That other guy

Collegiate Sports
1

[QUOTE]’‘Everyone thinks it’s going to be one-and-out (one year of college and on to the NBA), but Michael has always wanted to go to college,’’ Smith said, laughing. ''He will be in college as long as he needs to be there. We’re aware of the money that will be available, but heaven forbid if something would happen to him, he knows the value of an education."[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]“I was in Manhattan in September and it seemed like a way of life I’ve never seen before,” Smith said. “Here (D.C.), it’s all hustle, hustle, hustle, stop-and-go in traffic, and trampling over people to get to the buffet line first. In Manhattan, it was real calm. I thought ‘This can’t be real.’ Even the people were nice.”

But no one as nice as Wildcat coach Bob Huggins.

“He’s just like a big, old bear … a gentle bear. He’s very entertaining. He has a million stories, but he tells them over and over,” Smith laughed. "But he’s what Michael needs. He won’t be a push-over; he won’t put up with any crap. Michael needs to be pushed and a swift kick in the butt every now and then.[/QUOTE]

[B]Being Michael Beasley’s mom[/B]
Mark Janssen. Senior Sports Editor, [URL=http://www.wildcatdaily.com]WildcatDaily.com[/URL]
11/8/2006 11:03:31 AM

It was fun initially, but lately … the last four to six months?

“It’s been a nightmare you didn’t ever think would end,” Fatima Smith said. “I’m so excited that it’s almost over.”

Just so you know, Fatima Smith is Michael Beasley’s mother; mom of the No. 1 high school basketball player in America, who signed a national letter of intent this afternoon to play at Kansas State University.

“All of this was fun at the very beginning when he made the Top 100, and eventually No. 1, but now it’s so exciting that this recruiting stuff is about to be over,” Smith said Tuesday from her home in the Washington D.C. area.

Smith said she first realized her son was special in hoops when he was “… about 13 and AAU coaches started calling in and bidding for him to play for their team. It was about 15 when I realized, ‘This kid is amazing … just awesome.’ The last few years you would go to his games and just have chills because he was so good. Watching him is like watching a good movie. You just can’t take your eyes off him.”

While Smith has worked as a manager in a medical office, her son has toured the northeast playing at three different prep schools in the last three seasons — Riverdale Baptist (Upper Marlboro, Md.) as a sophomore; Oak Hill Academy (Mouth of Wilson, Va.) as a junior; and Notre Dame Prep (Fitchburg, Mass.) this year.

“He’s almost been like a military baby with all those moves,” Smith said. “But it was always for a strong academic atmosphere.”

Smith calls her son a “goof ball,” but also "a pretty smart kid.

“When you really sit down with him, he’s more intelligent than he lets on to be.”

Intelligent enough to know the value of an education; intelligent enough to know the value of being a No. 1 pick in the 2008 NBA Draft?

‘‘Everyone thinks it’s going to be one-and-out (one year of college and on to the NBA), but Michael has always wanted to go to college,’’ Smith said, laughing. ''He will be in college as long as he needs to be there. We’re aware of the money that will be available, but heaven forbid if something would happen to him, he knows the value of an education."

Smith says she’s seen her son play quite a bit, and with the games she couldn’t be at in person, “I was on the phone with either a coach on the bench, or a scorer on the bench. Just call me nosey.”

Smith was divorced from her husband, Michael Beasley Sr., when Michael Jr. was a 3-year-old. She said the two Michaels stay in contact, but was not sure how often.

As for her son moving half-way across the country, Smith admitted that it will be tough. Tough enough that she has considered moving west with Michael, plus his two brothers and two sisters.

“I was in Manhattan in September and it seemed like a way of life I’ve never seen before,” Smith said. “Here (D.C.), it’s all hustle, hustle, hustle, stop-and-go in traffic, and trampling over people to get to the buffet line first. In Manhattan, it was real calm. I thought ‘This can’t be real.’ Even the people were nice.”

But no one as nice as Wildcat coach Bob Huggins.

“He’s just like a big, old bear … a gentle bear. He’s very entertaining. He has a million stories, but he tells them over and over,” Smith laughed. "But he’s what Michael needs. He won’t be a push-over; he won’t put up with any crap. Michael needs to be pushed and a swift kick in the butt every now and then.

“Believe me, he’s been clobbered before,” Smith chuckled. “He’s been raised in a single-parent home, but has always known that you do what you need to do to be right, or it’s not going to be a pretty picture.”

But the picture coming to Bramlage Coliseum, Smith predicts, is going to be very pretty.

“Michael is pretty amazing to watch,” Smith said.

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[B]The class of the country[/B]
K-State celebrates locking up a highly touted recruiting class
Mark Janssen Senior Sports Writer, [URL=http://www.wildcatdaily.com][B]WildcatDaily.com[/B][/URL]
11/9/2006 10:53:14 AM

Brown, to Pullen, to Sutton — ally-oop to Beasley for the windmill slammer-oo.

Selection Sundays; national television exposures; heck, maybe even Dick Vitale.

It’s the new territory Kansas State entered Wednesday with four signings to national letters of intent: five-star Michael Beasley, plus three-star talents Fred Brown, Jacob Pullen and Dominique Sutton.

That quartet joins five-star Bill Walker, who officially joined the Wildcats last week, and will be eligible for play on Dec. 17. It makes for what recruiting analysts are calling the No. 1 early signing recruiting class in America.

“This is going to wind up as the marquee basketball recruiting class in the history of Kansas State basketball,” said Dave Telep, national recruiting analyst of Scout.com.

Rivals.com ranks Beasley the No. 1 player in the nation and Walker No. 6.

At a mid-afternoon press conference Wednesday, Wildcat basketball coach Bob Huggins admitted that he was worried “until about 20 minutes ago” whether the cast of verbal commitments would all stay true to their word.

“There were people trying to get in on most of them,” Huggins said.

But by mid-afternoon, all had signed to be Wildcats.

Captain of the 2006-2007 class is the 6-9 Beasley, who comes from Washington D.C., but will play this winter for Notre Dame (Mass.) Prep.

The best talent Huggins has ever signed?

“He’d be real close,” Huggins said. “Dontonio Winfield (1994 all-American at Cincinnati) was very talented. I think Mike is a lot like Dontonio. He’s not as physical, but he’s more athletic, and Don was a pretty good athlete.”

Huggins added, “I had a lot of guys tell me that Mike’s the best guy that they’ve seen in a long time.”

And yes, Beasley, who averaged 20.1 points, 10.4 rebounds and 4.5 blocks per game last year for Oak Hill Academy in Mouth of Wilson, Va., will be called on to be an immediate factor.

“He better make a difference immediately, or it’s going to be a long year,” Huggins said. "What’s exciting is when you throw Bill in the mix, we’ve got five guys that are great teammates.

“Mike is not selfish at all. He really loves to pass the ball and share the ball,” Huggins said. “Bill has always shared the ball with the group he played with. All five of these guys are going to be great teammates. I think they will mesh together faster than maybe other classes will just because of the kind of players and people that they are.”

The unsung heroes of the recruiting class include Brown, a 6-3 off-guard from West Palm Beach, Fla., where he was ranked as the 13th best player in the state; Pullen, 6-1 point guard from Maywood, Ill., where he was ranked as the No. 7 player in the state; and, Sutton, a 6-4 guard from The Patterson School in Lenoir, N.C., where he was ranked as the 57th best player in the nation by Scout.com, and 131st best by Rivals.com.

“Fred passes it extremely well,” Huggins said of Brown, who averaged 12.3 points and 6.0 assists per game. "Freddie really has great court vision and passes the ball really well. Plus, he’s so long that he’s going to end up being a heck of a defender.

“Jake just really pushes the ball and sees the floor,” Huggins said. "He’s going to enable us to play a little faster because he’s got such great speed with the ball.

“Dominique may be as hard a playing guy as I’ve ever recruited,” Huggins said of Sutton, who chose KSU over offers from Kansas, Illinois and Wake Forest. “He has great anticipation, can get the ball, and he’s really athletic.”

Huggins said he will lose depth on the perimeter at year’s end, making that area a focus of 2007 recruiting. “We have the two big freshmen (7-3 Jason Bennett and 6-10 Luis Colon), but we needed a more mobile, agile big guy, which certainly Mike is,’’ he said. ''The rest of those guys are wing guys, but they are going to be able to rebound it as well.”

Although Beasley and Walker already carry big reputations, Huggins said both will improve with age and maturity.

“I think both of them, physically, are going to get much bigger and stronger,” Huggins said. “Both of their genetics are just off the charts. When you have that much fast-twitch muscle, you’re going to get strong quicker, and they’re going to get stronger quicker.”

Huggins said Beasley’s at his best on the perimeter, but certainly has the talents to score inside.

He said Walker ''has to develop some confidence in his shot. He attacks the rim, which is terrific. But when they back off of you, you have to jump up and make it. That’s something we’re going to try to work with him a little bit."

Huggins stopped short of calling this recruiting class the best of his coaching career, mentioning an eight-player cast of Corie Blount, Nick Van Exel, who both went on to NBA careers, plus “really good college players” in Eric Martin, Allen Jackson, Terry Nelson and John Jacobs.

But as Huggins said, “It’s easy to say that now because I didn’t know Van Exel was going to be a pro when we recruited him.”

Part of the new territory Kansas State has traveled has its possible down side. Fans may only be able to cheer the likes of Beasley and Walker for one or two years before they enter the NBA draft.

Huggins says he will advise each player to do what’s best for them with this philosophy: “You don’t want to make the NBA, you want to have a career in the NBA.”

He gave former Cincinnati star Kenyon Martin as an example for someone he encouraged to stay in school one extra year.

“He would have been picked 18th to 22nd, but made the decision to come back and went No. 1 the next year,” Huggins said. “I try to be honest with them. There’s enough data out there, and the NBA does a great job of projecting where guys are going to go within two or three spots.”

While Wildcat fans won’t want to see the day that Beasley or Walker would leave K-State, Huggins says each future pro must make a business decision.

“The people who say don’t do it … it’s not their kid,” Huggins said. “If it was their kid, they’d be right there trying to find out where they were going to go and how much they were going to make. You just try to get them to do what’s best for them.”

3

[QUOTE]“It’s a great thing for a big-time coach to be at a [B]smaller[/B] school, a school that wasn’t really on the map,” Beasley said by telephone. “It’s a big thing and it’s going to bring nice things.”[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE]Huggins credited his assistant coaches Dalonte Hill, who coached Beasley in A.A.U. and later became an assistant at Charlotte, and Frank Martin, a former assistant of his at Cincinnati, for the Wildcats’ haul.

“Dalonte’s got great relationships with people, and Frank’s got great relationships with people, and I’m older than dirt, so I know everybody,” he said. “Our guys work hard at it.”[/QUOTE]

[B]Huggins and Kansas St. Land Four Top Prospects [/B]
By Thayer Evans, New York Times

Kansas State and its new coach, Bob Huggins, secured what could be the best recruiting class in college basketball yesterday with binding letters of intent from four high school players, including Michael Beasley, considered the nation’s top power forward.

Though it was the first day of the early-signing period, the Wildcats already had the fifth member of their elite class on campus, Bill Walker, a 6-foot-6, 200-pound small forward

Walker, a consensus top-10 prospect known for his toughness and for being a prolific dunker, signed a financial-aid agreement with Kansas State on Nov. 3 and is taking classes part time at the university, the team spokesman Tom Gilbert said.

In July, Walker was declared ineligible to play high school basketball this season after it was determined that he had exhausted his eligibility at North College Hill High School in Cincinnati. He earned his diploma last month when he completed an accelerated graduation program.

He played with O. J. Mayo in A.A.U. basketball and at College Hill. Mayo, the nation’s top recruit, is said to be headed to Southern California, but could also still be considering Kansas State.

Walker was not available for comment yesterday, but Huggins said he expected Walker to play once he became eligible for competition Dec. 16. Until then, he cannot participate in any athletic-related activities.

Huggins said Walker is living on campus at Kansas State and has adjusted well to his new surroundings, but is eager to make his debut on the court.

“He has athleticism that’s just off the charts,” Huggins said in a telephone interview. “He’s a guy that I’m sure will not stay four years in college.”

In addition to Walker and the 6-8, 210-pound Beasley, the class includes the 6-4 small forward Dominique Sutton of Durham, N.C.; the 6-foot guard Jacob Pullen from Maywood, Ill.; and the 6-2 guard Fred Brown of West Palm Beach, Fla.

“We had to get more athletic and this is an extremely athletic class,” Huggins said. “These four individuals will be great additions to the foundation we have already put in place.”

Dave Telep, Scout.com’s national basketball recruiting analyst, said the Wildcats’ class ranked first in the nation, followed by Syracuse and Duke. He said Walker would have an immediate impact in the Big 12 this season and described him as a “freakishly rare combination of size and power.”

“Kansas State had a day on Wednesday that they’ve never experienced in the history of their basketball program,” Telep said in a telephone interview. “They’re in an atmosphere and stratosphere that they’ve never been before.”

Beasley, who averaged 20.1 points and 10.4 rebounds for Oak Hill Academy (Mouth of Wilson, Va.) last season, is the most polished player in the group, Telep said. Beasley is attending Notre Dame Preparatory School in Fitchburg, Mass., this year.

“Michael Beasley is a program changer,” Telep said. “The expectation level gets cranked up to an all-time high with him.

“Mike is the guy that defines this class. He’s the guy that ties it all together.”

Huggins credited his assistant coaches Dalonte Hill, who coached Beasley in A.A.U. and later became an assistant at Charlotte, and Frank Martin, a former assistant of his at Cincinnati, for the Wildcats’ haul.

“Dalonte’s got great relationships with people, and Frank’s got great relationships with people, and I’m older than dirt, so I know everybody,” he said. “Our guys work hard at it.”

Kansas State has been invigorated by Huggins, 53, in only eight months. He had a drunken-driving conviction in 2004 and in 2005 he accepted a $3 million buyout from the University of Cincinnati, where he had coached for 16 years. He has a career record of 567-199.

He did not coach last season and was hired by Kansas State in March to replace Jim Wooldridge, who resigned after a 15-13 season. His contract is for five years and is worth at least $800,000 a year in the first three years.

Since Huggins’s arrival, season-ticket sales have almost doubled from last year, and the Wildcats will appear on national television five times this season, compared with once last season.

Kansas State is picked to finish fifth in the Big 12, according to a preseason coaches poll, and opens its regular season Saturday at home against William and Mary.

“The people have been unbelievable here,” said Huggins, who added, “But we haven’t lost yet.” Without Huggins, Beasley said he was unsure if he would have considered Kansas State, but he is now thinking about possible national titles.

“It’s a great thing for a big-time coach to be at a smaller school, a school that wasn’t really on the map,” Beasley said by telephone. “It’s a big thing and it’s going to bring nice things.”

4

Simply sickening.

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[URL=http://sg.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061101035424AAsddzs]http://sg.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061101035424AAsddzs[/URL]

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[ATTACH]714[/ATTACH]
I’m sure the 156’ grain elevator (tallest 'building" ) was the “breath taking” view for the thug huggins and anyone ever stopped by manhattan ks. The key for "I’ve got to move here " kind of a town. :tongue:

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[QUOTE]Walker, a consensus top-10 prospect known for his toughness and for being a prolific dunker, signed a financial-aid agreement with Kansas State on Nov. 3 and is taking classes part time at the university, the team spokesman Tom Gilbert said.

In July, Walker was declared ineligible to play high school basketball this season after it was determined that he had exhausted his eligibility at North College Hill High School in Cincinnati. He earned his diploma last month when he completed an accelerated graduation program.
[/QUOTE]

Kansas State better hurry up and submit their paperwork. You know how the NCAA likes to drag their feet when reviewing transcripts.

Oh, who am I kidding?

8

Really I know Beasley backed out the way he did, but bringing it up over and over again isn’t making him come… Huggins blows we all know this, but let it go.

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[QUOTE=CharSFNiners;197915]Really I know Beasley backed out the way he did, but bringing it up over and over again isn’t making him come… Huggins blows we all know this, but let it go.[/QUOTE]

It was brought up because it involved us.

Nice first post. Hope you hang around for a while.

(or are you the poster who formerly went by SFNiner?)… If so, welcome back.

10

Na, I’m new if you can say that… I’ve checked things on here for over a year, but never signed up until 2 weeks ago (it took that long for my activation to finally come, I’ve seen things lately that I can no longer just look the other way and not voice an opinion or fact). I know it was brought up b/c we were involved but throwing salt in your own wounds is not a good idea that’s all I’m saying, trust me I hope all of manhattan falls flat on their face too.

11

im not letting it go…i still think this is one of the best things to happen to our program.