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Adam Zagoria covers basketball at all levels. He is the author of two books and an award-winning journalist whose articles have appeared in ESPN The Magazine, SLAM, Sheridan Hoops, Sports Illustrated, Basketball Times and in newspapers nationwide.
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Sunday / December 22.
  • Despite the huge penalties levied by the NCAA against the Southern California football team Thursday, Jio Fontan and his teammates on the basketball team are somewhat relieved.

    “It’s a little weird because as far as basketball-wise, things went pretty decent I guess. Of course we’d rather have no sanctions at all. But we understand we did wrong and we know we had to have some penalties,” Fontan, the Paterson, N.J. native and former St. Anthony star who transferred to USC from Fordham, said late Thursday night during a phone interview.

    In January, USC implemented self-imposed sanctions on the basketball team in the wake of the O.J. Mayo scandal, but no additional penalties were levied Thursday.

    EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. –No one would have blamed Dexter Pittman if he gave up and quit on his dream of playing in the NBA.

    After what he went through last month, how could you?

    “When I found out the news, I was just in a hole, like I didn’t want to do anything,” Pittman said Wednesday after a group workout in front of more than 20 NBA teams at the Nets’ facility.

    Pittman left the NBA draft combine in Chicago May 21 to be with his family a day after his half-brother, 15-year-old Darius Johnson, was shot and killed in Katy, Texas.

    Two players looking to transfer will visit Rutgers and Seton Hall in the coming days.

    Givon Crump, a 6-foot-7 wing from Washington, D.C. who is transferring from Baylor, will take an official visit to Rutgers today (Thursday), an unofficial to Seton Hall on Saturday and an official to Fresno State on Monday.

    “Yes,” Crump wrote by text.

    Crump averaged 0.4 points and 0.3 rebounds in 16 games as a reserve forward at Baylor in 2009-10. He will have three years of eligibility remaining.

    There was a flurry of coaching movement Wednesday in the New York area.

    St. Peter’s assistant coach John Morton has been offered an assistant coaching position under Tom Pecora at Fordham and is expected to take it.

    Morton, a Bronx, N.Y. native, played on the 1989 Seton Hall team that reached the NCAA championship game before losing to Michigan.

    He replaces Van Macon, who left Fordham to join Mike Rice’s staff at Rutgers.

    Meantime, Kimani Young, the athletic director of the New Heights AAU program, will join the Rice High School staff under new coach Dwayne Mitchell while retaining his position at New Heights.

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