After the toughest of seasons imaginable -- and the memory of January's tragic plane crash renewed by a likely lawsuit from the family of deceased player Daniel Lawson -- no one is more interested in thinking purely about hoops than Sutton.

"They all stayed on campus this summer and are playing on their own," said Sutton, whose team, despite everything, managed a 20-10 record and an NCAA bid last year. "I checked with the strength coach and they seem to be pretty dedicated."

The Cowboys return seven of their top eight scorers, including the superb backcourt of Maurice Baker (19.8 points per game, 6.7 rebounds per game) and Victor Williams (11.5 ppg). The frontcourt of Jonzen (15.0, 6.5) and Andre Williams (6.8, 7.7) will be bolstered by Ivan McFarlin, a tough post player who sat out last season as a partial qualifier.

"He'll challenge for a starting position," said Sutton.

Backcourt recruits Aaron Hill, an excellent shooter out of Salt Lake City Community College and Cheyne Gadson, a physical point guard from Westchester (N.Y.) Community College also will be expected to make immediate impacts. Most of all, Sutton believes being a year older, deeper and mentally tougher will help immeasurably. And after a difficult season, a bright new day is welcome.

"I think our league (Big 12) should be a great league this year," said Sutton, who took similar veteran teams to a Final Four (1995) and an Elite Eight (2000) in his 11 seasons at his alma mater. "But I think our ballclub will be better. Not only does everyone return but, with the recruits we added, we have more help in the backcourt. With Baker and Williams we almost worked those guys to death.

"We'll be deeper and the fact we will be a year older means our ballclub will be much better."

Challenging again

The matchups for the nine-game ACC-Big Ten Challenge five months from now are in and it appears that the gentlemen from the South have a distinct advantage.

Here is the breakdown:

Tuesday, Nov. 27

• Illinois at Maryland
• North Carolina State at Ohio State
• Duke vs. Iowa (United Center, Chicago)
• Minnesota at Wake Forest

Wednesday, Nov. 28

• Wisconsin at Georgia Tech
• Michigan State vs. Virginia (at Richmond, Va.)
• Indiana at North Carolina
• Florida St. at Northwestern

To be determined

• Clemson at Penn State

Michigan and Purdue are sitting out this year.

Putting aside our long-standing argument that this challenge is only good for the league's top teams -- the Dukes, Michigan States and Carolinas get the high-profile games, while Clemson and Penn State always seem to play each other on Cablevision Altoona -- it should be a couple of great nights of basketball.

You have to like the ACC's chances of winning its third consecutive Commissioner's Cup. The ACC gets five home (or ostensibly home) games to the Big Ten's four. Moreover, two of the Midwestern league's home games are at arenas that provide limited home-court advantage -- Penn State and Northwestern.

Still, the event should be fairly evenly matched and provide some particularly intriguing matchups. Illinois at Maryland could be a feature two top five teams in the always delirious Cole Fieldhouse. Duke visiting Iowa in Chicago should help spur some early season college hoop interest in the Midway that was lost with the disappearance of the Great Eight.

Indiana and Carolina is a historic matchup anytime, even though the two coaches have a combined three years of head coaching experience going into the season. Play that game a few years ago and you'd have 60-plus between Dean Smith and Bob Knight. Michigan State will have to prove in a hurry that it can survive the loss of five key players when it takes on deep and talented Virginia. Minnesota at Wake and N.C. State at Ohio State won't get a great deal of attention, but should be excellent in their own right.

This event isn't perfect, not that any event is, but it should provide a couple nights of early season action. There is no better testament to the event than the fact that since its creation in 1999, each league has won one national title.

"When the Challenge was initiated two years ago, we had very high expectations and they have been fulfilled," said Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany. "We believe the third edition will be just as successful."

Recuiting rush

There has been a lull in recruiting commitments from the Class of 2002 in recent weeks, but expect that to change in the days leading up to the start of the July recruiting period.

Already, 15 of BlueChipHoops.com's top 50 players have made commitments, with Raymond Felton (5) and Rashad McCants (10) going to North Carolina; J.J. Redick (6) and Michael Thompson (38) with Duke; and Carmelo Anthony (8) and Gerry McNamara (30) with Syracuse.

However, top prospects throughout the country have been taking unofficial visits to schools the last two months and a number of players appear on the verge of making a decision.

The lynchpin everyone is talking about right now is Bracey Wright, a talented 6-feet-3 shooting guard out of The Colony (Texas) who is leaning heavily toward making it official to Indiana with a verbal commitment. Wright is ranked No. 13 in the Class of 2002 and also is considering Iowa and Kentucky.

The key with Wright is he might bring big man Sean May, a 6-8 forward from Bloomington, Ind., and the son of Hoosiers great Scott May, with him to the Hoosiers. May is ranked No. 11, and he and Wright have long discussed playing college ball together. Point guard John Gilchrist, of Salem High in Virginia Beach, Va., is ranked No. 19 and is down to Indiana and Florida.

Which means Hoosiers coach Mike Davis is on the verge of a monster haul, but needs that first domino to fall.

Then there is North Carolina, which still is right there with May and already has two top 50 verbals in the bag. Both McCants and Felton are backcourt players, so the Heels need big men. Matt Doherty also is in the mix with top 20 big guys such as 6-10 Torrin Francis of Massachusetts, 6-9 Jason Fraser of Long Island, 6-9 Shelden Williams of Midwest City, Okla., and 6-10 Shavlik Randolph of nearby Raleigh. Plus, 6-5 wing Lenny Cooke of New Jersey has told reporters recently he has always wanted to play in Chapel Hill, although the NBA remains a distinct possibility.

Duke might have a say in all of that, too. The Blue Devils and Tar Heels will go head-to-head on a number of those prospects, including Williams, Francis and, of course, Randolph, who has become a larger-than-life figure in the Triangle. He has Duke, North Carolina and N.C. State, not to mention Florida, locked in a heated sales contest.

Illinois landed Dee Brown, a 5-10 jet from Maywood (Ill.) Proviso East who also was considering Michigan State, this week. Not only does that give the Illini the No. 17 rated prospect, but further opens up the battle for Chicago Julian's Sean Dockery, No. 20, who was looking at Illinois and Duke. Dockery is not yet academically qualified, which might force the Blue Devils to hold off for the time being.

The same is true with 6-1 Anthony Roberson (No. 10), who sources say favors Duke to Michigan State, Florida, Michigan, Missouri and Cincinnati.

So when does it end? No time soon. Some of these players will push the recruitment through the summer and into the fall. However, the trend in recent years has been toward earlier and earlier verbals, and not just from local prospects. The amount of travel and exposure club basketball offers means kids are more aware of programs throughout the country.

We would expect a major wave of top 50 commitments in the next two weeks, probably locking half of the nation's top players up before the Nike and Adidas ABCD Camps begin after the 4th of July. And it might begin with Bracey Wright.

News and notes

• The predominant color, obviously, of the Texas Tech Red Raiders is ... red. So will new coach Bob Knight, who was famous for wearing red sweaters and pullovers at Indiana, don the same colors for his first season in Lubbock? Maybe. Knight says he will commission a poll of the Tech student body who will then vote on what color they want him to wear. The options will be red, white or black, with black seeming like the most fashionable and odds-on choice.
• Speaking of Knight, he called to say that contrary to what our recent story on him and his new school said, there is not good trout fishing in West Texas. There is exceptional bass fishing, but to get after the trout you have to head to Colorado, which he has done with a Red Raiders fan from Dallas. We'll take the noted outdoorsman's word for it.
• If Herb Sendek is on the hot seat at N.C. State, then you at least have to applaud the way he is handling it. There was no backing down for Sendek when he decided that sophomore Damien Wilkins, who was testing the NBA Draft waters, had no future with the Pack program. Sendek was clearly rankled by the play of Wilkins and the complaints of his father, former NBA player, Gerald. "They have demanded assurances and explanations that I am unprepared to provide and am not obligated to provide," Sendek said. "Moreover, they have repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with our program." Wilkins was a coveted recruit out of Orlando two years ago, but his game has suffered from so-so shooting and sporadic effort at both ends of the court. NBA scouts have advised him to return to college, but with State no longer an option, he will have to sit out a season, if he decides to transfer. While Wilkins has undeniable talent, Sendek has obviously decided he can do more with less in Raleigh next year.
• Next March's Conference USA Tournament remains up in the air after Cincinnati's Firstar Center was bought by The Nederlander Co. LLC for $22.1 million in bankruptcy proceedings. The downtown Firstar Center was supposed to host the C-USA Tourney in 2002 and 2004 but, so far, the Nederlander group has rejected that contract. Expect the league to either renegotiate with Nederlander, move the event to the University of Cincinnati's Shoemaker Center or to the Louisville's Freedom Hall, which hosted the event last March and is scheduled to do the same in 2003. Because the championship game is scheduled to be broadcast on CBS on March 9 at 11:45 a.m., leaving the Eastern time zone for Chicago or Memphis seems unlikely.
• Ben Johnson, who averaged 10.7 points a game as a sophomore last season at Northwestern, has decided to transfer to Minnesota. A former standout at Minneapolis De La Salle High School, the move makes sense, although Big Ten rules forbid intraconference transfers to receive scholarships. That means he will pay his own way to be a Gopher. At least it is in-state tuition, which wouldn't have been the case had Johnson headed to Michigan State, where former Wildcat assistant Brian Gregory now works. He also considered Missouri, which could have provided the full ride.
• Louisville was dealt a setback last week when the Kentucky Supreme Court overturned a decision granting Nigerian big man Muhammed Lasege college eligibility. The NCAA had ruled that Lasege, a role player for the Cards last season, was ineligible due to a professional contract he signed in Russia before his arrival in North America. The decision might also affect Missouri recruit Uche Okafor, who came over with Lasege and spent the last two years at the College of Southern Idaho. In the good news/bad news side of things, the Cards did pick up a late recruit when 6-9 Otis George, a raw but gifted big man from Homestead (Fla.) Berkshire, committed to Rick Pitino over South Carolina this week.
• Michigan coach Tommy Amaker was able to gain a verbal recommitment from 6-6 Pontiac (Mich.) Northern wing Lester Abrams, who committed last fall but backed out when Brian Ellerbe was let go. Abrams ranks among the top 25 players in the Class of 2002 and averaged 20.2 points and 10.3 rebounds a game as a junior. It was a much-needed get since Michigan recruits Kelly Whitney of Chicago Whitney Young is headed to prep school and Flint Northern guard JaQuan Hart is still awaiting qualifying test scores and is likely to follow.
• Best nickname in the Class of 2002? So far we like Shelden Williams, a 6-9 forward out of Midwest, Okla., who occasionally goes by the moniker "The Landlord" because of his ability to dominate in the low post.

Next time you are in Post, Texas, or its greater metropolitan region, be sure to stop by Holly's Drive-In, a classic, old-style 50s joint complete with everything but waitresses on roller skates and the Fonz. It claims to be "home of the Holly Burger Since 1971" and in a small West Texas town, we assume, pretty much the spot for three decades of post-football game dates.