-day process and — from what an industry source told us — clearly “Barnhart wasn’t swinging for the fences.”  That doesn’t mean Stoops won’t be more akin to brother Bob than brother Mike, Cat fans, just that UK wasn’t really in on successful, proven head coaches.  If you’re looking at up-and-comers and assistants, searches can move more quickly.

Note we said, “quickly.”  Well, quickly was 23 days.

Tennessee’s search is now just 11 days old.  (For those who believe the Vols offered their job to Jon Gruden after UT’s game with Mississippi State in early-October, I’ve got some land to sell you.)  Auburn’s search is all of four days old.

How many of you have ever been in the position to make an important hire for your company?  A hire that could cost you your own neck if you got it wrong?  A hire that could either bring in or cost your company millions of dollars?

If you were in that position, would you rush the hire because people on messageboards and Twitter are tired of waiting for you to make a move?

Read the rest of this entry »

Across the college sports landscape, folks are trying to make sense of what the Big Ten has just done.  While smack in the middle of negotiating a new playoff with all the other major football conferences, Jim Delany’s league was secretly negotiating with Maryland and Rutgers on the side.  Until the weekend, very few saw the Big Ten’s move coming.

Now that the Big Ten is a 14-team league and it’s caught most everyone off guard, what comes next?

*  Mark Schlabach of ESPN believes the age of the super-conference might finally be at hand.

*  Dennis Dodd of CBS says that television insiders are having trouble wrapping their heads around the Big Ten’s move.

*  Some folks are calling the Big Ten’s move “dumb” and “greedy.”

*  UConn and Louisville are the favorites to replace Maryland in the ACC.

*  Boise State, San Diego State and BYU could all join the Mountain West Conference.  (You know things have gone crazy when schools exit conferences as soon as they enter them.)

*  The Big Ten could target all sorts of southern schools.

*  Even Nate Silver — The New York Times blogger who nailed this year’s election projections — weighs in to say that the Big Ten’s move east could dilute the league’s brand.

The reality is pretty simple: The biggest schools want the biggest share of television revenue from college football and its new playoff.  Period.  End of story.

Academics play some role in all this — the Big Ten added two more AAU schools in Maryland and Rutgers, for example — and geography matters, too, if only in terms of adding cable households.  In addition, the biggest schools would like to pay their athletes “full-cost-of-tuition scholarships.” But all of those issues tie back to money.

So if we’re all headed into a super-conference era, you need to ask yourself two questions:

1.  Which schools can afford to give full-cost-of-tuition scholarships?

2.  Which schools can provide an increase in cable households for a conference?

We’ve already got the answers for you.

Read the rest of this entry »

Should they or shouldn’t they?  Should college coaches allow their players to tweet or should they ban them from using the popular social media platform for fear that someone will write something he shouldn’t and bring trouble upon himself of the program as a whole (as was the case during North Carolina’s recent football scandal).

As we’ve written before, at MrSEC.com we believe most coaches would be wise to ban their players from Twitter during the season.  Several programs across the country have gone that route.  And for those who feel it’s a First Amendment issue, it’s not.  At least no more than a coach banning his freshmen or his quarterbacks or some other players from speaking with the press.

Aaron Brenner of The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer did a nice job of compiling the varying views of a variety of SEC football coaches.  You can read his excellent piece right here.

We’ll simply share with you some direct quotes from five different league coaches…

“What can you ever gain by putting your business on the street?  The bad outweighs the good.”

– South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier, who bans Twitter during football season

“I’ve got mixed emotions.  It can be a very good tool, depending upon how it’s used.  I think it’s been a great thing for me and the relationship-building here, for us to get our message out of who we are and what our core values are.  A lot of our kids have that to heart, too.

Unfortunately, that’s not always the case, and makes you question whether it should be a part of your program.  I can also be very discouraging to read some of the things you see on there.  I want kids to understant that could prevent them from getting a job one day.  I’ve asked a few to get off of it.”

– Ole Miss’ Hugh Freeze, who does not ban Twitter

Read the rest of this entry »

Wide receiver MarQuez North from Mallard Creek High School in Charlotte, N.C., has announced Tennessee is the leader for his services.

“Tennessee, they just caught me with the energy, the faculty and the law degree, really,” North told 247Sports, which ranks North the No. 11 receiver in the country.

North took an unofficial visit to Tennessee on Sept. 15, but it was a trip during the summer that helped put the Vols on top of his list.

“Really when my coach told me to take a visit up there and see what they had to offer,” North said in response to question about when Tennessee became his leader.

North still has plenty of  time to go in his recruitment. He told 247Sports he plans to take official visits to Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio State. Clemson is also in the mix.

“No. 2 has to be (North) Carolina and Clemson because those are the only ones I’ve really had a chance to go to,” North said.

And don’t count out Florida. The Gators signed highly-touted offensive lineman D.J. Humphries from Mallard Creek in February and have made North a high priority for their 2013 class.

Ohio State received a commitment Thursday from defensive end Tyquan Lewis from Tarboro (N.C.) High School.

Lewis chose the Buckeyes over LSU and North Carolina.

“I felt comfortable (at Ohio State),” Lewis told ESPN RecruitingNation.  ”I think it’s a great choice overall. The coaching staff and the facilities, everything there is nice.”

Lewis told ESPN he expects Ohio State to return to a position where it competes with the best teams in the nation.

“I expect to win a national championship,” he said. “Year after year after year.”

Defensive end Tyquan Lewis from Tarboro (N.C.) High School has decided when he’ll announce his college decision.

September 20th save the date! 4 p.m.

— Tyquan Lewis (@PrimeTime_Lewis) September 13, 2012

Lewis is considering LSU, North Carolina and Ohio State.

In a new feature for our recruiting page, Joseph Thompson will regularly provide you with some quick Q&As with a few of the nation’s top hoops recruits.  Today, he starts with Dondre Griffin, a 2016 shooing guard out of the Christian Faith Center Academy in Creedmore, North Carolina.

Griffin has heard from several SEC schools.
Joseph Thompson:  Who is interested in you?

Dondre Griffin: Georgia, Hampton, Auburn, Florida, South Carolina, and Houston Baptist.

JT:  Do you have any offers?

DG:  Not yet.

JT:  What team(s) did you grow up watching?

DG: North Carolina.

JT: Who would you compare your game to?

DG:  Jeremy Lamb or Brandon Triche of Syracuse.

JT:  What are you looking for  in a NCAA program?

DG:  A program with great academics and school resources, a fun/safe environment, a winning program, and a coaching staff and team that’s going to make me a better player and a man.

JT:  Do you have a dream school?

DG:  Two, Florida and North Carolina

JT:  What do you think of peoples reaction when they find out that you’re a 2016 (freshman) and hearing from these schools?

DG:  I really appreciate it when its positive but when it’s negative I just use it to push harder in warm ups, it’s just the factor of having people that support me that I appreciate.

CBSSports.com is continuing its survey of “nearly 100″ college basketball coaches with a question today that’s sure to draw eyeballs — “Which play is perceived to have the dirtiest recruitment in the last 10 years?”

Dirty doesn’t mean any actual NCAA rules were broken, of course.  It just means that the perception of said recruitment was that there were some odd shenanigans taking place.  And the perception of the SEC as a cheater’s paradise won’t be aided by the list of most popular responses:

1.  Shabazz Muhammad (signed with UCLA)

2.  Anthony Davis (signed with Kentucky)

3.  John Wall (signed with Kentucky)

4.  Kyle Anderson (signed with UCLA)

5.  OJ Mayo (signed with Southern Cal)

6.  Derrick Rose (signed with Memphis… under current Kentucky coach John Calipari)

7.  Renardo Sidney (signed with Mississippi State)

8.  Terrence Jones (signed with Kentucky)

9.  Tobias Harris (signed with Tennessee)

10.  Chris Obekpa (committed to St. John’s and Steve Lavin… who used to coach at UCLA)

So of the 10 recruitments most often cited as “dirty” by anonymous basketball coaches, five signed with SEC schools (not counting Rose who signed with Calipari).

But wait, it gets worse.

In the “also received votes” category were DeMarcus Cousins (Kentucky), Enes Kanter (Kentucky), Josh Selby (whose attendance at a barbecue helped lead to the demise of Tennessee’s Bruce Pearl before the player inked with Kansas), and Rodney Hood (Mississippi State).

See a theme here?  Kentucky (Calipari), Mississippi State (ex-coach Rich Stansbury) and Tennessee (ex-coach Pearl) were all tied to more than one of these chases.  Does that mean those programs/coaches are or were rogue?  Or does it mean those coaches’ reputations for being renegades just led other coaches to assume that their key signees and targets were somehow bought?  If you’re a UK, MSU or UT fan, I bet I can guess your answer.

The most interesting quote in the piece came from an anonymous coach and it was aimed at Wall, the former star Kentucky point guard:

“Baylor hired John Wall’s AAU coach and that still wasn’t enough to get that deal done.  That recruitment was on another level.  And remember, Roy Williams basically stopped recruiting him.  Best player in the country is from North Carolina, and North Carolina didn’t really want anything to do with it.  What does that tell you?”

It tells you whatever you want it to tell you.  That’s what.

On July 29th, fourth-string South Carolina quarterback Tanner McEvoy was arrested in North Carolina for driving after drinking alcohol while still a minor (which is not the same charge as a DUI).  He was suspended for less than a week before Steve Spurrier reinstated him and blew off his arrest with a surprising level of nonchalance.

Well, now comes word that the redshirt freshman will transfer from the Gamecock program.

It’s believed that his placement on the depth chart as well as the emergence of sophomore quarterback Dylan Thompson had more to do with McEvoy’s decision to leave Columbia than his arrest or any behind-the-scenes punishment from Spurrier.

Still, don’t be surprised to hear a Gamecock fan or two suggest that Spurrier made his flippant comments in an effort to take the spotlight off of McEvoy as he exits.  For years some media members have believed that the Ol’ Ball Coach says outrageous things that he knows will get play in the press whenever he wants to distract the public from another issue.  Or protect a player.

Whether the coach was providing cover for McEvoy’s exit or just honestly stating that he doesn’t believe an alcohol- and car-related arrest was a big deal likely depends upon whether or not you like South Carolina… or hate South Carolina.