"My rule was I wouldn't recruit a kid if he had grass in front of his house.
That's not my world. My world was a cracked sidewalk." —Al McGuire

Saturday, August 06, 2011

Sunday Brunch

Today I'm going to try something a bit different. In the dog days of summer, it's sometimes hard to find any information out there on Marquette basketball. As we enter August, recruiting enters its "quiet period", Marquette Madness is still months off, the non-conference schedule has been analyzed to death, and we're all jumping at any rumors we can find.

I've been scouring the web for some of the more worthwhile stories going on out there and thought I'd just share them with readers who might not have had a chance to do the digging. Here's a sample of what's out there, I hope you enjoy:

Anyone following Twitter has likely heard about how Darius Johnson-Odom has been tearing it up at the North Carolina Pro-Am. In the process, he had one of the best highlight reel dunks of the summer. Check out his alley-oop windmill slam from Austin Rivers, a Duke recruit and son of former Marquette great Doc Rivers.

Chris Otule has been working hard on his game. In addition to going to the Milwaukee Pro-Am, he just got back Saturday night from the Pete Newell Big Man Camp in Hawaii. Before setting out, he took some time to talk to John Dodds over at MarquetteHoops.com. Here's the interview on his off-season workouts, playing with Keaton Nankivil, his impressions on Marquette's incoming class, and the physical development of fellow Warrior big man Davante Gardner.

Despite spending most of his time on the Brewers' beat, Todd Rosiak is still taking time out for the Warriors. He noted recently that Marquette was returning to the Maui Invitational in 2012, and updates us on future tournaments in one of his most recent JSOnline Marquette blog posts. Plenty of time to make travel plans for Hawaii in 2012, California in 2013, and Florida in 2014.

Marquette continues to get plenty of preseason respect. It seems almost every pundit has Buzz's boys in the top-25 coming into next season, and Jason King of Yahoo! Sports is no exception. In his latest preseason ranking, he has Marquette ranked #13 in the nation.

And finally, I've said it before, and now I'll say it one last time for this summer. If you haven't been out to the Milwaukee Pro-Am yet, you have one final chance on Sunday, August 7th. The final rounds of the playoffs will be held at the Al McGuire Center on Marquette's campus beginning at 11:00 am. This might be the last chance most of us have to see Junior Cadougan, Chris Otule, Vander Blue, Davante Gardner, Juan Anderson, and the rest of the Marquette participants both present and past before Marquette Madness. Entry is free to the public, so you have no excuses to not attend. For any additional details, check out the Milwaukee Pro-Am homepage.

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