No offense to our Portland Pilot friends but here is the head scratcher of the WCC scheduling season. UOP will be playing in the Rose Garden against . . . . KENTUCKY?? Good luck to the Pilots and I hope they crush that slime ball Calipari and his crew of semi-pro basketball players (generally speaking).

That begs the question though how do we get stuck with Notre Dame and UOP can pull a home game with Kentucky? How many years in a row will Portland have to travel to Lexington to make up for this?

I guess we have offered this guy a scholarship. Has anyone else heard anything else about this? He appears to be a 3 guard with some athletecism. I saw some talk about this on the GU boards forum but am having a hard time finding anything else.

The only other thing I have been able to find are some youtube clips of him which isnt really much to go off of.

Anyone have any info or updates on his recruiting??

At first I thought Keita would Redshirt this year, but that really doesn't make much sense since we have Gary Bell coming in next year.  With Carter playing the 2 we need Keita to backup Meech.  Hyland most likely will come off the bench for instant offense, to drain threes and to be a zone-buster, Harris and Sacre should draw many double teams. I have to believe that Carter will play SG.  Few likes to have Arop's energy off the bench. and that there will be a lineup of Goodson Carter Gray Harris and Sacre..    While Carter and Gray could also get a few minutes every game running the point.  Basically I believe that Carter was recruited to take Bouldin's spot in the offense.  Kelly and Dower will both sub in for Harris and Sacre they are both interchangeable.  Arop can play the 2 and 3 most likely being the first to sub for Gray, and Hyland in his first year will see a lot of minutes against the Zone..  Since Hyland seems to have taken Bol's position as the sharp-shooter, Bol will have to work on other areas of his game, mostly dribbling and shooting off the dribble and becoming a physical defender if he expects to get more minutes...  Hyland's play will largely be dependant on matchups and at some times we could see Meech and Keita on the floor at the same time..

Seriously.  

It's not that much further than Seattle, they have a perfectly suitable arena, we are recruiting more and more out of Oregon, and we have a competitor in the area that we could cripple even more than we already do by having a big game in their back, wait, front yard.   

It's very important that we begin playing in Portland as soon as possible.  We have had trouble getting home-and-home series with teams of high prestige, due to our mid-major status, how dangerous we are as a mid-major, and the venues we have at our disposal.  I don't know how hard it is to get an arena to agree to have a college game, but take a couple things into mind and tell me we can't do this: 1) we have an annual game in Seattle, so we aren't illiterate in terms of negotiating, and, 2) in 2008, the Big Sky Men's Tournament Semifinals and Finals were played in the Rose Garden, so it's not like we're too small for an NBA arena like this.  We have two arenas that we have used for our end of neutral site deals with BCS conference teams and Memphis: Spokane Arena (12,210) and KeyArena in Seattle (17,072).  The Rose Garden has a basketball capacity of 20,630.  Portland is our best bet to get schools like UNC, Syracuse, or Duke (since they owe us a trip out here) to come West and give us a chance at beating them.  I don't think Portland has any kind of neutral site games to host already, so let's jump on it.

Perhaps the most important issue with playing in Portland is that it has become a very fertile city for recruiting basketball talent.  Seattle has been great for a decade or so now, and Portland is catching up.  We need to tap into this while we still can, and get a big name school to come in and help us sell out that arena.  How cool would it be to play Arizona, UCLA, Kansas, Kentucky, or Duke in the Rose Garden?   

From what I understand, the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament is a great opportunity for senior ballers to showcase their skills before the pre draft workouts and all of those other things.  NBADraft.net covers the event pretty well each year, and I was eager to see how Matt Bouldin would fare at the tournament.  To my surprise, his name was not on any of the rosters.  I tried to learn more about how the rosters were selected, and it seemed pretty confusing to me.  I also was reminded that Jeremy Pargo and Josh Heytvelt both skipped out on this event last year.  Both were seen as second round picks, but neither one got drafted.  Does anyone know if Bouldin was invited but declined?  If so, do you guys think this hurts his chances of getting taken in the second round?

It seems to me that we wont get anymore verbals until May 2011. Im not sure about this but it stands to reason no H.S prospect will verbal to a school that has no scholarships to offer. And im sure that some H.S kid would feel uneasy about having a current player strpped of a scholarship to make room for them. And IF Harris stays for a 3rd season we have zero scholarships. I dont think ( nor do i want ) anyone is going to transfer. I really think these guys want to be a Zag and will settle for being roll players. I got an email from Kyle Wiltjer yesterday and this was what he told me. " The one thing i have noticed about GU is their fan support. I have had numerous e-mails from fans and people that go there. Right now i have not narrowed out any schools and GU is definetly one of my options that i consider. Thanks for the e-mail Kyle" This is a great kid and a great B-Ball player. He would fit in so well here with Gary Bell Jr. The one thing i will say about the Zags, is that they really find nice kids to come here.

Keep up te good work guys i really enjoy coming to this page and get my hoops fix. I do want to know if KO and Dower and gained any pounds. So if any of you have that answer please feel free to post. And it would make the next 6 months go by faster if we got ANY recruiting news. The only recruiting news i have, is that Gonzaga coaches were at Taft HS in California last month along with many Pac-10 coaches.

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Any word on how his visit went??  I'm really hoping we can land this kid, this is the shooter we've been looking for since Stepp left.  I think this is what has been killing us the last two years is the lack of a pure shooter that can stretch defenses, we can put  a crazy offensive lineup out there if we have Hyland, Carter, Grey Harris and Sacre, at least that is my dream lineup..  

Word on the street is that Gary Bell is at Gonzaga this weekend. If someone can confirm this that would be great. This is an unofficial visit. And i heard he will be back for a camp in the summer. So this sounds like good news. Maybe we do have a shot at Bell after all. I want this kid so bad. With 2 rides left maybe3 ( if Harris leaves for NBA ) I would like to land Bell . Wiltjer and Pangos. But we also need a center at some point and if someone bails and leaves Gonzaga we will have a 4th ride to hand out. I know we wont land LeBryan Nash but i have read that some Zags think his interest in Gonzaga was an error but it was not. He claims the Zags have offered him a ride. I was glad to hear the Zag coaches were seen in LA looking at some prospects at Taft HS with other Pac-10 coaches. I see Donny Daniels knows a little about LA HS kids = )

In our continuing attempt to drown you all with as much Gonzaga information as possible, we have finally put our blog on the time killer known as Facebook.  You can get through to our Fan Page using this link and become our "fan" so you get constant updates whenever you are on Facebook.  Every story we put up here will be linked over there and we plan to keep the page as updated as our Twitter page (which you can find here).

The cool thing about our Facebook page is that, similar to here, you can post discussions, add pictures and interact with Gonzaga fans from all parts of the world. 

There are also a bunch of little Facebook buttons on the site and when you read posts that give you the option to share them with friends and that sort of thing so we encourage you to keep spreading the word about our site so that the following years just keep getting better!

Also, and this has nothing to do with Facebook but if you want to learn more about Max and I (and the site) we urge you to check out this article that ran in last week's Gonzaga Bulletin.  We think it turned out very well and the author did a great job with the piece.

From OUHoops:

As you guys have already read on the boards this morning there have been some reports/rumors that Marquise Carter, the 6-4 point guard from Three Rivers CC, may be reconsidering his commitment to Gonzaga and taking a trip to OU. 

I sent a message to Carter this morning asking him about this, and here is the response I got.

“Yes, I’m probably going to take a visit…haven’t decided yet.”

What is the word on Marquise reconsidering his commitment?