IUPUI coach Ron Hunter kept his word.
He's going to take the sneakers he collected, after he coached a game barefoot in January, to the feet of those who need them in Africa this summer.
And, after a little lobbying, he got help from a new, kinder and more compassionate NCAA.
Hunter said Wednesday that the NCAA approved for him to pay for the 13-player 2007-08 Jaguars team to join him on a four-country tour (they are likely headed to Nigeria, Cameroon, Liberia and possibly Kenya) of Africa, beginning July 24. The only hitch from the NCAA was that no one can miss school during the trip. Ironically, one of Hunter's players from Cameroon may have to skip the trip for school.
Hunter hooked up with Samaritan's Feet, an organization whose goal is to give shoes to 10 million people in 10 years. He went barefoot while coaching the Indianapolis school against Oakland on Jan. 24. The outpouring of support was overwhelming for Hunter, who initially started with the goal of raising 40,000 shoes. Since January, he has helped raise more than 150,000 shoes.
"We raised so many that now we're talking about chartering a plane for the whole event," Hunter said.
Hunter also will host a charity golf outing on May 15 in Indianapolis to help raise funds so that the shoes, the team, a dentist and a doctor can all go together. That would offset the cost of shipping the shoes in advance. If the personnel have to travel commercially, then the shoes will be shipped in advance.
Hunter said he told the National Association of Basketball Coaches that he's going to make a three-year commitment to the project and that with the NABC's backing, he's hoping it gets expanded next season. The NABC has a cancer awareness weekend, during which coaches wear sneakers on the sidelines for one game during the season.
Meanwhile, Hunter organized this project out of Indy. He interviewed for the Oregon State opening last month but decided to stay at IUPUI. He received a two-year contract extension that will take him through 2015-16. Hunter has coached the Jaguars for 14 seasons and took the IUPUI program through a transition to Division I. IUPUI was 26-7 last season and lost to Oral Roberts in the Summit League tournament title game. Hunter took IUPUI to its first-ever NCAA tournament appearance in 2003.
• A North Carolina official said Thursday that there are no plans for a news conference in the coming days (that doesn't mean there won't be) to announce the decisions of junior Tyler Hansbrough and sophomores Wayne Ellington and Ty Lawson for the NBA draft. The deadline to declare is Sunday.
Gene Hansbrough, Tyler's father, said he doesn't know if his son has made a decision.
"The last time I talked to him, he really didn't know," Gene Hansbrough said Wednesday night. "I really think he doesn't know. But he can't lose. He can come back to Carolina, break all the records or go to the NBA and make a lot of money. I'm not sure what he's ready to do, and I don't think he knows either."
Gene Hansbrough said he expects that if his son were to declare for the draft, he wouldn't sign with an agent to see how high he would go in the draft.
The reality is that Hansbrough, unlike Lawson and Ellington, has nothing to lose by declaring and working out for teams. This would be his one shot to actually test the process. So, there would be no harm in going through what is available to him. If Lawson and/or Ellington declared, then they would give up their one shot as sophomores and couldn't "test" as juniors.
• The NBA's Orlando pre-draft camp committee will discuss next week the official early-entry list of players to choose from for the May 27-30 camp at Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex's Milk House. (Games on May 28 and 29 will be on ESPNU.)
The committee, led by former Atlanta Hawks general manager Pete Babcock, met for the first time two weeks ago at the Portsmouth (Va.) Invitational. But the committee has to figure out who is serious about playing in Orlando versus who just wants to go through the physical-only portion. There are so many underclassmen declaring for the draft that the seniors who desperately need to get a look from NBA personnel may get squeezed out of the 60 to 70 spots. Babcock said Wednesday that the NBA can accommodate up to 20 physical-only candidates at the camp in addition to the players who are competing in the games. Babcock said they go over the list of early entrants and try to discern who is willing to play versus who won't. Babcock said the NBA wants to conduct the service of evaluating the players who want to be seen by the NBA before going back to school.
"We want to help in that regard," Babcock said. Once they figure out who is willing to play, they'll call the players sometime later next week.
• Gene Hansbrough is hoping the visit of his other son, Ben, to Notre Dame this weekend goes well. Ben Hansbrough is leaving Mississippi State after two seasons. The 6-3 sophomore guard was fourth on the team in scoring (10.5 ppg) and ended his Bulldogs' career with one of his best games of the season. He scored 19 points, making seven of 10 shots and three of five 3s in the three-point loss to Memphis in the second round of the NCAA tournament.
Notre Dame and Mike Brey's offense would be a great fit for Hansbrough. Brey has done a great job of blending in shooters like Hansbrough. Notre Dame will be a Big East favorite next season, and getting Hansbrough as a practice player certainly would help.
• Davidson's Bob McKillop is in the middle of a renegotiation package with the school. McKillop has spurned overtures from Stanford, UMass, Rice and Providence since the Wildcats took eventual national champion Kansas to the final possession in the regional final in Detroit last month.
McKillop said he fully anticipates the Davidson administration will treat him fairly after the great run the Wildcats had and will likely continue to do so with Stephen Curry, a potential 2008-09 player of the year, returning for his junior season.
The reality is that McKillop has a great life in Charlotte. He said Wednesday how important family life is to him, and coaching his sons Matthew and now Brendan has been a thrill. So, too, will be walking his daughter, Kerrin, down the aisle in August at a Davidson campus wedding.
• McKillop said Curry will spend the summer polishing up his point guard skills now that senior Jason Richards is gone. But McKillop said he won't use Curry exclusively in that role. He said Curry is "too valuable off the ball," so the junior will spend plenty of minutes at both positions next season. McKillop said he was thrilled with the effort of the team after its loss to Kansas.
"They demanded our coaches get in the gym to work on individual instruction," McKillop said.
• McKillop will coach USA Basketball's U-18 team this summer. The team will begin training July 1 in Washington, D.C., at either Georgetown or the Washington Wizards' practice facility. The competition is in Argentina later in the month. The total time commitment is 20 days, according to McKillop. USA Basketball gave him quite a staff with assistants like Georgetown's John Thompson III and VCU's Anthony Grant. The roster will be made up mostly of high school seniors and some college freshmen who meet the age requirement.
• Mississippi State junior guard Jamont Gordon can still return to school if he chooses even though this is the second summer he has declared for the draft because a year ago, he withdrew before the NBA draft list was released. The NBA office confirmed that Gordon did send in his paperwork a year ago to declare for the draft but then notified the NBA before it issued its official list that he didn't want to be eligible for the draft. The NCAA looks at the official list that comes out of the NBA and then judges who has used his one exemption to declare for the draft.
A year ago, Kansas' Brandon Rush declared for the draft but then withdrew after he tore his ACL. But Rush was on the official list last summer, so when he declared again this month, that made him ineligible to return to the school. Rush actually declared out of high school, too, when that was allowed. But high school seniors were given the chance to declare at the time and then do it again once they were in college.
• Stanford will have an interesting decision to make. Will it continue to go for the news conference hire or will it go with a coach who knows how to tap the limited pool of top student-athletes who can get into the school? Efforts to get Gonzaga's Mark Few and McKillop weren't successful.
Larry Brown is no longer a candidate for the job, a source close to the situation told ESPN.com's Dana O'Neil. Tulsa's Doug Wojcik, a Navy grad, would understand the culture there. But if Stanford wants to go with someone who truly does understand what it's like to be there, then Portland's head coach Eric Reveno, current Stanford assistant Doug Oliver and Old Dominion's Blaine Taylor -- all who were assistant coaches under former Stanford head coach Mike Montgomery -- would make sense.
All have talked to athletic director Bob Bowlsby. One name that also would be intriguing is Bruce Weber at Illinois. Weber is a fantastic coach who wouldn't have to deal with the major summer league nonsense at Stanford as he does at a place like Illinois.
• Two MEAC coaches may not be at their current gigs for long after they both got much higher-level interviews during this coaching carousel. As previously reported, Morgan State's Todd Bozeman interviewed for Providence, and Hampton's Kevin Nickelberry talked to UMass. Morgan State and Hampton finished 1-2 in the MEAC this season, although seventh-place Coppin State won the conference tournament.
• John Calipari's coaching tree is certainly expanding this spring. Derek Kellogg will take over at UMass, Chuck Martin landed the Marist gig and former UMass assistant Bill Bayno got the Loyola Marymount job. And Calipari already had Tony Barbee at UTEP and Bruiser Flint at Drexel.
• It's spring and Michigan State's Tom Izzo is in the NBA coaching carousel chatter, most recently reportedly with the Bulls by Yahoo! Sports. We'll see. I could be wrong, but I just see Izzo staying at Michigan State.
• New Marquette coach Buzz Williams made a great hire when he landed Nebraska assistant Tony Benford on Thursday. Benford's strong ties to Texas and California as a former ASU and New Mexico assistant will help expand Marquette's recruiting base.
Andy Katz
