UK Targeting Winners...Like Terrence Jones/Brandon Knight Note

Over the weekend, Terrence Jones and Jefferson High School pulled off a feat that had never been done before in Oregon's 5A or 6A class. They won the state championship for a third straight time. Jefferson beat Mountain View 57-48 to claim the title. Jones wasn't his teams leading scorer but still put up a championship worthy stat line at 18 points, nine rebounds and four steals. Maybe even more importantly, he was a champion down the stretch. He made a three-point play to put Jefferson up 50-43 with 2:26 left and then followed it up with a steal, a block and two made free throws to seal the deal. Jones' coach, Pat Strickland, had said that none of the coaches recruiting Jones had been in attendance lately but that changed during the championship match up. Ben Howland of UCLA stopped by to watch Jefferson win it all. From a recruiting perspective, I'm sure Jones liked seeing Howland in the stands, if he even did amongst the near 2500 person crowd, but you also have to think that he appreciated the fact that some of the other schools recruiting him still had work of their own to do in their conference tournaments. If you're a UK fan, you'd probably like to think of it in your head as a statement by Howland saying, "Hey Terrence, we're not very good so I was able to come watch you instead of coaching my team or worrying about the NCAA tournament." What it also says is that, despite all the rumors to the contrary, the process for Terrence Jones is still seen as a wide open race. After his victory, Jones told the Register-Guard, "I haven't even thought about that." In another classic line from a proven winner, Jones said of the state championship, "This is the best award I could get all year, over any individual award." The win also got me thinking about some of the guys that UK is looking to bring in next year. Almost all are proven winners on the high school level and you really can't place a "star value" on a kids ability to lead his team and drive them through state and national tournaments to championship banners. Stacey Poole recently won his state championship. Doron Lamb was a part of proven national winners, Oak Hill Academy. Terrence Ross was a part of Jones' earlier success at Jefferson and Brandon Knight fell just short of leading his team to three state championships as well. Even Enes Kanter averaged 18 and 16 and earned an MVP while leading his Turkish National team to Bronze in the European U-18 Championship and they only lost by 5 to Serbia, the eventual gold medalists. Whether it's just inherent in the fact that UK is targeting the most skilled kids in the nation or it's because Calipari places a higher value on kids that have this winning drive, UK should be aided in the end by kids that want to, or almost have to, win it all or feel a bit of emptiness with their season. If that isn't a UK basketball fan's mindset in a nutshell, I don't know what is. ------------------------------------------------------ Scout.com's Evan Daniels spoke with Brandon Knight's coach, Dave Beckerman, who says that he believes a decision, at least a public one, won't be made until after Knight returns from the McDonald's All-American game. That game will take place on March 31st. Beckerman based that belief on their commitment to ESPN to do something on TV whenever they do decide to announce. So basically, Beckerman says Brandon is still undecided, probably won't announce at the McDonald's game or before, and will eventually make his announcement on ESPN.