The Jelan Kendrick saga will continue at Ole Miss, and he'll be eligible to play there next fall. The Kendrick situation at Memphis was a mess, and early on it was clear that he was never going to last long there. If you want to re-hash that mess, you can read what I wrote about it more than two months ago here. I understand that Ole Miss has a dearth of talent and is desperate for a player with the raw skills of a guy like Kendrick, but troublemakers like this are not the way to build a program. There's always the potential of a kid maturing, but it sounds like Kendrick is messed up to the point that it's going to take a few more failed opportunities before he has a real chance of growing up. You'd think that Ole Miss would be particularly careful considering the mess that their in-state rivals Mississippi State have gotten into with Renardo Sidney.
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Speaking of Renardo Sidney at Mississippi State, it does appear that he'll be back playing again. The team is claiming that Sidney didn't start the fight that got caught on television, and so they've kicked his sparring partner (Elgin Bailey) off of the team, and Sidney will be allowed to play right away. I don't have inside knowledge of what happened, so I'll have to take their word that Sidney was retaliating rather than starting that fight, but to me this Renardo Sidney story is not going to have a happy ending at Mississippi State. He's had so many off-the-court problems, and he's had other physical altercations with his teammates. He's immature and he is out of shape and unable to live up to his tremendous raw talent.
I said several weeks ago (just a day or two before the Bailey fight) that Mississippi State fans should view any positive contribution from Sidney this season as a bonus. I stand by that. Mississippi State has fallen way off of the Bubble with losses to Hawaii, Florida Atlantic and East Tennessee State. Even if Sidney manages to play the rest of the season without getting suspended again, and even if Dee Bost comes back and plays the best basketball of his life (his first game post-suspension will be tomorrow against Alabama), I still don't see this Mississippi State team getting into the Tournament.
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More problems for California with Gary Franklin transferring out. Only 13 games into his freshman season, Franklin has played well. He has started 11 of those games and is third on the team in assists, and fifth in points. He was part of a large and very talented 2010 recruiting class. Cal has played a tough schedule this year (Pomeroy rates it 2nd, Sagarin rates it 8th), but they're only 7-7 against it. They have wins over Temple, Iowa State and New Mexico and no really bad losses, but overall they just have too many losses. Their Sagarin ELO_CHESS is 67th, and they need to go on a little winning streak to just get back onto the Bubble.
But California has a young core that was going to be dangerous next season. They return almost every key player next season, and the loss of Franklin will lower the ceiling for that team.
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