… but I’ll still be blogging. And definitely still putting out stories — I’ve got the MIAA preview coming out Wednesday and the Jayhawk preview out on Thursday. So hit The Eagle at your newstand or online or pigeon carrier or however you get your news. Just make sure to get it.
And no I’m not working on vacay — I wrote the stories before I left.
I’ll be back to work on Sept. 3, but as big news comes in, of course I’ll throw it up here. BTW, I’m headed to the Pacific Northwest. Just because I know you cared. And I’m not flying Oceanic.
So it’s 2003 and there’s this kid, Vincent Banks, and he’s really good at basketball. Like he’s-one-of-the-best-high-school-players-in-the-country good. He’s from Atlanta, so there’s no shortage of exposure. He decides to go to Miami, but doesn’t qualify academically. So he goes to prep school for a year then heads to Cincinnati to play for Bob Huggins. He ends up a partial qualifier for the Bearcats and has to sit out a year and then, finally, when he’s going to be the focus of Cincy’s offense … he decides to leave school for personal reasons, leaving Huggy Bear and Cincy and the whole lot of them feeling foolish for going to bat for him. And then he gets on a plane from Sydney to LA and nobody sees him for almost six months.
Former Wichita Southeast and Cowley standout Jack Crowder is headed to Southern Illinois — I talked to the 6-foot-4 forward tonight and caught him as he was sending his letter of intent back to Carbondale. Also got a chance to catch up with former Cowley and current Hutch CC coach Steve Eck — check out tomorrow’s Eagle for my story on it. What’s that going to be like for JC when he comes back to play in Wichita next year? Goosebumps, people. Goosebumps. Like I said, read Friday’s Eagle for the entire story.
Oh, and to clarify: THE BLOG IS NOT SHUTTING DOWN FOR THE SUMMER. LIKE MY BOY CHARLIE PACE SAID, “I’M ON IT, SAYID.”
I’m out. -TA
Forward to the 1:10 clip below to see Crowder’s dunk against Bishop Carroll his senior year at Southeast.
My state/juco notes for today focused on the Friends softball team, something I was leading up to for a couple weeks but hadn’t pulled the trigger on the story because I was waiting for them to make a move in the standings, which they did. If you don’t know the backstory, here it is in a nutshell: Two-time defending KCAC champs have 31-game league winning streak broken, fall into second place then regroup to peel off six straight wins including a sweep of the first place team and take back the league lead.
