The big story of the day is the apparent commitment of John Wall to Baylor. Bears coach Scott Drew has apparently hired Wall’s handlers to be on his staff, which is the thing to do in college basketball these days. It’s underhanded, but all perfectly legal. Teams have been doing it for years. Kentucky hired Simeon Mars to be an administrative assistant in 1997 for the sole purpose of locking up Jamaal Magloire. Had Mars (who coached Magloire in Canada) not been added to the staff, Magloire probably would have gone to Purdue and Kentucky may have ended up with Brian Cardinal instead.

When Coach Gillispie was filling out his staff, he chose Tracy Webster because of the relationship he had established with Darius Miller. The payoff in the long run was the commitment of Miller. Of course, Webster is not a one-trick pony, as he was also chiefly responsible for locking up Dominique Ferguson, who we all can’t wait to see a couple years from now. My point is, this happens all the time and is just the nature of the beast.

More often now, superstar recruits like Wall and Mike Beasley want to be THE man, so they go to schools with less talent and they become THE man. Obviously life will go on at Kentucky and North Carolina and Kansas and other top programs, but something just isn’t right when a Raleigh native like Wall had no interest in any of his home state’s schools and vice versa. I suspect that his handlers are the reason why, but I don’t know for sure.

Another big rumor is that the annual battle with North Carolina will be taking place in the middle of November, rather than its usual December date. I don’t know what to make of this. On one hand, North Carolina is heads and shoulders ahead of everybody else in the country in terms of pure talent and should be the unanimous top team in the country, at least in the preseason. They are loaded with veterans and will be the best offensive team in all the land. Considering it’s in Chapel Hill, Carolina should be favored by about 15 points on paper, but fortunately, they don’t play games on paper.

Taking the other end of the spectrum, Carolina does have to incorporate freshmen Ed Davis, Larry Drew and Tyler Zeller into their offense, so I don’t think chemistry will be as solid as it should be later on in the year, as freshmen are prone to struggle somewhat. Also, Carolina won’t get to do much effective scouting on Kentucky either because of the early date, and Carolina did struggle against Davidson, BYU and Ohio State in their OOC slate. I’m not guaranteeing a UK win – far from it, the good guys will probably lose that one – but let’s just say that nothing would surprise me.

I’d love to give more pickup game reports, but the Craft Center is making it much more difficult to make this happen. It was easier for Tom Cruise to infiltrate Langley in “Mission: Impossible” than it is to get into the Craft Center to watch one of these games.

Coach Gillispie has allegedly offered a big man from Ukraine. Don’t panic. UK now offers dozens of guys. An offer does not necessarily mean “OMG he’s on the roster!” It just means that the staff is interested. I know Coach Gillispie had a really good European player at Texas A&M named Antaunas Kavaliauskas. Regardless, I’ll wait a little longer before I react one way or the other. Also, Kentucky has popped up on another ***** big man in the 2010 class. His name is Adreain Payne, and the other top schools on his list are Cincinnati, Ohio State and Tennessee. I’ll have more as it develops.

I’m Seth Stogsdill, and I’m ready for both seasons to start – anything to cure my White Sox depression

I’ve made reference to Dave Kersey several times when talking about recruiting. He’s the source I trust the most, and he usually brings it with solid info. But why get a recruiting opinion from me when you can get it from Dave Kersey himself? This is hopefully the first of many guest columns Dave will do exclusively for ukwildcatcountry.com, so without further ado, here’s Dave Kersey with a call to our fans.

CALLING ALL BLUE FANS IN RED LAND

I’m Dave Kersey. Contact the good folks at this site with your information or comments and we’ll get this ball rolling.

If you have a name, just leave it on the comments page and I’ll see to it that Dave gets it.

I’m Seth Stogsdill, and I’m happy to have Dave on board.