James stays homeDominic James decided not to take part in USA Basketball's Pan Am Games team trials after all.
The 5-foot-11 junior guard was expected to be one of three MU players, along with Jerel McNeal and Wesley Matthews, to vie for a spot on the 12-man roster, which is expected to be announced on Sunday.
Although he initially said he would try out, James' move to stay home isn't totally unexpected considering how much time he'd spent away from MU during his foray into the National Basketball Association draft.
"Dominic didn't come. He decided to stay back and focus on just being home," said coach Tom Crean on Friday from Haverford College, where the trials are taking place. "I think as time went on he really wanted to stay home, be with his teammates that are there, get some credits under his belt in summer, and be able to travel back and forth between school and home.
"I'm totally supportive of it."
As far as the chances for MU's remaining two players, those appear to have taken a hit as well considering Matthews is suffering through an illness and is less than 100 percent.
"Wesley's really under the weather," Crean said. "He had a high fever last night, and they've got him on antibiotics. He had to see a doctor out here. He's trying to play through it. It's a highly competitive atmosphere; there's 30 players for 12 spots, and the competition is great. I just feel bad for him because you can tell he's really trying to fight through it. But I really don't think the committee will take that into consideration."
Crean said McNeal has played solidly thus far, and that both he and Matthews are sticking to the team-first mantra that Crean had been stressing going in.
"There's so many players that the committee's really going to have a hard job with what it's trying to do," said Crean. "The concern this morning was there might not have been enough full-throttle offense and making shots as a group. I thought Jerel stood out a little bit with making some jumpers. But both Jerel and Wesley are moving the ball, sharing the ball, rebounding, running the floor and looking to read their teammates."
Crean will stick around for another practice Saturday before heading out on a recruiting junket to West Virginia.
"Recruiting's been important, and I've been out every day, but I think it's really important that you support your players, too," he said. "Outside of the committee, there aren't a whole lot of coaches here, so I think the players appreciate it."
Schedule update: Crean was excited about the release of the Big East portion of the Golden Eagles' schedule today, but said there's still some work to be done on the non-conference portion.
One proposed made-for-TV matchup with an opponent Golden Eagles fans remember all too well was recently scuttled.
"We're trying to put the finishing touches on our schedule," he said. "We were hoping we'd get a home-and-home with Alabama, we were approached by ESPN and the Big East on that, but to my knowledge Alabama said no. We would have liked to have worked that out, too."
http://blogs.jsonline.com/muhoops/archive/2007/07/13/james-stays-home.aspx
