Lowell Robinson is a semi-finalist for a new college football award recognizing the best return man.

Now the bad news. They actually named the award after — brace yourself — Randy Moss.

Kind of overshadows the whole honor.

I’d love to see the numbers, and some of the research. Not to mention that the sample size might be questionable. Still, it’s an interesting premise regarding the correlation.

Recently, national basketball recruiting analyst Dave Telep did an analysis of his evaluations from the classes of 2000-2004. He did it mostly to see how he had missed ranking two future NBA draft picks, but he also wanted to find some trends in the sport. After having a local computer whiz kid crunch the numbers, he saw some disturbing things about players attending multiple high schools.

There were 31 players in the top 100 as seniors who had gone to multiple high schools and 61% of those players failed to meet Telep’s expectations. Of course, academics are a big issue with student-athletes who transfer, but there are other less obvious issues that play into the success rates. In his analysis, 24 of those multiple-school players were identified as having academic issues. Of the seven who did not, 25% failed to achieve their expected level of success.

Telep was quick to say that evaluating high school players is hardly a science and those expectations were based on his judgment, but he also thinks that stability is a major factor in players’ development.

“The issue (of a player’s character and poise) has come up in the last year with college coaches more than in the previous 10 years I have been doing it,” Telep says. “So much of being a college basketball player is multitasking, handling classes, basketball and everything else going on. Players that have dealt with issues, who have stability, seem to be able handle it better.”

Keep in mind how small the numbers are. Only 31 of 100 went to multiple schools. Of those, (61% of 31 players is only about) 19 were disappointing in Telep’s estimation. How that compares to the other sample size of 69 is not mentioned and makes it hard to have context. Correlation does not equal causation.

This sort of thing should be looked at a little closer by coaches you would think. It might give them a better idea about players beyond simply their talent potential. Going to multiple schools is usually a red flag for academic issues, but it might also indicate other issues that could have as great an effect on the court. One more tool for evaluating.

After 3 games in 3 days, everyone needs a little rest. Pitt doesn’t play until Friday when the FSU Seminoles come to the Pete (Pitt returns the favor in 2008) for a post-Thanksgiving game that is technically the last game of the FCCAABC Tournament. I don’t pretend to understand how this tournament played out, other than the fact that Pitt got to host and play a bunch of early games.

The Oakland team gave Pitt a good battle. Dennis at Pitt Hoops has his thoughts on the game
Pitt came out sluggish and not fully ready to play.

Pitt missed its first five field-goal attempts, and Oakland went on a 12-2 run to take a 25-15 lead on Vova Severovas’ back-door layup with 8 minutes, 20 seconds left in the first half.

Pitt trailed, 33-29, at the break. The Panthers shot 33 percent and had as many turnovers as field goals (eight) in, by far, its worst half of the young season.

Oakland, located in the Detroit suburbs, was trying to match Oral Roberts’ upset at Kansas, and become the second Mid-Continent Conference team in less than a week to beat a top-5 team on its home court.

“I think we were maybe a little fatigued,” Kendall said. “We weren’t expecting them to come out quite as hard or be quite as good as they were. We were a little bit tired.”

Oakland also was playing its 3d game in 3 days, but they were presumably a little more juiced about taking on Pitt then the other way around. Pitt was the opponent, each team coming into the Pete, wanted to take out.

The Grizzles hung close for most of the second half but Keith Benjamin came off the bench and hit two crucial baskets and a lay-up with seven minutes left which gave Pitt a 12-point lead, 57-45.

He also sank a tough 3-pointer from deep in the corner that pushed Pitt’s lead back to double-digits, 60-49 with five minutes left, much to the disappointment of Oakland coach Greg Kampe.

“We’re disappointed. We had a chance to beat the No. 3 team in the country,” Kampe said. “Just when I thought we were getting close enough to steal the game at the end, that No. 1 (Benjamin) hit a tough 3-pointer.

“We knew they would go to Gray, but I thought we defended him as good as you could defend him for players of our size. We knew Pitt was coming out in the second half as intense as they could so we went into the locker room happy to be up four points on the No. 3 team in the country, then we came out in the second half in a fog and just watched.”

The second half, though, was really about Aaron Gray — sore lip and all — just dominating inside.

The Panthers avoided the upset by force feeding the ball to Gray in the second half. Pitt’s 7-foot, 270-pound senior center scored 15 of his 23 points after halftime and the Panthers came back to beat the pesky Grizzlies, 66-55, at the Petersen Events Center.

“Coach Dixon told us to get the ball down low,” Gray said. “He has confidence in me to make good decisions. I got a couple of easy buckets. I had a few good post moves. I started to really get confident.”

Pitt played a nice little tournament, won the games and (mostly) no one got injured.

Charles Smith is, without any exaggeration, one of the best basketball players ever in Pitt history. His professional career was not what was expected as injuries and playing for the Clippers took its toll. Still, Smith was smart in how he planned his life, and he listened:

In 1987 Smith listened to his mother, Dorothy, who advised him not to leave Pittsburgh University in his junior year to take a tempting NBA contract. A year later Smith became Pitt’s first basketball or football All-American to graduate. He kept a B average, majoring in business and communications. And he got that lucrative NBA contract anyway.

Smith listened to John Thompson, his coach on the 1988 U.S. Olympic basketball team, when he advised him to spend his newly acquired wealth very carefully.

…

Seeing a market for a system that would digitize and store videotape, he formed a company called New Media Technology. The system he devised earned a patent from the U.S. government. NBC and ABC ranked among its clients. In 2000 NJBiz magazine named Smith among its “Top 40 under-40 New Jersey Entrepreneurs.”

Smith reportedly sold his patent a few years ago for $7 million. More recently, Smith joined the NBA Players Association as northeast region director, a job that has him advising players as they make the transition in and out of the league. He also represents some former NBA stars.

That’s all very good, but the reason for a story like this is that his Bridgeport, Connecticut foundation (his hometown) that bears his name is not making positive news.

Years of fiscal mismanagement have left the Charles D. Smith Foundation at least $1.2 million in debt and struggling to fulfill its mission to help disadvantaged children, a series of internal foundation documents show.The previously secret documents, provided to the Connecticut Post by the agency’s former interim director, allege that the charity, founded in 1989 by former NBA star Charles D. Smith Jr., is behind on federal taxes, misused federal funds and operated for two years without required liability insurance.

“They are essentially insolvent,” said Anthony Ball, the former interim director who suddenly resigned last week, claiming the organization is not doing enough to right its ship.

Smith disputed any contention that the charity is on the brink of collapse. He acknowledged serious problems have been discovered during the last few months, and stressed all of the issues are being addressed.

Unfortunately, foundations such as Smith’s, over time, are ripe for abuse and misuse if the principal does not have trustworthy and competent people operating it. Smith does not live in his old hometown any longer, so the direct oversight and controls necessary for personal foundations is just not there. Sadly, such abuses appear to be the primary reason for the problems.

The Post previously reported that city police are investigating allegations that former foundation executive director Deborah Sims and program manager Maria Valentin used foundation credit cards to fund lavish personal expenses, such as Caribbean cruises, spa treatments and personal cell phones. Both were fired in September after they walked off their jobs.

State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is also investigating the organization. He said last week that he has “found some very problematic practices and omissions.”

“It’s really nothing short of a tragedy for a very worthwhile organization,” he said.

Hopefully this will be cleaned up and fixed. There are no allegations that Charles Smith did anything wrong other then not paying close enough attention to the doings of the people running his foundation.

I do have to look into the claims in the article that Smith was “Pitt’s first basketball or football All-American to graduate.” I have re-read that part a few times and I have to believe that was an error. Just on the football side, players like Ernie Borghetti, Mike Ditka, Marshall Goldberg and a host of others never actually graduated? If they meant to say African-Americans, that would still mean Dorsett, May, Green never graduated. I’m not sure about that. On the basketball side, there was Don Hennon and Billy Knight that come to mind.

UPDATE (10:15am): I just got an e-mail response from Michael Daly, the Managing Editor for the Connecticut Post. He agrees that the passage is an error. They will correct and will look into from where that bad info came.