Recruiting Defense
From the LA Daily News: USC has a couple of possible additions on the defensive side of life: Shane Horton, a transfer freshman safety from UNLA who started or played in every game last year, is transferring to USC. If he can get cleared in the next 2 weeks, he'll be eligible to play in the fall. His brother, Wes Horton, is a USC commitment at strongside defensive end; Rivals thinks he's a potential all-American.
Speaking of, USC also picked up a verbal commitment from Malik Jackson, a weakside defensive end from Birmingham High in Lake Balboa. Rivals has him rated as a potential All-American also - but for both Jackson and Horton the Younger, ob viously, there's the minor detail of signing on the dotted line and actually playing the games.
"A Secondary Violation"
Hurrah! A new entry for a certain ucla blog's list of offenses! Per the LA Times, OJ Mayo received tickets to the Sunday Lakers - Nuggets game from Carmelo Anthony, which were pretty darn good. Apparently Anthony made the offer at a party which OJ Mayo attended on Saturday night.
The LA Times suggests that the critical issue was whether this was a personal gift from Anthony or a benefit from the Nuggets:
The tickets Mayo received were located behind courtside seats near mid-court and had a face value of $230 each.
A compliance director from another West Coast school said that although he did not have all the details, Mayo's actions could constitute a secondary violation and that the NCAA could order Mayo to donate the value of the tickets to charity.
Tell you what, I'll offer a little bit of free advice to USC's beleaguered Compliance Office: just make Mayo pay the face value of tickets to charity now and get it out of the way. I know the NCAA investigators are busy anyway, so give thema break and treat this as the picayune non-issue it should be: tell Mayo to pay up and to not do it again.
In the meantime, I'm sure that the folks across town will be drafting paperwork to have Mayo taken to the Human Rights Court in the Hague or something. After the rediscovery of optimism and happiness from the hiring of Norm Chow, it will be nice for them to get back to business as usual.
Update [2008-1-23 23:26:1 by DC Trojan]: Per the LA Times, Tim Floyd has indicated that he told Mayo it was all right to take the tickets and that he should be the focus of NCAA sanctions. The article further points out that Mayo and Carmelo Anthony have been friends for some years.