The Floyd Street Tribune: Drink in a cocktail of hoops thoughts in the dog days of August
Inside: Assorted thoughts on Louisville hoops and college basketball in general, plus some quick recruiting updates and a reader question of the week.
EDITOR’S NOTE: There will be no newsletter next Thursday, but we’ll return to our regularly scheduled newslettering the following week.
Thanks for reading The Floyd Street Tribune! Miss last week’s newsletter on the preseason ACC rankings and expectations for Louisville? Paid subscribers have access to each newsletter via the main TFST page.
This week’s newsletter will be a hodgepodge of thoughts and topics. A potpourri. Dare I say in this city a cocktail.
We are in the dog days of summer, and aside from a celebrity kickball game and a charity golf tournament, there isn’t a whole lot going on at the moment on the men’s hoops front. We have a few small updates to our recruiting big board. We have a good question of the week. And we start this week’s newsletter with a variation of my all-time favorite columnist Bill Reynolds’s old Providence Journal-Bulletin rapid-fire column, For What It’s Worth.
—
* The hiring of Justin Perez (finally) as the director of basketball administration — after he completed his law studies — brought back many of my thoughts from the spring. The transfer and spring recruiting haul didn’t quite match the initial stages of the “Louisville is cool again” movement, so the early vibes didn’t quite sustain their momentum for the branding of the new staff. But the addition of a young, sharp staffer with connections to Jay-Z and Roc Nation should at least open some more doors on the recruiting and NIL fronts, and there are of course ample opportunities in the 2023 recruiting chase to reclaim that “cool” momentum.
* Are we bummed about the imminent death of the ACC-Big Ten Challenge? The Big Ten is moving toward a landmark new broadcast deal outside the ESPN kingdom, taking down the ESPN-made Challenge. The event has been a cool way to pit power conference teams against each other, but ultimately it just doesn’t feel like it has the same juice that it did maybe five-to-eight years ago. The schools in both leagues can just, ya know, schedule each other anyway.
* Why not create my dream college hoops event as a replacement? Wrote about this in 2018 — the idea was rock solid and still is. Pay me millions as an event organizer. Ja Rule will be there.
* Classes start on August 22 at the University of Louisville, and matriculating students must register by August 26. Not much time left for Fabio Basili to enroll, but I have heard nothing different about his intention to join the Cards for this season. That said, I was also under the impression Malachi Smith and Emoni Bates were locks for Louisville for a long time. Anyway, it’s always tough to hit the ground running when moving up a level in competition, but at least Basili isn’t coming in to challenge for a starting spot.
* Random stat of the newsletter: Louisville had nine different leading scorers over the course of last season. That’s the highest number of any Louisville team since at least Rick Pitino’s first season (2001-02). A few teams came close with eight.
* POP QUIZ: I’ll give you a hearty pat on the back if you can name all nine of those leading scorers last season without looking ‘em up. I’ll put the answer toward the end of the column.
* Holy crap, I didn’t know what I was missing by not watching Drive to Survive, the Netflix series on Formula One racing. I’ve watched two seasons in 10 days. Full-on addiction. I wish more sports and teams gave such access to documentarians like that. It’s refreshingly direct and really entertaining.
* That said, I might call you a glutton for punishment if you wished to see a docuseries of Louisville’s last season. (Hello, I am a glutton for punishment. Nice to meet me.) Obviously the first episode would culminate with the fateful Dino-Mack confrontation. OK, I’d watch the hell out of that.
* We’ll talk more about the IARP stuff with Louisville below, but it’s just hard to fathom we’re still seeing headlines like this about Kansas five years after the FBI case was publicly revealed.
* Would love to know DJ Wagner’s visit plans, but at this point, who wouldn’t?
* I forgot to ask earlier: Does Justin Perez’s hiring rekindle the hopes that Jay-Z comes to a Louisville game?
* Hey, by the way, you can use a .edu or JCPS email address to get up to eight tickets for $5.02 each for Racing Louisville’s game on August 27. We’re trying to set a new attendance record, and we’ll have $2 pregame beers, a bunch of giveaways and postgame fireworks. I’d love to see you there supporting our community’s team and women’s sports. Let me know if you’re coming.
* POP QUIZ ANSWER: The following nine(!) players led Louisville in scoring in a game last season … Matt Cross, Sydney Curry, Dre Davis, El Ellis, Noah Locke, Jarrod West, Malik Williams, Sam Williamson and Jae’Lyn Withers. I was honestly surprised Mason Faulkner didn’t do it once. Here is that hearty pat on the back if you got the trivia question right without looking it up.
* I don’t know if I’ll ever truly grasp how terrible last season was.
* One last thing before we move on: I know Rutherford already shared this TikTok video of Rodney Purvis watching a Rick Pitino-led Louisville practice, but I am reposting it here because it’s absolutely fantastic content. I still laugh about players saying there’d be days where Pitino would tell them not to make eye contact with him in practice or else. The TEDTalk wireless mic detail is also hilarious.
Recruiting Big Board 3.0
A few small updates to the board …
Already committed
Kaleb Glenn
The very top of the list
DJ Wagner (5-star point guard)
No updates
Aaron Bradshaw (5-star center)
No updates
AJ Johnson (5-star combo guard)
Updates: Based on his official visit schedule, seems like Louisville’s primary competition is LSU, NC State, Texas and USC.
Curtis Williams (4-star wing)
Updates: Nothing really new, but Louisville and Providence are his only visits set.
The newer guys
JP Estrella (5-star center)
Update: Only visited Iowa, Marquette, Syracuse and Tennessee before announcing he’ll make his college choice on Sept. 2. On3 reports he won’t visit any other schools, so … I think this will be his last week on the list.
Elmarko Jackson (4-star combo guard)
Freddie Dilione (4-star combo guard)
Isaiah Miranda (5-star center)
Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn (4-star point guard)
Who else?
Caveat for every single week on the recruiting front: There might be other prospects on their radar who we don’t know about.
Reader Question of the Week
“Can you lay out the NCAA penalty timeline once again? I’ve legitimately lost track at this point.” — Grant C.
To my former doggy daycare peer parent, the timeline is there is no timeline. It is the Fight Club of timelines. There was reportedly going to be a hearing in mid-June. The IARP has not yet updated its website timeline of activities to reflect that. So, in terms of any sort of idea of when we’ll hear anything about Louisville’s case, I’d use the NC State IARP file as a rough comparison. The IARP announced its penalties for NC State four months and 10 days after the hearing. If U of L’s situation follows similarly, that brings everything to late October. Just in time for Kenny Payne’s first season as head coach and more than five years since the FBI announced its investigation.
You Hear That?
The next interview is lining up for early next week. Subscribe to the Floyd Street’s Finest podcast on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
This offseason’s guests include:
Denny Crum, El Ellis, Mike James, Danny Manning, Mike Rutherford, Kenny Klein, Travis Graf and Sean Vinsel (@HoopsInsight) in addition to a few chats with producer Jack Grossman
Thanks so much for reading! See you again on the 25th.
Great stuff Jeff! I lol’d at the Doggy Daycare line.