THIS IS to keep a promise I made two years ago, while sitting in a tiny Lambeth living room watching Connecticut beat Duke on television, waiting for "One Shining Moment" to come on and trying not to cry. We were friends from first year, guys that lived the floor below me.
The best Dan Ellis story turns out not to be true, after all. He didn't request the phonebook-sized Virginia playbook while still in high school.
NBA Commissioner David Stern's new great idea to fix all that ails the basketball world also happens to be a bad one, full of the illogical reasoning of a man who's been on top too long to remember how he got there.
The best Dan Ellis story turns out not to be true, after all. He didn't request the phonebook-sized Virginia playbook while still in high school and memorize it before he arrived in Charlottesville, which didn't prompt head coach George Welsh, not one given to hyperbole, to call him "the smartest player I've ever seen." It's not a matter of Ellis not wanting to.
The case for declaring freshmen ineligible to play men's basketball is a strong one, with an appalling graduation rate, rampant early defections to the NBA and a common perception that the acclimation to college life is exceedingly difficult. The proposal also has a strong corps of supporters, including North Carolina head coach Bill Guthridge and Virginia Athletic Director Terry Holland.
