The topic of the NBA age limit has come up again, and it continues to puzzle me why the league would want to restrain itself. I don’t know if age limits have really been tested in court. Maurice Clarett was supposed to be the test case for the NFL, and that challenge, um, kind of fizzled out. But let’s say they’re fine and that it’s the NBA’s right to set whatever age limit they want. Why would they?

Fortunately Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has put his thoughts down to give us the first-hand perspective of an NBA owner. He favors an age limit of 22, citing concerns over the maturity of younger players. His concens make sense, but they still come off as "please protect us from ourselves."

Why have NBA teams continued to draft high school players or, lately, one-and-dones? There are only two reasons that make any sense: 1) they are better prospects than older alternatives in the draft and 2) these are likely to be high-profile players who can instantly sell tickets and merchandise and raise the profile of the team. If the young players were a negative for the league, you’d think that fewer would be drafted over time. Watch this year’s draft and tell me if that’s the case.

I don’t buy Cuban’s line that a 22-year-old is more likely able to handle the fame and fortune of the NBA. We’re talking about a lifestyle and sums of money that are incomprehensible for almost all Americans. Being thrust into that situation whether 18 or 22 or 42 is a life change that can’t be understood until you live it.

Cuban replies to some comments by saying that "there are plenty of companies that will only hire college graduates. Others will only hire Phds." True. But those requirements have little if anything to do with maturity. For those companies, a degree or doctorate is a way to establish that the applicant has a minimal skill level or aptitude for the job. An NBA team’s scouting and player evaluation takes care of that.

For the NCAA, this is a great deal. Their product is worth more when high-quality players stick around whether it’s by the players’ own choice or through artifical restraints on the job market. A few years riding the gravy train with someone like LeBron James? Yes, please.

The NCAA gets to play the academic integrity card too, though it’s a small point. A one-and done can breeze through a trivial fall semester and then blow off his spring classes once the season is over. Someone who stays for two seasons must at least pretend to be a serious student for a full academic year and then some. College isn’t and shouldn’t be the NBA’s purgatory.

So we have a deal that’s great for the NCAA and seems to be a step in the right direction for at least one NBA owner. Win-win all around, right? Sure, unless you’re the talented 18-year-old who must go through the motions of pretending to be a college student while taking the NCAA’s vow of poverty for two years instead of working in your chosen profession.

I’d be OK with a system based on what baseball does. They’ve seemed to manage fine without requiring a cup of coffee in college. If someone wants to come out of high school, fine. Let them and the NBA teams take that risk. If a player would rather head to college, require a minimum stay of three years to show a commitment to education and allow the programs some shred of long-range planning.

Congratulations to Georgia’s Tasha Humphrey who was selected by the Detroit Shock with the 11th overall pick in the first round of Wednesday’s WNBA draft. She is Georgia’s eighth WNBA first-round selection; only Tennessee and Connecticut have produced more.

It was a bit of a surprise and disappointment for local fans that the new Atlanta expansion team passed on Humphrey at the #8 pick, opting instead for Tamera Young of James Madison. But Atlanta’s mistake is Humphrey’s gain. Instead of being part of an expansion franchise, she finds herself on a contender. Detroit won the league title two years ago and remains strong led by Deanna Nolan, another former Lady Bulldog great. Detroit’s first pick at #4 was Alexis Hornbuckle of Tennessee. Besides being outstanding players, Humphrey and Hornbuckle are both very smart on the court with great awareness. It goes without saying that two decorated players from Tennessee and Georgia should be assets in Detroit.

The situation is great for Tasha. She’s on a good team with a chance to win a title as a rookie, she won’t be the only quality player drawing attention from defenses, and she should relate to Detroit coach Bill Laimbeer’s style easily. Yet another Lady Bulldog, Kara Braxton, is the liklely Detroit starter at center.

I can’t let this post go without mentioning the #9 pick. Amber Holt of MTSU originally signed with Georgia, but she was "rejected a week before the fall semester because course credits for her major weren’t accepted." It’s an understatement to say that a player who was among the most prolific scorers in the nation would have made a difference on a Georgia team that struggled to produce offense. Insult was added to injury when Holt helped to lead MTSU to an upset win at Georgia in December of 2006.

Presenting…Bring a Girl to Tech Day

Mississippi State guard Ben Hansbrough will transfer from Rick Stansbury’s program citing “the school’s lack of a practice facility” as his main reason for leaving.

Hansbrough’s story shows that the investment matters not only in recruiting and retention, but the absence of one can even hold back a player looking to develop and improve. We’ve shown before that Georgia’s new facility matches up with some of the best in the nation. It’s not often that Georgia basketball has had an advantage over its peers in much of anything when it comes to facilities, but that’s not the case anymore.

Entering the tournament the conventional wisdom said that Memphis would be done in by free throw shooting. Through five games, they just got better and better from the line. But with the pressure of the lead in the national title game bearing down on them, the charity stripe did indeed prove fatal. The free throws were just symptomatic though. Memphis looked like a team unfamiliar with playing in big, close games, and free throws were just one of the mistakes they made down the stretch.

Congratulations to Kansas for not packing it in down by nine and fighting back to force overtime. A classic game all around, and the outcome shouldn’t make us overlook great performances on both sides.

This guided-missile submarine should be ready for the next encounter with the Vol Navy.

Anyone find it interesting that last week’s college three-point and slam dunk contest was sponsored by Vegas.com? I realize that the NCAA has nothing to do with the event and that these student-athletes are seniors who have exhausted their eligibility, but I wonder how an organization that has an active PR program against gambling on college sports feels about this sponsor.

UPDATE: Maybe Hooters would have better luck sponsoring this quasi-collegiate dunk competition than they did placing an ad in the Final Four program.

You can’t talk about a football team for two minutes without some element of scheme coming up. Do they run the option or a pro-style offense? If they run an option, is it the spread or a wishbone attack? Is the 4-3 or 3-4 defense in style this year? How about the 3-3-5? Though the relative importance of a particular scheme to a team’s success is one of those things that’s debated among fans, it’s hard to talk about or watch football without understanding some elements of scheme.

When it comes to basketball, so much of the discussion of scheme revolves around defense. Everyone can recognize at the most basic level a zone defense versus a man-to-man. Analysts are even willing to go deeper and talk about different flavors of zone like the matchup or the 1-3-1. There’s not that level of depth when it comes to discussion of offense. Sure, you’ve heard of some of the systems – the Princeton offense, the high post, the motion offense. If you’re a Georgia fan, you might have even heard of Dennis Felton’s 4-out, 1-in offense. Unless you’re really familiar with the game though, it can be hard to recognize a certain system at work within games, and broadcasts don’t do much to illustrate scheme.

Memphis has had an impressive season culminating in tonight’s national championship appearance. It’s an appropriate time to point to this SI article from earlier in the season about the "dribble-drive motion" offense which Memphis adopted this year. It’s a fascinating story not only about Memphis but also about innovation and the roots of this system from an unknown California JUCO coach. Now the offense is the rage not only of Memphis but also professional teams like the Boston Celtics.

In many ways, this dribble-drive motion offense is somewhat of an analogue to football’s current rage – the spread option. Both offenses spread the field/court to exploit weaknesses in individual matchups. Both offenses involve players in flexible roles whether it’s receivers involved in the running game or post players taking perimeter shots. And if Memphis wins the national title tonight, both offenses will have produced a national champion in relatively little time after their adoption at major programs.

Like Urban Meyer and Rich Rodriguez, John Calipari and Vance Walberg are poised to become the gurus for the evolution of offense within their sport. Whether or not Memphis wins, the success of the offense at the college and professional level will have many more coaches experimenting with it in coming seasons. Of course it will be mis-applied in some programs where the personnel doesn’t match the system, and detractors will say it’s been exposed as a fad like any other system. There’s a useful bit in the SI article about defensive adjustments to counter the DDM offense, and we should expect to see the defensive masterminds of college hoops continue to innovate on their side as well. On it goes.

If nothing else, I’m interested in seeing whether or not this innovation in offense will bring the discussion of offensive systems in college basketball out of the shadows.

Head over to Kit’s Dawg-gone Blog for a thorough live-blogging from yesterday’s game. Pretty much as I remember it.

The good…

The Diamond Dawgs swept a double-header from South Carolina, and both wins required late-inning scoring. The opener saw a rare 0-0 defensive battle head into the bottom of the ninth before Matt Olson’s RBI single plated the only run of the game. In the nightcap four eighth inning runs brought the Dawgs back from a 3-1 deficit, but the bullpen had to escape a bases-loaded situation to hold on for the sweep.

Heading into Sunday’s series finale, the Diamond Dawgs move into first place in the SEC East at 8-3 in the league. South Carolina drops to 6-5. Both teams started the day with identical 6-3 SEC records.

The double-header sweep guarantees Georgia their fourth SEC series wins in four tries this season. The consistency has been impressive. One thing remains – though Georgia has won all of their SEC series to date, they have yet to sweep a series. They can change that on Sunday afternoon at Foley Field.

Football recruiting also had some big news on Saturday. Northside Warner Robins defensive end Abry Jones committed to the Dawgs becoming the seventh commitment for Georgia in the class of 2009. I don’t pretend to have much skill at evaluating players, but Jones was one of those who couldn’t help but stand out during his team’s run to a 2008 state title. He is quite possibly the best defensive line prospect in the state this year – this is a big commitment.

The scary…

This *is* brain surgery. Larry Munson is recovering from a procedure on Friday to “remove a subdural hematoma.” The surgery went well, and he is expected to recover completely and be back in the broadcast booth this fall. That’s great news, but damn…brain surgery. Hopefully the brain surgeons were not tossing around words like “whatchamacallit” during the operation.

The news release notes:

Munson’s family and his attending medical staff have asked everyone to respect his privacy during his recovery. Anyone wishing to send cards or letters to him is asked to send them to the following address:

Larry Munson
c/o UGA Athletic Association
P.O. Box 1472
Athens, GA 30603

A better crowd than I expected turned out to see the Red beat the Black 17-3 at G-Day.  Though around 40,000 tickets were supposedly pre-ordered, an announced crowd of 19,874 braved the rain.

• No real surprise to see the Red team with the first team offense come away with the win.  The shortened nature of the game made it tough to put up much in the way of gaudy stats or scoring.  Michael Moore was he star of the day with two touchdown receptions to account for all of the day’s touchdowns.
• Matthew Stafford is aiming for a 62% completion average, and he came close with a 6-10 performance.  He did have one perfectly-placed touchdown pass and got lucky when Asher Allen dropped a sure interception.  Had Kris Durham not dropped a sharp pass, we’re looking at a 70% day, so it was a pretty fair day for the starting QB.
• It was a ho-hum day for the running game.  No one looked awful, and several guys did well creating yards, but no one really ripped off a long run.  It says enough that Caleb King was the leading rusher with 6 carries and 31 yards.
• An unexpected highlight of the day was placekicking.  Andrew Jensen nailed a 47-yard field goal, and Brian Behr hit one from 52 yards as the first half expired.  They weren’t being rushed, but it was good to see some distance on a wet field.  Punting was a different story…
• Once they settled in after a touchdown on the opening drive, the first team defense held their own.  Curren, Atkins, and Allen all had nice games.
• Two defensive newcomers had plays worthy of the highlight reel.  Akeem Hebron, who spent last season at GMC, had a key 40-yard fumble recovery after a botched snap.  He also had a game-high five tackles.  Safety John Knox looks like the next pain delivery specialist in the defensive backfield.
• Caleb King showed plenty of the elusiveness that’s supposed to be his hallmark.  You’d like to see what he could do behind the starting line, and I’m sure we will get plenty of chances to see that this fall.  He definitely needs to work on his pass protection though. 
• Logan Gray’s debut was impressive, and he showed off both the arm and the mobility that makes him a likely successor to Stafford.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he sees some real playing time this season.
• It was hard to get a read on the offensive line.  The second team line got beat for five sacks, but the first team line “did well” according to Coach Richt. 
• The only injury of the day was Vince Vance with about a minute remaining.  Coach Richt said postgame that it was an ankle sprain, so it looks as if the Dawgs dodged the injury bullet on a wet track.  That’s the best news of the day.

Now let’s hope that the traditional night on the town after the end of spring practice stays under control.  We only need to read about highlights in the papers tomorrow.

One other thing…nice job by Buck Belue of sneaking a Tommy Bowden reference in there. Well done.

Mark Richt wants a lot of people at G-Day on Saturday. “I hope a lot of people show up so it will make it more and more exciting and more like a real game,” he said after Wednesday’s practice. Of course it’s left to the fans to make the spring scrimmage seem “more like a real game” because it’s doubtful that the action on the field will resemble one.

Richt’s priorities for the day are “a crisp game without a lot of penalties and fumbles, probably without a lot of scoring and for everyone to come out healthy.” Sounds like big fun, right? You certainly can’t blame a coach for just wanting to get through the day – G-Day might be that day of spring practice where the least gets done, but it is still a chance for the team to have some fun and show off in front of the fans after weeks of hard work.

Players like early favorite Kalvin Daniels will battle it out for the Brown-Powell Award after Stafford and Moreno put in their couple of series, and fans will gauge the team’s worthiness for a national title run based on the outcome of a single scrimmage. We all know what G-Day is like, so I can’t really be down on Georgia fans if they have more options in life than Alabama fans and don’t pack Sanford Stadium. There’s a ton of anticipation around this year’s team though, so, weather permitting, Coach Richt will probably get his wish and have a decent crowd.

I like Ching’s take: we know that G-Day is a dawg-and-pony show for the fans that doesn’t mean much in the big picture, but I’m curious as anyone to see some of the names and groups that have been in the news.

One of the challenges for a fan looking to see how the Dawgs are doing is not reading too much into each bit of news that comes out of spring and preseason practices. We should know by now that certain statements in the press and even depth chart decisions at this time of the year can be as much motivational tactic as they are real news. As we sift through all of that, we’re left with a few main storylines going into G-Day:

• Everyone in the world wants to see Caleb King, but the other newcomers at tailback might be as intriguing. Richard Samuel and Dontavius Jackson would be the center of attention on a team that didn’t already have players with the hype of Moreno and King.
• I questioned myself for pointing to the offensive line as a possible weakness for this team, but it has been a big story so far in the spring. Clint Boling has been sidelined with mono, Ben Jones has tweaked his ankle, and the battle for the center position will continue on into the summer. I think the staff has a general idea of who they’d like to see on the starting line, but Boling’s illness and the unsettled center spot have meant that the ideal starting line hasn’t seen much work as a unit. With G-Day unlikely to settle much in this area, the line should be a focus well into August.
• Injuries at some positions will peel back the layers of the depth chart. Receiver might be the one position where this is most noticed. Massaquoi, Wilson, and Harris are all injured. Young players like Israel Troupe, Walter Hill, Tavarres King, and even Aron White should benefit from extra playing time. I’d also like to see some of the veterans who have lurked down the depth chart – guys like Demiko Goodman and Michael Moore. At other positions, center Ben Jones has an ankle sprain, and defensive tackle Jeff Owens is out with a separated shoulder.
• Is the defense really that good? Aside from Owens’ shoulder, there just hasn’t been much bad news from the defensive side this spring. The biggest question is at defensive end, and that seems to be more a case of seeing which promising player will win the job. We remember how bad the defense looked last year, so G-Day performance isn’t the best indicator of things, but I will be curious to see how things have changed and improved since the dominant performance in the Sugar Bowl.

We aint one-at-a-timin’ here, we’re mass communicatin’!

For those who aren’t making the trip to Athens, UGA is making G-Day available on television, radio, and online. It won’t quite rival the overexposure for Florida’s spring game (featuring Tebow healing Percy Harvin at halftime live on ESPN), but most Dawg fans who want to tune in should be able to find the game.

Television

CSS will have the game live at 2:00. If you can’t catch it on Saturday or DVR it, one would expect CSS to replay this game a few dozen times in the next couple of weeks.

Radio

AM750 WSB will carry the game for the first time since 1993. The game will also be broadcast across the Bulldog Radio Network; check your local affiliate to make sure that they will have the broadcast. XM subscribers nationwide can find the game on channel 199. If you XM subscribers leave it on 199, you’ll get the LSU spring game at 6:00.

Online

For the first time, UGA’s GXtra will stream a football game live. GXtra has had its shaky moments in the past few months (anyone else get that great mousepad?), but this is the best option for distant fans who want to watch the game.

Oh…and if you’re in Athens for the game, head over to Foley Field after the G-Day game.  There’s a big weekend series with South Carolina.  Georgia’s coming off of a nice two-game sweep of Clemson, and it would be huge for the Diamond Dawgs’ SEC chances if they can take another series from a Palmetto State team.

Up until now I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but this brings it all together.

The arrogance about his offense, chip on the shoulder, 1-AA success, confrontational style with the media, even the references to Oklahoma’s offense under Switzer…

Paul Johnson is Georgia Tech’s Jim Donnan.

This Johnson quote is right out of a 1996 Georgia press conference:

"If something wasn’t wrong, if what they were doing was so great, we wouldn’t be here…It’s not like we’re coming in here and dismantling this high-powered machine that was lighting everybody up."

If nothing else, the rivalry is about to become a lot more entertaining. Tech fans will lap up the tell-it-like-it-is style (at first) as Georgia fans did, and Dawg fans should look forward to years of colorful quotes coming from the enemy.

Six people you probably haven’t heard of are the semifinalists for the LSU athletic director position which will open up when Skip Bertman retires later this year. There are two internal candidates, and Duke’s current AD Joe Alleva is a recent addition to the mix. Some cursory browsing shows that Florida Atlantic AD Craig Angelos might be the favorite.

The story is locally relevant because two names expected to be on the list aren’t there. Everyone’s favorite short-list candidate, Florida associate AD Greg McGarity, didn’t make the cut. More surprising is the fact that Georgia Tech AD Dan Radakovich didn’t even apply for the LSU job. Though he’s only been at Tech for two years, Radakovich had been mentioned as a likely successor for Bertman the moment Radakovich left Baton Rouge.

Logan Gray talks to the Red and Black about coming to Georgia from Missouri, his redshirt season, and possibly seeing playing time as something other than the third-string QB.