On Justin Coleman

I've spent the past 48 hours reading whatever articles the three major search engines could spit out on Justin Coleman, until on page nine I began being directed towards his epilepsy advice. I'm tremendously excited, but also wary.

I'm excited because he seems to provide exactly what this roster needs next season. A physical, strong, athletic small forward that plays above the rim, but also has a refined shooting stoke. Suddenly Cards fans aren't waiting till 2011 for help to arrive, but are looking at a possible lineup next year of Siva-Knowles-Coleman-Samuels-Jennings and saying, hey. Heyyyyy....

But I'm also wary, and not just because of his academic issues.

(Random aside, my favorite player with "academic issues" story. Remember the final days of the Denny Crum years, when things were starting to get bad, and Troy Jackson was a corpulent yet embarrassingly important cog for our team? Jackson was suspended for academic issues, and Denny insisted in multiple press conferences that all he had to do was finish this one project, that was the sticking point for him to be reinstated. Well, Troy must have been working on string theory or something, because he never played another game in a Cardinals uniform. To this day, when things get really bad, Mr. Black and I still console each other with a standard "Don't worry, once Troy gets that project in, things'll turnaround" line).

Anyways, I'm also wary. For such a lauded prospect, Coleman is still an unknown. He burst onto the scene with a remarkable performance at the NBA Player's Association camp. He was a late bloomer, an under the radar sort of player, and the major programs didn't start looking at him till recently. No one questions his athleticism, and maybe this is just my own bleak outlook speaking, but there must be something there to explain his low profile. Some of his quotes have a certain, hard to explain, lethargic quality to them. Even his coach admits that his biggest challenge is "learning to play for 32 minutes" (high school length).

Normally, it wouldn't bother me. Get him qualified, get him on campus, get him motivated. That's what coaches are paid big bucks for. But Pitino has shown weakness in that regard, and sometimes takes a frustrating "pro" outlook towards these situations. A: "Well, he is who he is, and he's going to do what he's going to do" approach, rather than a: "Listen kid, this is who you're going to be, and you will become it, and you will be better for it" approach. Since his early days in Louisville with Carlos Hurt and Brandon Bender, to the infamous Derrick Caracter saga, to his current coldness towards Terrence Jennings, Pitino has a history of not getting the best out of of these certain sort of players. Even Earl Clark, a success story, never reached his true "potential" while he was here.

Justin Coleman. Explosive, athletic, tough, and talented. Reading about his game reminds he of a young Ron Artest, but I hope that's where the similarities end. His arrival will present a tremendous opportunity for Louisville basketball, for Coach Pitino, and for himself.