Not even close.

Wake came out riding a wave of three pointers and severely pounded the Hokies in Winston-Salem last night, despite a subpar night from Tim Duncan. The final score was 61-44. Check out my report on the carnage on my Basketball Page.

Kudos to both The USA Today and ESPNet for posting the news about Greg Melvin's acquittal. The USA Today ran it on the front page of their NCAA sports web page, while ESPNet posted it on the front of their College Football web page. So I shot off my mouth without looking, and quite a few email-capable Hokie Central fans let me know about it.

Kudos to The Roanoke Times as well, who ran the article on the front page of the paper.

Does this mean I'm going to have to get off of my anti-media soapbox and cut them some slack? I'll tell you what - you guys start holding your breath, and I'll let you know when I decide to do that.....

By the way, since I'm in the habit of posting schedules, here's a schedule for you to cut and paste. It's a schedule of the upcoming Brawl trials:

DATE      PLAYER(S) ON TRIAL Mar. 17   Angelo Harrison, Michael Hawkes Mar. 24   Tyron Edmond, Brian Edmonds Apr. 14   Nat Williams, Sean Sullivan Apr. 21   Cornell Brown

It's not that I want to take the edge off of the celebration that has occurred due to Yubrenal Isabelle's commitment, but here's the way I feel....

First of all, on the same day that The Roanoke Times reported Isabelle's verbal commitment to Tech, the Bluefield Daily Telegraph ran an article saying that Isabelle had narrowed his choices to Tech and UVa. The BDT said that Isabelle wouldn't announce until next week what his final choice was.

I don't know when Tech and the RTWN heard their news, but I figure that the Bluefield reporter wrote his piece yesterday afternoon, at the earliest. So what the heck is going on here? Who's right? What's really going on with Yubie?

I don't like the way this smells. Based on the quotes in the RTWN article about the how the recruiting process has caused Isabelle a lot of stress, and based on the waffling that Isabelle was doing as late as yesterday (when the BDT article was written), I wouldn't call this a firm commitment.

I haven't read a single quote by Isabelle himself, but there's been plenty of quotes from his coach, and plenty of talk about how his family wanted him to go to Tech, which is close enough to Bluefield that they could easily come watch him play. But I don't hear Isabelle himself saying that he has selected Tech and giving the reasons why. I always feel good about a verbal commitment when I hear the player giving his reasons why he committed to Tech, and there has been no such info coming from Isabelle on this one.

Take that as you will, but here's my advice, and I have the same advice concerning all late-committing recruits: believe it when the kid signs his name on the dotted line. Isabelle is a heck of a catch, yes, but he's still hanging at the end of the line. He's not on the boat yet.

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