By Alex Kline

Justin Anderson basketball recruiting

Justin Anderson is the next big name in the state of Maryland for high school basketball.

With Quinn Cook leaving DeMatha for Oak Hill, the rising junior becomes one of premier prospects to come out of the state. Anderson takes it in stride and is very humble about his role at national powerhouse Montrose Christian. Currently, he is playing the U17 American National team overseas in Germany and fairing quite well. This is just one of many accomplishments to add to Justin’s resume.

Anderson is extremely proud to be a part of the American squad. “We’re doing good,” he said. “This is a great opportunity I have playing with the best players in the grade ahead of me.” Anderson is only sixteen and is the youngest player on the team by a couple of months. “I’ve gotten learn a lot from my teammates,” stated Justin. While they are thriving and going for gold, Justin continues to play his game and play his role.

His game is exciting to watch. He is energetic and lively on the court as he is a defensive presense. Anderson slashes to the basket, as well. He is an excellent scorer and very versatile. The only part of his game that hurts his versatility is his ball handling skills. The 6-foot-5 small forward needs to gain a handle in order to take his game to the next level. However, his game is great. At one point he was a top fifteen player in the class of 2012. Now he is in the top forty.

Currently, Justin’s recruitment is steady and he is drawing interest from tons of big name schools. “Right now, the five schools who are recruiting me the hardest are Maryland, Virginia, Duke, Texas and Oklahoma,” he said. “I would say that is my top five in no specific order.” However, one school has to stand out to Anderson as they are the only ones to offer. Maryland is the only school to give Justin a scholarship at the moment. Along with that, they are very close to him with his school being in Maryland. One of his former teammates, Terrence Ross, was once committed to the Terps.

Once he gets back to America, Justin will run with his Boo Williams AAU squad into the Nike Peach Jam in Georgia and AAU Nationals in Florida. As he plays some more AAU in the live period against some of the top players in the country, coaches will notice who he is and why they want him. Look for the rest of July to be a real eye opener for colleges on Justin Anderson.

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Jeff Capel NCAA violations

Recently, it became known that the NCAA was investigating the Oklahoma men’s basketball program over the involvement of two players and a cash payment from a financial advisor in Florida.

The players, Tiny Gallon and Willie Warren have both entered the 2010 draft, leaving the coaching staff waiting to see if the NCAA decides to hammer the program.

CBS writer Gregg Doyel sheds the harsh light of reality on the Oklahoma program, and it’s not pretty. The cold hard facts are that this is not the first violation for Oklahoma. The current coaching staff took over from Kelvin Sampson’s tenure already saddled with heavy sanctions:

“Former Oklahoma coach Kelvin Sampson makes a mockery of NCAA rules by teaming with his coaching staff to make almost 600 illegal recruiting phone calls. The OU compliance department lets it happen. Doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. ”

Doyel goes on to suggest that in cases like this, the NCAA by it’s own rules would be well within their expected options to place the ‘death penalty’ on Oklahoma basketball, which would mean no more basketball in Norman, at least for some time.

Doyel’s article raises an interesting point, which is that if Oklahoma basketball doesn’t deserve to get the death penalty, and, in a corollary example, USC also doesn’t, which program will?

It’s likely the NCAA has no intention of ever handing out the death penalty after placing the SMU football program under it in 1986, which decimated the program. The ‘death penalty’ option is now seen as a ‘nuclear option’, in that the SMU program, which was a college football juggernaut, did not return to a college bowl game in 2009.

However, it should be pointed out that SMU’s football program had no right to be allowed to compete by the NCAA rules, and since they were repeatedly caught breaking the rules, the idea that the NCAA somehow treated them unfairly is laughable.

They weren’t really a storied program, they were a program that cheated to win, many times, and they got caught.

USC’s football and basketball programs have already been caught multiple times, although not as many as SMU, but are more of an example of what the NCAA should be preventing, at least if they are going to continue to maintain that college athletes should not be paid.

The allegations against Oklahoma basketball are equally damning, but at this point, they are still just allegations. It remains to be seen how serious the NCAA is about keeping programs from breaking the rules. If the NCAA does not start really placing heavy disciplinary action on these types of violations, they are communicating to the rest of the programs that getting caught won’t be something to be afraid of.

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