ACC Basketball News: NBA’s view of Hickson, Taylor King to Villanova, and Miami picks up PG from Villanova

07-08 Basketball General85

There are many State fans who have issues with Dave Glenn, however there isn’t any member of the media who has his resources and access in covering ACC sports. With several ACC players considering declaring for the NBA draft, he gathered some opinions from NBA officials on Tyler Hansbrough, Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington and JJ Hickson.

An NBA official on condition of anonymity had this to say about JJ Hickson:

This isn’t complicated at all. If you’re 6-9 and you can put the ball in the basket on a consistent basis against people your size, you’re on our radar. Does he have a long way to go? Yes. Does he have a lot to learn? Yes. Is he ready to play in the NBA today? No. But it’s no secret that a lot of teams in this league will take a chance on big guys with scoring ability, even if they have to wait a year or two for the payoff.

In other words, JJ Hickson is not coming back and he will make the 4th former NC State player currently in the NBA along with Damien Wilkins, Josh Powell, and Cedric Simmons. Interestingly enough, each of these players left NC State in their first two years on campus and only two (Simmons and now JJ) went/are going directly to the NBA. Of course, Wilkins transfered to Georgia to become a sixth man for his final two years and Josh Powell’s career led him to Europe. Both are having successful NBA careers at this point.

There are a couple of newsworthy items today regarding ACC hoops. It is transfer season and there is news today of Taylor King selecting Villanova as his destination after marginal success at Duke:

It took Taylor King a season to decide Duke wasn’t the right fit for him. It took him less than 72 hours to figure out what did fit.

King, who had planned to visit Gonzaga and Southern Cal at the end of the month, committed on Sunday to transfer to Villanova after a weekend visit. He will enroll in June…

“It just couldn’t be a better fit for me,” King said. “It wasn’t about getting it over with. I wanted it. This gives me the best opportunity to start right away.”

Additionally, Miami landed a point guard transfering from Villanova.

The last time the Miami Hurricanes accepted a backcourt transfer it worked out rather nicely. Jack McClinton went from Siena to All-ACC for Frank Haith’s Hurricanes. Now the staff is hoping to have hit pay dirt again. Malcolm Grant, a freshman for the Villanova Wildcats, announced his intentions to transfer. He’ll sit next year and have three seasons to play. A high-level recruit, Grant was certainly talented enough to play a role at Villanova but was simply victim to a numbers game in the backcourt.

As a freshman for the Wildcats, Grant logged 13 minutes a game. He scored 5.8 points a contest to go with 1.8 assists.

Grant was a 3-star PG ranked #23 at his position by www.scout.com.

07-08 Basketball General

85 Responses to ACC Basketball News: NBA’s view of Hickson, Taylor King to Villanova, and Miami picks up PG from Villanova

  1. RickJ 04/14/2008 at 3:47 PM #

    Again, I don’t know how anybody can know how good Degand would have been after seeing him play 10 games after a 2 and a half year break from playing in a real game. He may have been terrible by the time ACC coaches were able to scout and game plan for him. I concede that as a real possibility.

    However, 50% of the game of basketball for a PG is played on defense. If you believe that Gonzalez and Degand were equals on the defensive end of the court, we will just have to agree to disagree.

  2. VaWolf82 04/14/2008 at 3:50 PM #

    Do any of the State fans that listen to and like Glenn ever hear him do interviews outside of the Triangle? I have and his hatred of Amato came through loud and clear in Virginia. Whether that hatred was limited to Amato remains undecided. Basically, Glenn plays to his audience in the Triangle region because he needs subscribers for the ACCSJ.

    Does anyone remember the year that BTB had four DL fail to qualify and end up at Hargrave? He wrote an article about that situation and used it as a platform to bash State’s academics while also praising UNC’s. However, the data he claimed to reference was actually available on the internet. The actual data proved that he told a bold-faced lie about the average SAT scores for State’s and UNC’s FB teams.

    Bascially, Glenn has shown that he is willing to lie and misrepresent the truth. That doesn’t mean that he always does….just that I won’t believe anything that he has to say without independent confirmation.

  3. BackdaPack87 04/14/2008 at 4:40 PM #

    I am sorry to high-jack the thread but the Torry Holt thing that I heard on WRAL from SMD’s sight just really pisses me off. It is shame that not even one of greatest alumni has any pride in NCSU and our basketball team.

    Here is the audio:
    http://www.wral.com/sports/999thefan/audio/2641757/

  4. BoKnowsNCS71 04/14/2008 at 5:23 PM #

    SFN I could not find your gmail address but this Awareness test reminded me of our overall Athletic Program. Consists of volley ball players with black and white shirts and the viewer has to count the passes by the ones with white shirts. Of course I missed one item and that was sort of where LF comes in.

    http://www.break.com/index/awareness-test.html

  5. Mr. O 04/14/2008 at 7:41 PM #

    Vawolf82: I have been reading the ACC Sports Journal for most of my life. I don’t remember that article you are refering too.

    I would love to see some links/quotes from these claims Glenn supposedly made along with the data that shows he lied or got something wrong. You and Choppack come up with the same stories each time Glenn’s name comes up, however I would love to finally see proof of Glenn lying or misrepresenting facts. Personally, I have never seen or heard him do so. As much as I have read and listened to him since his start with the Poop Sheet and on the radio and followed this type of stuff on the internet for the last dozen plus years, I just figure I wouldn’t have missed this.

  6. dawgitall 04/14/2008 at 7:46 PM #

    I know I’m roaming a bit off topic here but in regards to ranking SAT scores as some kind of indication of having low academic standards wouldn’t the real test of academic integrity be how well they performed in the college classroom, not how well they performed on a test trying to get into college?

  7. turfpack 04/14/2008 at 8:27 PM #

    My 2 cents worth on D.G.-Have listened and read his articles for a few years.
    33%-Very factual and knowleadgable insight.

    33%-Some sensationalism on topics to draw readers and listeners.

    33%-Slanted thru the babyblue glasses.(UNX grad.)

    Remember its a business-what do you expect???
    He is still alot better than A.G.(OPINIONATED IDOT)

  8. choppack1 04/14/2008 at 8:55 PM #

    turf – he’s the man when it comes to the ACC…

    Mr O – alot of w/ Glenn is those few moments, when he let’s his guard down – like signing day w/ AJ Davis. I know that I’m biased – and if I was in Glenn’s profession, I’d make an effort a lot, but my bias would show in those rare moments – like when Curry signed w/ UNC or when Stackhouse stepped on Feggins. And the academic angle is something he plays up knowing better.

  9. VaWolf82 04/14/2008 at 9:38 PM #

    Vawolf82: I have been reading the ACC Sports Journal for most of my life. I don’t remember that article you are refering too.

    The entire article was typed into PP Premium and was fairly quickly debunked by the various posters then. I traded several e-mails with Glenn over it and eventually decided to quit wasting my time. He claimed that he had four (or maybe five?) year moving averages that supported his claims. However, that is not what he reported and the data supporting his claims was not included.

    The raw data makes a big difference because he worded the article such that UNC was third in the ACC and State/FSU were “near the bottom”. The delta in SAT scores between State and UNC was not included in his data. The actual data that used to be on the Stanford Scout site showed that most of the schools not named Duke/WF had SAT scores that were pretty close to each other. So I doubt that his characterization was all that meaningful.

    You know the old cliche…Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure. If you don’t present your data (and refuse to when questioned via e-mail), then you’ll have to forgive me for rejecting conclusions that conflict with the data that is available.

    At the same time that he was praising Amato in the Triangle (based on reports from PP posters), he was slamming him in interviews given to a talk-sports program on local radio in Virginia. You can label that anyway that you would like….but once again it shows me that he can’t be trusted.

    I truly don’t care what any other State fan does with their time or money. I just don’t spend any of mine listening to Dave Glenn. Once you know that he skews the truth (at best, lies at worst), then reading his “stuff” is like getting all of your news from NPR.

  10. PackerInRussia 04/14/2008 at 9:41 PM #

    Wow, BoKnows, I did the Awareness Test; I thought for sure they put that in digitally or something (or took it out the first time) and that it wasn’t actually in there the first time. Pretty cool (or not cool depending on the point one is making with it).

  11. doug74 04/14/2008 at 10:29 PM #

    I remember Dennis Wycik (sp?) as being a lot like Hansbrough. He lowered his shoulder and knocked people over. He never fouled out either.

  12. Mr. O 04/15/2008 at 7:37 AM #

    Vawolf82: Still don’t remember that day on Packpride Premium. You, Choppack and I have this same D. Glenn discussion at least once a year. We have gotten it out of the way early in 2008. 🙂

  13. blackdom 04/15/2008 at 9:01 AM #

    Now degand is once again the missing link to our success.How do we have a director of basketball operations?when our basketball operation is about up to par with our ice hockey operation?

    on to jj I bought the hype as well but he was not the answer given all that and with sid knowing he was a one and done player here what is sid doing about replacing him?(or is this the previous coaches fault?or perhaps sid needs a few more years to grow into finding a way to replace jj)

  14. BoKnowsNCS71 04/15/2008 at 9:03 AM #

    Packer in Russia — My point was that LF is the bear. While we are too focused on the balls

  15. Noah 04/15/2008 at 9:09 AM #

    Dave Glenn wasn’t the only person critical of some of the classes Amato brought in.

    I know there was one class where something like 90 percent of commitments were just barely qualified. I think that was the year there were three kids in the class that had average grades and scores. The rest were either at the minimum level or just barely above it.

    Amato went round and round with the admissions people every year.

  16. packbackr04 04/15/2008 at 9:16 AM #

    If you win 9 games a yr, you can go round and round with admissions. when you win 3 games and get beat by ECU and UNC, you dont have a leg to stand on. people will overlook alot of things when youre winning games.

  17. Noah 04/15/2008 at 9:30 AM #

    It’s hard to sustain nine wins a season when so many of your players probably don’t have any business (or interest) in academics at NC State.

    Yes, you can pull out exceptions like Andre Brown, who went from non-qualifier to honor roll. But…you play a difficult game with percentages.

  18. packpigskinfan23 04/15/2008 at 9:33 AM #

    Andre gets TONS of help. Trust me… but he is a good guy. He could be a GREAT student but needs a lot of pushing to get it done.

  19. Noah 04/15/2008 at 9:36 AM #

    Brown also had some funky living conditions in high school. Didn’t he go back and forth between Baltimore and Greenville?

    I give Brown major props for being the only guy on the planet to admit that he missed a qualifying score on his SAT by more than 10 points. Everyone that doesn’t qualify always says the same thing…”I was 10 points short.” Chris Washburn would have said that (had prop 48 been in place a year earlier).

    I think Brown said he was 30 points shy.

  20. Dr. BadgerPack 04/15/2008 at 10:07 AM #

    Degand should be OK as indicated by the above comments on the recent successes of ACL surgery. I don’t think Degand or Gonzalez by themselves is the answer at PG in a traditional offense. However, I have mentioned previously that they would become quite servicable on the court TOGETHER with Fells at the 3 if they can hit open shots. Ferguson probably finds a lot of time in the 3 “guard” mix as well if he continues to display the shooting ability he showed as the season progressed. This traditional 5 position 1-5 mess has to go though, with current personnel.

  21. redfred2 04/15/2008 at 11:43 AM #

    May be dreaming, but wouldn’t it have been nice to have played at least a halfway decent BB last season. Favors sure would be nice to have around for a year or maybe two, depending upon what the NCAA/NBA decides. There’s also Lorenzo Brown in that same class.

    I’m sure Sidney knows that his fortunes have taken definite blow, and that he’ll have to double his efforts in order to land the necessary recruiting talent now. He did have kind of a free pass and a working window there, but it was abruptly slammed on his fingers.

  22. PackerInRussia 04/15/2008 at 11:54 AM #

    BoKnows,
    I thought that maybe you were saying that the video is Lee Fowler’s “whole body of work”. The passing of the basketballs represents his drawing our attention to facilities and finances while the “moonwalking bear” (representing wins and losses) sneaks in and out of the frame.

  23. Noah 04/15/2008 at 12:01 PM #

    Favors sure would be nice to have around for a year or maybe two, depending upon what the NCAA/NBA decides.

    Favors is staying in Georgia, I believe. Wall to Memphis, it appears. I think we’ll get L. Brown.

  24. ruffles31 04/15/2008 at 12:05 PM #

    I wonder with the new coaching staffs at both UNC and NCSU what trends will be created for our academic casualties. Will they be similar? Will O’Brien be less likely to take riskier players than Amato would?

    How do the new statewide college entrance requirements, I think one more Math credit, one more Science (not 100% positive here), affect both schools? I was surprised that this wasn’t a bigger issue in the previous class.

    Do we have many recruits who are borderline eligible?

    Here is my 2 cents on Glenn. I do like listening to him, but I have found lately I seem more drawn to Packman. Maybe it was with our bad finish in basketball and UNC’s Final Four berth, I just didn’t want to listen to local radio as much. He did have a very good interview with O’Brien yesterday talking about his trip to Camp Legume with Donald Bowens among others. He definitely respects O’Brien and appears to really like him. I can see his blue-colored glasses in his shows occasionally, but I also enjoy reading the ACCSJ. I have friends who still don’t like him because of the “where there’s smoke there’s fire” quote.

    I really did respect him a couple of years ago when he was in the fans’ corner with Herb. He said that State should expect more out of a coach. 1 Sweet 16 in 10 years was not good enough for a school like State. He sounded like if he was AD, he would have fired Sendek after year 5. He never waived from that opinion.

    Sendek left on Saturday, April 1, and I first heard about it on his show. The funny coincidence was that my old roommate called that Friday night from Dallas. He was at DFW waiting for a flight back to Raleigh. He was at the gate and saw Sendek waiting for the same flight. He called me to figure out why he was in DFW. Never thought of ASU. That was a good 24 hours.

  25. LRM 04/15/2008 at 12:18 PM #

    I’d just assume never see the name Damien Wilkins — er, “The Next David Thompson” — ever again on this site for any reason, even to make a point.

    That man’s evil knows no bounds.

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