Here are some of my random mid-week thoughts, news, and rumors……..

Bowling Green is close to making a hire to replace assistant George Jackson who departed for Cincinnati. Former NBA player Dennis Hopson (currently an assistant to Rollie Massimino at Northwood), and Devon Smith, who has worked at Oakland, Louisville and Indiana Southeast are in the mix. Also, former Toledo Head Coach Stan Joplin is believed to be involved.

Rick Pitino hired Shabaka Lands as “Special assistant to the Head Coach” at Louisville this week. It just so happens that Lands was an assistant at Pike High School (Indianapolis), where he coached Marquis Teague, the No. 1 point guard in the Class of 2011. Also ironic that Teague has Louisville near the top of his list and is planning a visit soon. This is just another example how this business works – it’s not always pretty. I wonder what happens to Lands when Teague commits to Kentucky or Indiana?

There is some good discussion going on in our forum about getting a job at the college level. One of our posters eloquently describes getting a job the way Lands did as “douchebaggyness.” Sounds good to me….check out the rest of the discussion and add you thoughts in the “General Basketball Discussion” Section of the forum.

Speaking of forums…..check out the Southern Illinois message board (http://salukitalk.net/st/viewtopic.php?t=28852&postdays=… ), 13 full pages blasting the promotion of Lance Irwin to Associate Head Coach at SIU. Either the Saluki posters have a lot of free time, or they really don’t like to move. Pretty interesting reading.