Five for the Weekend: Roe Ends Hoops Career, but He Should Be OK at LinesMaker

Five for the Weekend: Roe Ends Hoops Career, but He Should Be OK

Delvon Roe is fin­ished with basketball.

Let’s start the Five for the Week­end with that.

1. How good could Michi­gan State’s Delvon Roe have been if not for his body fail­ing him?

I sup­pose we’ll never know for sure, but I can tell you this: Roe was so awe­some in high school that Scout.com ranked him ahead of prospects like Kemba Walker, Al-Farouq Aminu, Elliot Williams, Iman Shumpert, Luke Bab­bit, Ter­rico White, Klay Thomp­son and DeAn­dre Lig­gins. In other words, Roe was a safe bet to be an NBA Draft pick just like all of those guys became, but that was before the 6-foot-8 for­ward seri­ously injured his knee for the first time back in 2007. I always assumed Roe would regain the explo­sive­ness at some point, but he never did. It was one thing after another, from now until then. So was I sur­prised when Roe announced his retire­ment from bas­ket­ball Thurs­day by basi­cally explain­ing he could no longer take the pain that comes along with it? Yes and no. I was sur­prised in the sense that I didn’t wake up expect­ing to write about this, but I’m not sur­prised that Roe finally reached a point where he con­cluded enough is enough. It’s a sad way for a once-promising bas­ket­ball career to end. But Roe is a well-rounded and highly respected young man. I sus­pect we’ll look up in 10 years and he’ll be suc­cess­ful and doing well, in some form.

2. William Buford could become Ohio State’s all-time lead­ing scorer? Really?

It’s true, and it’s really not that crazy. It says less about Buford and Ohio State than it does about the state of col­lege bas­ket­ball because we now live in an era where A) teams play more games than ever, and B) great play­ers leave col­lege almost always before their eli­gi­bil­ity expires. So it’s mostly guys like Buford — i.e., gifted play­ers who aren’t quite gifted enough to jus­tify an early jump to the NBA — who are set up to fin­ish high on their schools’ all-time scor­ing lists, because the truly spe­cial tal­ents that enroll (Jim Jack­son, Greg Oden, Evan Turner, etc.) rarely play four sea­sons. As my col­league Jeff Good­man pointed out, some feel Buford “hasn’t lived up to his poten­tial.” I’d argue that’s pre­cisely why Buford might become OSU’s all-time lead­ing scorer, because if he’d lived up to his poten­tial he prob­a­bly wouldn’t be a senior at Ohio State.

3. How weird does Old Dominion’s Blaine Tay­lor look with­out his mustache?

I haven’t seen him yet, but I’m guess­ing he looks fine. Just dif­fer­ent. Which is prob­a­bly why Tay­lor kept the mus­tache as long as he did, because he was so used to it and afraid of look­ing stu­pid. But let’s be hon­est: Mus­taches are kind of stu­pid. They just are. But some­times being attached to some­thing makes you keep it way longer than you should even when you know it’s stu­pid, and I speak on this sub­ject with expe­ri­ence because I have a stu­pid hair­cut. I mean, I know it’s ridicu­lous. I read your emails. But that hair­cut has become part of my iden­tity over the years, and I don’t know how to get rid of it. It’s like I’d rather look nor­mal and ridicu­lous than dif­fer­ent and mature. But I might reeval­u­ate it soon. And if I find the courage to shave my head, just know that Blaine Tay­lor will be my inspi­ra­tion. If he can change, then maybe I can change. And if I can change and Blaine Tay­lor can change, then, as Rocky Bal­boa famously put it, every­body can change.

4. Was your story about the for­mer Ten­nessee assis­tants sup­posed to make us feel sorry for them?

All I wanted to do with that col­umn was show how greatly the NCAA inves­ti­ga­tion not only has affected their careers but also their lives, and detail how there are hard feel­ings on both sides because of the way every­thing went down. Noth­ing more. Noth­ing less. It’s a unique sit­u­a­tion with dev­as­tat­ing results, and I just found the whole thing inter­est­ing. So I wanted to visit Steve Forbes and Jason Shay at North­west Florida State and write about it. That the par­ties involved opened up to me is what made the col­umn work. So I don’t care whether you feel sorry for them, exactly, and they’re not ask­ing for sym­pa­thy. But when you see where they were a year ago and where they are now, well, it’s hard not to feel sym­pa­thetic on some level because I gen­uinely believe they played a small role in what led to their demise. Yes, they knew about the improper cook­out and attended it, but what assis­tant is really going to stop his boss from hold­ing a cook­out he wants to hold? And no, they weren’t forth­com­ing with the NCAA when ini­tially asked about the infa­mous pho­to­graph of Bruce Pearl and Aaron Craft snapped at Pearl’s home, show­ing a vio­la­tion of NCAA rules. But, again what assis­tant is really going to roll on his boss before the boss has a chance to either spin his ver­sion of the story or roll on him­self? In some ways, Forbes, Shay and asso­ciate head coach Tony Jones were placed in impos­si­ble sit­u­a­tions once the pho­to­graph of Pearl and Craft sur­faced. So are they com­pletely inno­cent vic­tims? No. But in real­ity, they acted the way most high-major assis­tants would act when put in sim­i­lar sce­nar­ios. In that respect I know that the feed­back I’ve received from around the coun­try is that other col­lege assis­tants are very sym­pa­thetic towards them. They know, deep down, that what hap­pened to Forbes, Shay and Jones could hap­pen to any of them if their boss held an improper cook­out and was pho­tographed break­ing NCAA rules.

5. Where will you be for Mid­night Madness?

Our four col­lege bas­ket­ball writ­ers are going to four dif­fer­ent schools — specif­i­cally the four schools that’ll be ranked in the top four of our CBSSports.com Pre­sea­son Top 25 (and one) polls. Good­man is going to North Car­olina. Matt Nor­lan­der will be at Con­necti­cut. Jeff Borzello will be at Syra­cuse. Me? I’ll be at Ken­tucky. It’ll be my third Big Blue Mad­ness in the past five years. It’s quite a scene every time, and this should be no different.

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