Fighting Rick Pitino fatigue with a few UK recruiting nuggets

Is anyone else besides me past the saturation point when it comes to coverage of this Rick Pitino thing? I know there are some UK fans who have died and gone to heaven getting to see UofL and Pitino suffer, but I, for one, am not enjoying a thing. The story, however, has been utterly inescapable. Everybody has an opinion, everybody wants to pontificate, but this is one train wreck that I am completely ready to take my eyes off of.

This really has been a unique story in the way that it has been covered over the last 48 hours. It’s been strange because of the range of information that people had about it BEFORE it broke.

On the national scene, many people remembered something about some extortion attempt from back in May that made the rounds. Few details emerge back then, and it died quickly. On the local scene, casual sports fans had largely the same experience.

However, anybody who really cared to know what was going on (media, bloggers, message board goers, and generally obsessive fans like me), found out pretty quickly what the deal was early this summer, or at least knew another shoe was going to drop sooner rather than later.

Flash forward to August 11 when the Courier-Journal broke the story, at long last, reactions ranged from shock on the part of the lesser involved to “yeah, that’s about right” from the above mentioned crowd. It was such a strange dynamic in my office this week. It was the casual sports fans that couldn’t stop talking about Pitino. They had no concept of the situation bubbling below the surface, so once it did erupt, they were taken aback.

The serious sports fans, on the other hand, had some fun exchanging jokes about Porcini’s, but after that, we were pretty much done. It was a rare time when those that don’t care as much about sports were boring us with water cooler talk about the latest UK or UofL happening.

Anyway, what I’m saying is that I’m completely tired of talking about Rick Pitino. It’s essentially to the point where all I see is the human suffering element of it all, and when it gets to that point, it wears on me.

On that note, we are on the cusp of one of the key periods in college basketball recruiting (not to mention the fact that we are agonizingly close to football), and today we have a few bits of news from the trail. John Calipari finally has returned from China and he won’t have any time to relax, because the staff is planning a massive weekend of visits next weekend (August 21st-23rd).

-The thought that Kyrie Irving favors IU and Duke is becoming more and more popular. Both schools made it absolutely clear to Kyrie that he is a prime focus for their 2010 strategy during the AAU season. Kyrie has said that he plans to take all 5 of his official visits, but that he is not going to hesitate to pull the trigger if the time is right.

The 2 schools that he has said that he WILL officially visit are IU and Duke. It looks like UK will likely get a visit, which means I would not rule out UK, but, as I’ve said before, I think Tom Crean is the coach to beat on this one, because of Duke’s recent inability to land a player like Kyrie.

-UK’s second of 3 point guard targets, Josh Selby, begins an unofficial visit to UConn today and will be in town for 2 days. The popular thought was that UK had in the inside track after his UT decommitment, but ZagsBlog has a post about Selby that suggests a spring decision is a distinct possibility:

Josh Selby could wait until the late signing period to pick a school, according to Herman Harried, Selby’s coach at Baltimore (MD) Lake Clifton.

“I don’t think he’s going to decide early,” Harried said Thursday by phone. “It’s up to him and his mom.”

While Selby could be wowed on a visit and commit, there are a couple things that could prompt a late decision:

(1) The firestorm after his commitment – Lots of people raised questions about the meeting with Worldwide Wes immediately before his commitment and possible less that up front dealings. Selby and his mother will want to distance themselves as much as possible from those issues. Waiting until after a full set of visits and due diligence could help to fight those types of perceptions.

(2) A too early commitment – Selby already committed too early once and no one wants to be the guy who commits 5 different times. He’s going to make sure he has the right and final decision this time around.

-Jeff Goodman reports that top ranked (according to Scout) 2010 player Harrison Barnes plans to narrow his list to 5 by the end of this month. Duke and Kansas are thought to be in the lead here; Kentucky should be one of the schools competing for the other 3 of his official visits.

-2 top ranked 2011 players, Marquis Teague and Quincy Miller, say that UK is in the mix. Teague is a point guard and a top UofL target as well whose father says he will soon make an unofficial visit to UK.  Miller is a power forward who lists at least 14 schools, including both UK and UofL.  There’s still a lot to shake out for these rising juniors, but don’t discount the possibility that UK’s next commit could come from 2011 instead of 2010.