Dear Ezra,

I am sure that making the decision as to which college you wish to bring your talents is a difficult one. This is an exciting time and there are many great options. I am sure that you have the support of a great family and friends to guide you in this process. On behalf of this fan, though, I believe you would be the perfect addition to the Seton Hall Pirates. (But who wouldn't want an athletic, versatile big man that can attack the rim, run the floor, rebound, and play defense?)

(1) You'll have the opportunity to play for Coach Sha, a proven winner, a great developer of players, and, above all else, a good man. Coach Sha, a Seton Hall University Hall of Fame inductee, bleeds Pirate blue & white. He coaches for the love of Seton Hall, not the "next job". He took an undermanned St. Peter's to the Elite Eight, beating Kentucky and Purdue along the way. He took Seton Hall to an NIT championship over a highly regarded Indiana State squad. He is competitive and you will have to earn your minutes but know that you will be treated fairly and with respect.

(2) We've already added some dogs to this team that have been overlooked before. Scotty Middleton, Prince Aligbe, Chaunce Jenkins, Gus Yalden, just to name a few. If you want to work and get your hands dirty, this is the place to be.

(3) The Big East will challenge you. It's one of the most physical conferences in the nation. It also boasts the national champion and NIT champion.

(4) We are a passionate and loyal fanbase. If you join the Pirates, you instantly become part of our Seton Hall Family.

(5) There are many opportunities in the New York/New Jersey area for you to give back to the community and you will be inspired by the Seton Hall basketball legends who have contributed in so many ways. Jerry Walker leads the way in that regard. Another power forward like you, Jerry has spent his career helping the underprivileged children in the area.

(6) Time is of the essence. Seton Hall has one scholarship left. I would love for that to be you, but there does come a time when you have to do what's right for the players already on the team and move on.

Please feel free to join PiratesCrew if you have any questions of me or the fanbase.

Thank you for your time, Ezra.

[The views expressed here are those of Hall Berry]

Player profile




We'll start where we always begin, with Jerry Carino......

1. He’s a cousin of Raymond Felton​

Hoop-heads certainly will recall Raymond Felton from his days as an All-American point guard and NCAA champion at North Carolina whose long NBA career included two stints with the New York Knicks. Jahseem’s uncle Jalek Felton was a coveted backcourt recruit who played one season at North Carolina. So the bloodlines are there.

In a notable family twist, his father Michael Felton hails from Jersey.

“My dad is from Trenton, and growing up I always heard about historic runs Seton Hall had in March Madness," Jahseem said.

2. He was a middle-school prodigy​

Ranking middle-school basketball players is a sketchy and controversial endeavor, but those who do such things have had Felton high on their national radar since he was a young lad growing up in Charlotte. He currently is rated three stars by Rivals, 247Sports and On3 and is a consensus top-150 prospect for 2024, with On3 ranking him highest at No. 120.

He also fielded scholarship offers from N.C. State, South Carolina and Wake Forest and visited all three schools. For Seton Hall, assistant coach Rasheen Davis was the lead recruiter.

Felton took an official visit to Seton Hall Oct. 13-15 and had a conversation with head coach Shaheen Holloway that made an impression.

"My parents are always honest with me, always straight up; going there, it was like seeing family," he said. "(Holloway) said, ‘Listen, I’m not going to promise you minutes or promise you anything. If you come here and work you’ll get the minutes you deserve, and I will promise you a four-year education.' I can’t wait to come there and put that work in.”

3. Versatility a strength​

Scouting reports on Felton’s game stress his versatility. He is listed by various recruiting services as a shooting guard, point guard and combo guard.

“I’m a big combo guard – a dog on offense and defense," he said.

The North Carolina-based Phenom Hoop Report, which ranks him as the No. 10 Class of 2024 prospect in the hoops-rich state, wrote this about Felton in August:

“He is a 6’5 strong and physical guard that can really mix it up well, plays with a smooth feel and pace, and was able to help run the show. Felton was able to score in a variety of ways, whether it was creating and knocking down shots from the perimeter, making strong moves to get to his spots to score, or finishing strong through defenders and around the basket."

HS Mixtape (junior year)

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Words from the coach....

"I'm excited to add these two student-athletes to our program," Holloway said. (Jahseem Felton AND Godswill Erheriene) "These are two young men that we targeted in the recruiting process and we knew that they could help us right away. They come from great high school programs and great families."

A talented guard with New Jersey roots – his father hails from Trenton – Felton attends Combine Academy in Charlotte, N.C., a team that is currently ranked as the No. 17 high school basketball team in the country according to ESPN. Rated as a four-star recruit by On3 and the No. 24 combo guard in the class of 2024 according to 247 Sports, Felton averaged 17.5 points per game on the Under Armour circuit and 20.5 points per game in the Peach Invitational Tournament on the AAU circuit.

"Jahseem is a big point guard at 6-5," Holloway said. "He can shoot it, handle it and can get to the basket. Overall, he has a great feel for the game."

At the time of the signing (late October '23) it was expected that Felton would get major minutes at both guard positions. But now with the 1-2 (and 3) positions the strength of the current roster the question is where with the 3 star player fit in? Holloway as is his want will start with a clean stales regarding PT. But will the inexperienced young guard carve out the minutes he wants?

continued.....

RIP

Morgan Spurlock, 'Super Size Me' Director, Dead at 53 from Cancer https://www.tmz.com/2024/05/24/morgan-spurlock-dead-dies-super-size-me-director-mcdonalds/

Pete Thamel, ESPN

The ACC has joined the Big 12 as the second named party in House v. NCAA to vote to settle that case and related antitrust cases, sources told ESPN on Tuesday.

With those votes formalized, a path is underway to forge a new era in college sports. There will be four more votes this week: three more from the Power 5 leagues and one from the NCAA board of governors.

The ACC presidents voted in person in Charlotte, North Carolina, at their meetings Tuesday evening.

Big 12 presidents and chancellors voted virtually Tuesday afternoon to unanimously approve, with departing members Texas and Oklahoma abstaining. The 12 continuing members from this year's conference all voted to pass.

The settlement is widely expected to pass, which will chart a new course for college sports in establishing a framework for schools to share millions of dollars with their athletes in the future and create a fund of more than $2.7 billion to pay former athletes who were not allowed to sign name, image and likeness deals.

Sources have consistently indicated to ESPN that there is little resistance on the conference level, and the NCAA is also expected to pass the settlement measure. (The Pac-12 will vote as a full 12-team league, as currently constructed, as it was when the House v. NCAA case was filed.)

Sources said Big 12 presidents and chancellors were briefed in recent days on a 13-page term sheet that contains the settlement language.

The key parts of the settlement include the NCAA paying for more than $2.7 billion in back damages over a decade, about $1.6 billion of which will be withheld from schools.

There's also roughly $20 million in permissive revenue sharing that is expected to begin in fall 2025. This revenue sharing will give athletic departments the direct ability to pay the players, a massive paradigm shift for college athletics.

The point of the schools settling is to avoid even bigger damages down the road, which legal experts considered a likelihood considering the NCAA's poor record in court cases.

Leagues need only majority votes to approve the settlement, and the detractors in conferences aren't believed to have enough momentum to sway to a no vote, sources told ESPN.

But there's still an aura of uncertainty hanging over the landscape, as school presidents are meeting both virtually and in-person this week.

On campuses, school officials are meeting and scrambling to figure out how to adjust to the new paradigms. Schools in bigger leagues need to find nearly $20 million to budget for athletes and figure out how to divide it. Smaller leagues are adjusting on how to cover costs, as the NCAA is withholding varying money from schools in all levels of Division I to cover the costs.

There's no clarity on Title IX's role in revenue sharing, how roster caps will work and what enforcement of NIL will look like. (NIL is expected to continue to exist in addition to the revenue sharing.)

Sources have indicated it will be at least six months until these details are worked out, likely longer. There also are expected to be several other steps before Senior District Judge Claudia Wilken can approve the settlement. All Division I athletes have the opportunity to object to the terms or opt out of the class.

Wilken also needs to hold a preliminary hearing to review the terms of the settlement. Later, she would need to consider any arguments presented against it before formally ruling on the settlement. This all projects to take months to unfold.

There are also expected to be continued asks to Congress to work toward more narrow exemptions from future lawsuits. The industry belief has been that Congress could be more willing to help college sports, as opposed to saving it, now that there is a structure moving forward that includes revenue distribution for the players.

The lawyers in the House case and two other related cases -- Hubbard v. NCAA and Carter v. NCAA -- are veteran antitrust lawyers Jeffrey Kessler and Steve Berman. Kessler has been at the forefront of the sports labor movement for several decades, including the O'Bannon v. NCAA case in 2014. Berman has also been involved in several antitrust cases against the NCAA, including the Alston case that the Supreme Court upheld in 2021.

ESPN's Dan Murphy contributed to this report.

Quality sources have told me that Rutgers will no longer be recruiting big men. The price is too high and the ones who are affordable are not better than what is already on the roster.

Pikiell will probably hold one 'ship.

Ex Baltimore prosecutor gets 12 month home detention for mortgage fraud and perjury as I expected.With all the civil rights lawyers saying it sends wrong message to send her to jail even though she could have gotten 20 years,Prosecutors said there had to be jail tome but went light with 20 month recommendation.Judge apparently lacked the stones to sentence her to jail.Does anyone on this board think if they were convicted of mortgage fraud and multiple perjury convictions they would get home detention.

The Nova AD just replaced him on the committee

Virginia's Kaydan Lawson Joins Pirates​

SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. – Seton Hall women's basketball head coach Anthony Bozzella announced today the addition of Virginia transfer Kaydan Lawson (Beachwood, Ohio) to the program.

Lawson is a graduate transfer and will have one year of eligibility remaining.

"We are so excited with Kaydan becoming a Pirate," Bozzella said. "She will be a tremendous addition up front for our basketball program on and off the court."

Lawson is a versatile, 6-foot guard, capable of both handling the ball and scoring in the paint. In four years at the University of Virginia, she competed in 83 games, making 21 starts, and averaged 4.4 points, 3.7 rebounds and 1.2 assists per game. Lawson made 18 starts as a junior in 2022-23 before primarily coming off the bench last season. She collected her first career double-double with 11 points and 15 rebounds against Boston College.

An All-ACC Academic Team member, she scored over 1,000 points and 500 rebounds in three years at Orange High School prior to becoming a collegian. A two-time All-State selection, Lawson averaged 18.0 points, 8.0 rebounds and 3.1 steals per game as a high school senior.

RedBird Capital and Weatherford Capital are launching a college sports-specific investment fund, one that could lend as much as $2 billion to athletic departments across the country.

Led by RedBird founder Gerry Cardinale, Collegiate Athletic Solutions (CAS) is hoping to cash in on a college sports industry in upheaval, with athletes on the verge of more robust compensation and schools seeking new funding sources to stay competitive. The structure of CAS, according to multiple people familiar with its plan, is to lend upfront money and operational expertise to athletic departments in exchange for a share of additional revenue generated under their partnership.

Weatherford Capital, headquartered in Tampa, Fla., is run by brothers Will, Sam and Drew Weatherford, the latter of whom played football at Florida State and is a member of the school’s board of trustees. FSU has been negotiating for more than a year with another investment firm, private equity giant Sixth Street, on a potential capital infusion for the Seminoles. Representatives for both FSU and Weatherford said the school was aware of his work with CAS and that he would recuse himself from board decisions that might create conflict.

CAS, meanwhile, is raising money and is already in talks with a number of other universities, said the people, who were granted anonymity because the details are private. The new venture plans to initially partner with five to 10 athletic departments, offering $50 million to $200 million to each.

Representatives for RedBird Capital and Weatherford Capital declined to comment.

CAS is one of a number of institutional funds looking to finance and profit off the increased commercialization of college sports. Legal, financial and legislative upheaval has combined to create “one of the most potentially transformative opportunities I’ve witnessed in my 30-year career in sports,” Cardinale wrote in an introductory email to Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt late last year.

“We have done a tremendous amount of work to position ourselves as a thoughtful impact partner for you and your team as you evaluate the changing landscape,” he said later in the email, which Sportico obtained via an open records request. “Drawing on both (a) our collective experience of building cutting edge sports businesses (e.g., On Location, OneTeam Partners, and Legends Hospitality) to generate more revenue for your department and (b) our expertise in partnering/operating teams and leagues (e.g., AC Milan, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, XFL, etc.), we should be a fairly unique partner to programs like yours.”

Both Weatherford and Cardinale have been at least vaguely telegraphing the premise behind their new venture for months. Last August, Weatherford posted a column on LinkedIn titled, “Amateur Collegiate Sports is Dead…Act Accordingly,” in which he argued that instead of “rest(ing) on the laurels of the traditions” of what college sports once was, the industry’s stakeholders should “celebrate” the “multibillion-dollar national treasure” it has become and “commercialize the asset” for their benefit.

In early January, Cardinale told the The New York Times that Michigan’s football team might be worth $1.5 billion and implied that the Wolverines were an undervalued asset. The week prior, on Jan. 2, a Delaware LLC called Collegiate Athletic Solutions Platform was formed, according to the state’s Division of Corporations database. The CAS website is currently password protected with a landing page that says “coming soon.”

The company has one employee publicly listed on LinkedIn—Newman Delany, the son of former Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, who is identified as a senior vice president. Jim Delany is currently an advisor to the Big Ten as well as a partner at The Montag Group. The Delany family has also been a significant donor to the University of North Carolina, both Jim and Newman’s alma mater.

In a March email sent to Texas Tech’s Hocutt, Newman Delany requested a number of different pieces of financial information for CAS to develop a “tangible TTU-specific analysis as the foundation for a constructive discussion.”

That data included three years of itemized profit-and-loss statements from the athletic department; three to five years of itemized profit-and-loss projections; details on any future revenue pledged to existing projects or liabilities; a detailed breakdown of debt obligations; and a finance schedule for upcoming capital expenditures, including ROI estimates for those projects.

In response, Hocutt sent an email to deputy athletic director Jonathan Botros, the Red Raiders’ CFO and COO, asking if he had “concern in sharing this type of general information.” A Texas Tech spokesperson did not respond to an inquiry about the current status of these talks.

CAS’ approach is different from traditional private equity, or even private credit. The group does not plan to take an equity position in any athletic department’s commercial venture, nor does it intend to secure fixed payments in return for the upfront capital. Instead, a source said, the deals will be structured with returns tied to new revenue generation.

RedBird’s sports portfolio includes Italian soccer team AC Milan, Fenway Sports Group, YES Network, the Alpine F1 Team and the UFL. The firm has $10 billion under management, and recently closed its fourth fund with more than $3.28 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Founded in 2015, Weatherford Capital has raised more than $1 billion since its inception. The group’s portfolio is mostly technology and financial companies, though it invested in IMG Academy in 2023 when the company was sold by Endeavor for $1.25 billion.

(This story has been updated in the third paragraph to include comment from Florida State.)

Player profile

• Class:Freshman
• Position:F
• Hometown:Appleton, Wis.
• High School:La Lumiere (Indiana)
• Height:6-9
• Instagram:gus.bus.19
• Twitter:gusbus2023

BIO: Four-star big man Gus Yalden, a native of Appleton, Wisconsin, returns home to play for his home state Badgers. The 6-foot-9 forward ranked as the 17th best center in the country for his class, according to 247 Sports. Yalden attended IMG Academy (Bradenton, Fla.) and the Asheville School (Asheville, N.C.) during his sophomore and junior years before landing at La Lumiere (La Porte, Ind.) for his senior year. Yalden helped La Lumiere finish 18-10 in the National Interscholastic Basketball Conference (NIBC), which is considered to be one of the toughest conferences in the nation. Prior to his senior season, Yalden had a strong summer in the Nike EYBL, which included a 35-point, 17-rebound performance at the prestigious Nike Peach Jam in July.

HS Mixtape

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Stats

Did not play his freshman year.

The BE coaches in the October time frame come out with their Pre-Season poll. Perhaps we should wait till then or since their is more expertise here maybe we could give it a go now. I'm not sure there will be any more impactful team changes between now and the start of the season that will make much of a difference. Anyone want to give it a go?

1. Creighton
2. UConn
3. St Johns
4. Marquette
5. Providence
6. SHU
7. Xavier
8. Villanova
9. Butler
10. G-Town
11. DePaul