Crawford

Officially Jordan Crawford is a Musketeer. Kudos to Andy Taylor for living the 'All for One, One for All' mantra in giving up his scholarship for next season. He has been told he will be back on for the '09-'10 season. In the end that means we have only one scholarship spot as of now for rising seniors in this class. I would love to have one of these three make that commit to X: Ari Stewart, Kevin Parrom, or Tevin Baskin in that order.

Back to Crawford: he is a proven commodity at a high level in D1 basketball. Mike DeCourcey feels he is the best transfer we have had and that includes CJ Anderson, Brian Thornton, and Drew Lavender. He scored almost 10 a game as a freshmen on a team that included Eric Gordon and DJ White. He reportedly can play the '1' and both wing positions at 6'4". I seriously doubt the NCAA will grant him immediate eligibilty but the staff will explore every option to make it happen. IF he is eligible for this season I see one of the frosh taking a redshirt this year to balance out the classes. All in all we will have 8 new faces on the team next season so practice in October should be more interesting than usual.

I laugh at UC fans who come on Xavier message boards and report Crawford flunked out of IU when it became apparent that Clifton would not be his destination. Funny, TSN Mike reports that he left IU in good academic standing and would be immediately eligible to play if the NCAA ruled in his favor. Come on now that would be like me going on UC fan boards and letting people know the coaching staff at Withrow told me that Gates is 'lazy'. No sense in doing that and nothing to be gained from it. Just face it we have a lot of momentum behind the program and we are building a national title contender over on Victory Parkway. I temper my expectations for next year due to youth at the point position, but imagine this starting 5 if Crawford is eligible:

PG: Crawford
SG: Raymond
WF: Anderson
PF: Brown
C: Love

That starting 5 would have enough experience to make another 'run'.