August is here, which means football season is on the horizon. Aren’t you excited about that? I know I am, but I’m the basketball guy, so I’m writing about basketball.

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

2008-09 ROSTER BREAKDOWN: DARIUS MILLER

The man pictured above, teabagging a helpless player that is dumb enough to take a charge against him is Darius Miller, from Maysville, Kentucky, by way of Mason County High School. He won Kentucky’s Mr. Basketball for 2008 as the state’s best high school player. But of course, you already know that unless you’re from Mason County and have been in mourning since you found out Chris Lofton played the entire 2008 season with cancer.

I kid, Mason County – sort of. As I was saying, Darius Miller might be the most forgotten, underrated recruit Kentucky has had since Chuck Hayes back in 2001. I don’t know why Miller doesn’t get the publicity that other recruits get. Shortly after Miller committed to Kentucky last fall, the attention switched from him to Scotty Hopson, who reopened his recruitment after opting out of his letter of intent with Mississippi State. Hopson eventually chose Tennessee, which makes me wonder if Christian County will now secede from the state and turn orange like Mason County did when what’s-his-face signed with Tennessee. Then, *** Butler signee Shelvin Mack played out of his mind at the Kentucky/Indiana All-star Games, and now people say he’s better than Miller because Miller didn’t set the world on fire with his performance in the same games. Are people that shallow? If all of that were true, couldn’t you argue that Paul Pierce is better than Kobe Bryant because Pierce had a better NBA Finals than Bryant? You can sense the lack of logic in this statement, I hope, which means that I also hope you can sense the lack of logic in anybody saying that Mack is better than Miller. Mack will put up great numbers at Butler because he’ll probably be their alpha dog for at least three years. But that does not make him a better talent than Miller.

It’s very tough to pin down a player who reminds me of Darius Miller, either from college or the pros. He’s an extremely athletic wing with the body of an NBA small forward. I’m not sure if there’s any one thing that he does spectacularly, but he’s solid at everything. He’s a solid shooter, a solid scorer, a solid rebounder, a solid passer and a solid defender. He’s one of the most versatile players I’ve ever seen come out of high school.

The biggest knock on Miller is that he often appears lazy on the court. I’ve had it explained to me in a different way, however. I’ve heard people say that things come so easy to Miller that it looks like he’s hardly trying when he’s actually working very hard. This is the same misunderstanding that UK fans had about Tayshaun Prince. If it turns out that those people are wrong, and Miller actually is lazy, I can’t imagine him staying that way under Coach Gillispie. Look at Perry Stevenson as an example. Could you imagine that the same guy who dominated the paint against Tennessee says that his favorite activity is sleeping? Like I said, I’m not worried about Miller not developing. He’ll improve significantly every single year for Kentucky, and I’m excited for it.

I’ll leave you with some videos of Miller doing what he does.

Big dunk against Campbell County

Hoopsreport.com highlight reel

Game winner against Lexington Catholic

I’m Seth Stogsdill, and I really like this kid.

RECRUITING, RECRUITING, RECRUITING!