In recent years Coach Donovan has done well with transfers. Mike Rosario just wrapped a successful career for the Gators, and last year Florida picked up two of the better guys on the market. Now they're back at it again, this time snaring Eli Carter who just finished his sophomore year at Rutgers.

Does Carter belong on the transfer A-list, like Donovan's previous pick ups?

Carter is a 6-2 combo guard who fractured his right fibula in February. Prior to that he was averaging 14.8 points per game (13.8 as a freshman). But - as is so common on the transfer market - he scored primarily through volume. He took 31% of the shots when he was on the floor, which was 3rd most in the Big East, and in the SEC would have only been fractions of a percentage behind Marshall Henderson.

There’s a tradition in the blogging world of producing next season’s top 25 about four minutes after this season has ended. And then writers couch their predictions as being “way too early” as if anyone smart enough to decipher these little scribbles we call words didn’t already know that.

The next round of “way too early” top 25s follow the early entry deadline for the NBA, which happens to have just passed.  And yep, versions 2.0 are out.

Why do sites put out these lists? Because A) they get linked to team-specific sites, and 2) they consist of teams a lot of people are googling, and thus these lists generate hits. And hits are what it’s all about (just ask the crew who sells advertising on porn sites). Version 3.0 will drop post-Wiggins, 4.0 will be once most of the transfers have settled, and then 5.0 will be the ACTUAL pre-season top 25.

But I have more fun critiquing the mainstream media than I do performing acts of SEO fellatio (SEO, to you virgins, is Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known as “why anyone knows the name Bleacher Report”).

The first line of the May 6th Sports Illustrated feature story reads like this: "I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay." With that, former Stanford star center Jason Collins became the first current male athlete in a major American sport to come out of the closet.

In his senior year at Stanford he averaged 14.5 points and 7.8 rebounds, and went on to become a first round draft pick by the New Jersey Nets.

In college, he played alongside his twin brother Jarron, who told Sports Illustrated that he didn't know his brother was gay until last year. "I won't lie," he said. "I had no idea. We talked, he answered my questions, I hugged him and I digested what he had told me. At the end of the day, this is what matters: He's my brother, he's a great guy, and I want him to be happy. I'll love him and I'll support him and, if necessary, I'll protect him."

For years the football powers of the ACC have complained that the league is run to the favor of Tobacco Road. The ACC is branded with Duke and North Carolina basketball, but the reality is that football is a much larger generator of revenue. There is such a disparity between the sports that Florida State brings in more viewers and more revenue from their sports programs than any other ACC school. No. 2 is Clemson.

But now that realignment has happened, the ACC is positioned to be the premier basketball conference in the nation, but unless Notre Dame joins as a full member, the football side of things was largely unimproved. And considering the ACC recently announced a Grant of Rights, teams like FSU and Clemson won't have the options of jumping to a more football focused conference.

The ACC is trying to push their brand more aggressively, and now they're trying to jump the pond and play regularly in Europe.

In January 2012 Menelik Watson committed to the Florida State Seminoles - to play football. And even at this football obsessed school, the overwhelming reaction was "who?"

Bloggers began looking into his backstory and it turned out that he originally went throught he Canarias Basketball Academy in Spain, and that only happened because the coach stumbled across him at an obscure tournament in 2006. "He comes from a very tough background," said Rob Orellana. "Single mom, and one of the toughest neighborhoods in England."

He ended up playing basketball for Marist where he reshirted a season, and then averaged 4.7 points and 3.3 rebounds as a freshman. After that season he transferred to Saddleback Community College (CA) where he was exposed to football for the first time. He also tried his hand at professional boxing.

The blogging media (bledia?) is a funny beast. One national site puts up a story which generates a ton of hits, and suddenly all the other sites have very similar stories up in order to cash in on the hits. It's not about being right. It's not about covering what is important. It's about hits. That, in large part, is how quality is judged in the era of blogs.

Memphis transfer Tarik Black became the hot story this week. He's a former consensus top-60 recruit who is leaving Memphis and will be immediately eligible for one final season. What the coverage should have been is that he's a role player from Memphis who is transferring to be a role player somewhere else. Big deal. But since he might finish his career at Duke or Kansas there were suddenly lots of people from basketball obsessed fanbases googling his name. Cue the national blog race, and within a few days he was being reported by multiple sites as the biggest recruit in basketball outside of Andrew Wiggins.

Not a bad rise for a guy who averaged 8 points a game.

As one of the "Unforgettables," Richie Farmer forever has his place in Kentucky lore. He was one of the four players who stuck with the program after it was nearly dismantled following major recruiting violations by Eddie Sutton. But now Farmer is facing violations of another sort.

As the Agricultural Commissioner in Kentucky, Farmer has had a bit of a checkered career. First, he refused the mandated furlough days in 2011, because he "didn't believe in furloughs." He's since repaid the State for that portion of his salary.

Did I mention it was raining?

It's going to be no easy task replacing Matthew Dellavedova at St. Mary's. But it just got a tiny bit easier when head coach Randy Bennett confirmed at the end-of-season basketball banquet that senior Paul McCoy has been granted a 6th year of eligibility.

McCoy was a star football and basketball player at Grant High School in Portland, Oregon, and he ultimately committed to play basketball for Pepperdine. But the coach resigned, leaving McCoy to look elsewhere. Fellow Grant alumnus June Jones pitched him to SMU, where he signed.

At SMU he immediately starred. He averaged 13.4 points, 4.0 rebounds, 3.0 assists, and 1.6 steals.

As a sophomore the scoring became spread out and McCoy was averaging right around eight points a game before his injury. Driving to the basket his knee gave way without contact, and his year was done. He had surgery to repair his torn ACL, but due to difficulties with head coach Matt Doherty and staff, McCoy decided to transfer.