**First off, for those keeping track at home, my Black summer league Ultimate team in the Westchester Summer League (WSL) came back from a 7-4 deficit to Gold to win 10-7 in an exciting, rain-shortened affair at SUNY Purchase. We scored six unanswered goals to win the game and garner the No. 4 seed in Saturday’s playoffs…Wish us luck.

PITINO APOLOGIZES, FEELS THE HEAT

**Louisville coach Rick Pitino apologize for his behavior and was effectively backed by Louisville president James Ramsey.

“I let them down with my indiscretion and I’m sorry,” Pitino said.

Pitino is taking a lot of heat for his actions, and this episode will no doubt be used against him on the recruiting trail.

Tim Dahlberg of the AP came out with a really strong column and some harsh words for Pitino and his employers.

Vinnie Tatum was such a good soldier that he kept guard over Pitino in the back of a restaurant even as the coach was having drunken sex with a woman he had met just hours earlier. Tim Sypher valued his job so much that he gave Pitino the keys to his condominium, then kept watch as the coach gave the same woman $3,000 so she could go across state lines and get an abortion.

Meantime, Shawn Teague, the father of 2011 Louisville target Marquis Teague, told Jody Demling the Pitino situation will have no impact on his son’s decision.

“It hasn’t changed a thing for us,” Shawn Teague said. “Of course, I want to see some things fall out a little bit more. Things happen and things can change – even with this situation – and we still have to look to see if anything is going to happen as a result of what did happen. But in terms of who Rick Pitino is and how I feel about him and how my family and Marquis feel about him, there’s no change in that whatsoever.”

He added that “didn’t know the extent of what happened,” but added that he doesn’t have “any qualms with Pitino.”

Rod Odom Sr. echoed similar sentiments to Jeff Goodman of Foxsports.com.

“It doesn’t change anything with us,” the father said “We sat down as a family last night and analyzed it and spoke to Rod about it.”

SELBY VISITING UCONN

**Josh Selby, the point guard out of Baltimore (Md.) Lake Clifton High, who decommitted from Tennessee, will visit UConn Thursday, as will Long Island forward Rod Odom.

“Everybody is coming after him [Selby[," Lake Clifton coach Herman Harried told the Hartford Courant. "It's just going to be a matter of what he and his family thinks is best for him. If UConn doesn't get him, that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with UConn or that UConn did anything. I want to say strongly that the UConn coaches have done a fine job recruiting him."

TYLER TO ISRAEL

**Jeremy Tyler signed a one-year deal Wednesday with Maccabi Haifa of the Israeli Premier League for $140,000.

The 6-11 Tyler initially committed to Louisville but then announced  he would skip his senior year at San Diego High and spend two years abroad and return to the U.S. for the 2011 NBA Draft.

He becomes the second American player to skip college in as many years. Brandon Jennings signed a $1.2 million deal to play a year of pro ball in Italy last season before becoming the No. 10 pick in the NBA Draft. While Jennings struggled for playing time, Tyler wants to play right away.

"It's really important," he told The New York Times. "If you have playing time, people are going to see you. Brandon didn't play much over there. In order to get better, I need to play. I'll be playing against grown men that have kids and have been playing for years."

Sonny Vaccaro, who wants to stick it to the NCAA by showing that American talent can play abroad instead of here, brokered both the Jennings deal and the Tyler one.

"[Tyler] had his ups and downs during the workouts,” he told the Times. “He’s not as far along as Brandon Jennings was. He only played one year of high school basketball and the team wasn’t very competitive.

“I wanted to allow him the comfort level that he doesn’t have to win the Euro Cup next year.”

ROSARIO TO PUERTO RICO

**Rutgers guard Mike Rosario will return to Puerto Rico to train with the SEnior National Team and potentially compete in the Tutu Marchand Cup and the FIBA Tournament of the Americas later this month.  Fordham guard Jio Fontan was also invited, but is committed to his college team.

“We reached out and got coach [Fred] Hill’s blessing,” said Todd Washington of the Puerto Rico Basketball Association.  “Mike understands that there are no guarantees and has to show the coaches that he can do more than just fill it up.”

JOURNAL NEWS CUTS 50 JOBS

**The Journal News of Westchester County is the latest area paper to have mass lay-offs. The paper held a big meeting of its 228 employees today to announce that 50 jobs would be lost in news and sports. Everyone has to reapply for their jobs and corporate will decide who is re-hired. Those who aren’t don’t get severance.

“We’ve been working on a restructuring plan for the Journal News for a while,” Michael J. Fisch, publisher and president of the newspaper, told The New York Times.  “That’s partly the reason for the move today, but the other part of the reason for having employees reapply for newly defined jobs is to recognize that our business has changed.”

NADAL RETURNS TO TOUR

**Rafael Nadal returned to the tour in Montreal and won by walkover over fellow Spaniard David Ferrer. It is good for tennis to have Nadal back and hopefully he can round into form by the U.S. Open, which begins Aug. 31. Always one of my favorite events to cover.

Follow Adam Zagoria on Twitter.

A day after the now infamous Rubin-Gate press conference at Citi Field, Mets COO Jeff Wilpon has come out publicly to apologize and say that Mets GM Omar Minaya made a “very large mistake” in questioning Adam Rubin’s motives in writing the Tony Bernazard stories.

You can say that again.

“I think he really understands he made a very large mistake here. He apologized to ownership, he apologized to the staff,” Wilpon said. “Omar has told me he’s remorseful about what he said.

“I can only apologize from the organization’s standpoint. Omar made a mistake and he admitted to me he made a mistake and he’s apologetic for his mistake.”

Wilpon gave Minaya a vote of confidence as the team’s GM despite its struggles on the field and enough off-the-field distractions to fill a circus tent.

“Omar’s our general manager, he’s going to be our general manager,” Wilpon said.

We’ll see how long that lasts.

If the Mets slide and finish near the bottom of the NL East and/or there are any more embarrassing incidents, Minaya could be gone at year’s end.

On a related topic, do you think it’s OK for a reporter to inquire with a team he’s covering about potential employment in that field?

As I said yesterday, if Adam Rubin directly asked the Mets about working for their team, it’s a conflict of interest because there’s a perceived quid pro quo involved….You give me a job and I’ll cover your team in a “positive” light.

If, on the other hand, he asked general questions about a career in baseball, I’m less problematic with it.

SI’s Jon Heyman reportedly said he had no problem with Rubin’s actions today on NY radio, according to The Big Lead.

On the other side, NY Times sports editor Tom Jolly called it “inappropriate” on his Twitter feed.

What do you think?

Follow Adam Zagoria on Twitter.

(PHoto courtesy SI.CNN.Com)

]]> http://www.zagsblog.com/2009/07/28/wilpon-says-minaya-made-a-very-large-mistake/feed/ 1 http://www.zagsblog.com/2009/06/18/jumping-on-the-twitter-bandwagon/ http://www.zagsblog.com/2009/06/18/jumping-on-the-twitter-bandwagon/#comments Thu, 18 Jun 2009 04:55:56 +0000 Adam Zagoria http://www.zagsblog.com/?p=16496 I’ve officially jumped on the Twitter Bandwagon.

I held off for a while, but now I’m in.

Check out my page and feel free to follow me.

While I may or may not be following Brooklyn Decker, my plan is not to tweet about the endless daily minutiae of my life as I assume you all have daily minutiae in your own lives that takes precedence.

I will post links to news on ZAGSBLOG, but mostly I will follow a slew of college basketball coaches and recruits because, like it or not, this is now a legitimate source of news.

Taking a page out of Gary Parrish’s book, if you’re a college coach and wish to be followed but aren’t on this list below, please shoot me an email at zagoria@hotmail.com so I can add you to my list.

*John Calipari (Kentucky)

*Stan Heath (South Florida)

*Jim Engles (NJIT)

*Kyrie Irving (St. Patrick)*Jim Larranaga (George Mason)

*Tubby Smith (Minnesota)

*Gary Williams (Maryland)

*Donnie Jones (Marshall)

*Bruce Pearl (Tennessee)

*Matt Doherty (SMU)

*Travis Ford (Oklahoma State)

*Jeff Capel (Oklahoma)

*Jamie Dixon (Pitt)

*Keno Davis (Providence)

*Tom Crean (Indiana)

*Scott Drew (Baylor)

*Fred Hill (Rutgers)

*Darren Savino (Rutgers)

*Mike Brey (Notre Dame)

*Rick Pitino (Louisville)

The most interesting thing I’ve seen so far in my brief Twittering existence?

Coach Capel of Oklahoma posted an update directed solely at the 6-foot-2 Irving, one of the top prospects in the Class fo 2010.

Hey man, this is coach Capel head coach at the Univ of Oklahoma. Good luck at the NBA camp! Do work

So college coaches can reach out and issue comments directly to recruits on Twitter?

Text messaging and instant messaging recruits is off limits to coaches.

But apparently the NCAA considers correspondence on social networking sites to fall under the same rules as email, meaning they basically can be unlimited in nature.

Pretty sweet if you’re a college coach looking to establish a rapport with a kid.

“You have to stay up with the times to be competitive,” Clemson football recruiting coordinator Jeff Scott told Rivals.com.

Jeff Capel follows 10 people and, you guessed it, Kyrie Irving is one of them.

In a day and age when many college coaches — including those who aren’t big fans of blogs and bloggers — have a Twitter account (Can you be pro-Twitter and anti-blog at the same time?), it is fascinating to think how far technology has come.

Back in the 1950s, sportswriters tossed their articles from a moving train to a waiting telegrapher and then prayed the stories would appear in the next day’s paper.

Dave Anderson wrote about it in a great story called ‘The Romance of Teams Traveling by Train‘ that includes a great anecdote along those lines.

How far have we come in half a century?

Sportswriters are now called on to Blog, Tweet, do online video pieces…oh, and write newspaper articles, too.

Of course, the same technology that has moved us forward has also worked to put newspapers on the brink of irrelevance.

Overall newspaper sales are down 7 percent from last year and every paper in the Top 25 in circulation is down except the Wall Street Journal.

The New York Post is down 20.6 percent.

Need any more proof that times are a-changin’?

Just ask the three Baltimore Sun writers who were recently let go.

In the middle of an Orioles game. Over the phone.

Or check out the carnage that occurred last week at the Bergen Record.

It’s a new world…and news is coming directly from the horses’ mouths more and more these days.

So I figured, if you can’t beat ‘em…Jump on the Bandwagon.

If it’s good enough for Brooklyn, it’s good enough for me.

The Bergen (N.J.) Record, The Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger and The (N.Y.) Daily News, once arch-enemies in the print business, have embarked upon a content-sharing agreement that also includes the Albany Times-Union and the Buffalo News.

The papers have “formed the Northeast Consortium, a cooperative arrangement which will enhance each publication’s coverage in the region by exchanging articles, photographs and graphics among the newspapers,” according to a release.

The agreement kicks in in May.

The Daily News, The Record and The Ledger have long been competitors in the metropolitan area for stories, readership and reporters, yet now they are teaming up to stay alive.

“We are excited to collaborate with these other papers,” Stephen Borg, Record publisher, stated in a release. “They excel in many areas. Record readers will benefit from expanded coverage. The Record will hopefully benefit the other papers in areas where we excel, like our coverage of the Meadowlands.”

From what I’m told, The Record says this agreement doesn’t mean any jobs will be lost, but it’s hard to imagine all of the papers keeping separate beat writers for the local pro teams like the Mets, Yankees, Giants, Jets, Knicks, Nets, Devils and Rangers.

Seems more likely each paper would retain columnists who brand them and give them identity, while sharing beat coverage…Only time will tell how it actually plays out.