First off, Florida State fans have discovered the Golden Spikes Award poll, and Aaron Crow's lead is down to 50%-44% over Buster Posey (as of 5:35 am), so be sure to vote. Via trripleplay, I find a couple nice MLB draft stories. First up is this mlb.com story on Aaron Crow and Max Scherzer, next is this trrip-prepared look at random Mizzou-related Q&A Q's. Hazelwood's Most Wanted over at Mizzourah has prepared his own lovely list of links as well. It really must be football season, as we just got our first of many "Really...who needs tall QBs??" stories of 2008. Mike Dearmond wins the early bird award. PowerMizzou wraps up its one-day camp coverage with a story about the KC camp. No commits at this one, but that's not too surprising considering I'm not sure if anybody with an offer was actually in attendance. And I mentioned yesterday that I thought Lee's Summit's Adam Burton had an offer? Apparently he does not. Thought I had read that somewhere, but it was a figment of my imagination. ESPN's Tim Griffin has a neat story on 8-man football and an 8-man stud who will be attending OU soon. Since it's Illinois Week, I'll pass along this Fightingillini.com link where UI attempts to name its 10 best QBs of all-time. Which, naturally, begs an interesting question. Who are Mizzou's 10 best all-time QBs? I mean, it's pretty easy to an extent--working backwards, you have to include Chase Daniel, Brad Smith, Corby Jones, Phil Bradley, Terry McMillan, Paul Chrisman...that's 6. Beyond that? Jeff Handy? Ron Taylor? Phil Snowden? Steve Pisarkiewicz? Finally, the Trib's Steve Walentik throws in his two cents on the "Beasley or Rose?" NBA draft debate. He goes with the Big 12 boy.
The Bulls seemed to be developing into a title contender after making the playoffs and playing the Heat tough in 2006, then sweeping the defending champs and battling the Pistons for six games in 2007. One glaring hole on both teams was the lack of a dependable low-post scorer and rebounder (a need that was helped not at all by the addition of Ben Wallace). I can't think of a player in the last 10 drafts more ready to fill that role than Beasley, who enjoyed perhaps the most productive freshman season in college basketball history. I know he's got some character issues and he's not a hometown kid the way Rose is, but he was the most talented player in the country this season right up until the point where Rose went for 20-plus in three straight NCAA Tournament games.