Let's not forget the basketball team

Lost in the hoopla of the upcoming football season is a healthy, focused men's basketball team poised for redemption following a tumultuous 2008-09 campaign. Guards Chris Warren, Trevor Gaskins, have all been cleared for full practice and Zach Graham is on schedule as well.

The program got a big lift (literally) when big man DeMarco Cox committed to Andy Kennedy's program. He and PG Dundrecous Nelson give AK the first pair of 4* recruits in a single class since his arrival in Oxford. That's not including Indiana transfer Nick Williams, a highly-touted 3* guard who showed flashes of brilliance as a Hoosier last year and will be eligible to play as a Rebel in 2010-11. He's a raw talent though (those TO numbers are insane) and will definitely benefit redshirting this season and playing against Warren, Gaskins, and Terrico White in practice.

Considering the turnaround from the moribund late stages of Rod Barnes career, it will be exciting to watch what Kennedy and his staff can do with an even greater influx of talent. After a perfect storm of Murphy's Law last season, one would think that there's nowhere to go but up. The fluky injury situation must've run its course, right? From all accounts, Kennedy has severely toned down his... ahem.. lifestyle. If the Rebels get any sort of consistency on the blocks from DeAundre Cranston or newcomers DeAngelo Riley and Reginald Buckner, they could be very tough by the time SEC season rolls around.

Next year's starting lineup will be:
PG: Chris Warren
G: Terrico White
F/G: Eneil Polynice
F: Terrence Henry
F: Reggie Buckner
6th man: Zach Graham

And then there's quotes like this one that show why this group of guards has the chance to be very, very special:

Months before the season tips off, that sense of urgency already is apparent. It's evident in the way Warren responded to questions about whether he could return this season as the same type of player who opened so many eyes two years ago.

"I don't want to be the same," Warren said. "I want to be better."

"ESPN, I'll tell you, I don't have much to do with them anymore"

* Oh how the proud and mighty can change their mind... Tommy Tuberville will be an ESPN employee this season. Tuberville who once famously called out ESPN, claiming "most of their analysts are coaches who haven't won games," particluarly slobber machine Thenator Lou Holth, of whom he said "gets on there and talks about what a team has to do to win that game, and the guy couldn't beat anybody in our conference"

If you're an SEC fan these days and not a fan of ESPN, you're out of luck for the next decade and a half.

* The Press-Register is doing an interesting series on recruiting in the SEC, starting with a look at the amount of cash SEC schools have spent the last few years on football recruiting. Over the past three seasons, no school in the conference has spent nearly as much as Tennessee has:

1) Tennessee $1.15M
2) Auburn $705,125
3) LSU $662,773
4) Florida $599,818
5) Georgia $521,174
6) Ole Miss
10) Alabama $285,649
11) South Carolina $273,909

Vanderbilt, as a private institution, declined to submit their records. The article leaves out the numbers for Ole Miss, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Mississippi State, though it mentions the Rebels rank 6th. Given that EOr was the head coach for the majority of the time in question, it's not surprising that the Rebels were in the top half of the conference in total expenditures.

Then there's this piece that features the Kang quite prominently, as it covers cheating. State AD Greg Byrne has the typical msu excuse mastered:

The cultural environment for football, coupled with the instantaneous power of the Internet, is making allegations, character assassinations and innuendo an accepted behavior.

Yep, that's why msu ended up on probation... innuendo and character assassinations. What about Texas A&M and Pittsburgh?

* This summer has not been kind to Erin Andrews. Just weeks after setting up too many jokes to count by getting hit in the chin with a foul ball, someone apparently filmed her naked in her hotel room.

Personally, I don't quite get the obsession that many fanboys have with her. She's attractive and an SEC girl, sure, but she's no Melissa Stark. Regardless, it's a sad world when you can't walk around in your hotel room without fear of some perv hanging out with his cell phone camera rolling.