This is from Jeanie's, and my good friend, Diane Massie, on Facebook. Diane is our next UK Alumni National President and she will be among the best ever. She resides in Chicago as a lady executive of the highest order. She, along with her lawyer friend Jill Rappis, but the two ladies have their hearts with the Kentucky Wildcats ... Come to think of it ... What better place for a sports fan's heart?
sun-sentinel.com/sports/highschool/basketball/browardboys/fl-knight-commits-skolnick-0415-20100414,0,7360770.column
South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
Kentucky gets a special kid … who plays ball, too
Brandon Knight leaves a legacy at Pine Crest
Ethan J. Skolnick
Sports columnist
11:23 AM EDT, April 15, 2010
FORT LAUDERDALE
Brandon Knight hardly needed a recommendation, let alone a glowing one, to earn admission into any college in America. A repeat Florida Mr. Basketball and Gatorade National Player of the Year? No need to waste time and trees. Son, just show up and start shooting.
Yet this is what colleges got, if they cared to read it. They got an English Honors III teacher raving about "Brandon's perfect articulation in reading Shakespeare," and describing "the stillness of the room as his peers listened in rapt attention" to his "Macbeth" soliloquy. They got an Advanced Placement statistics teacher recalling all the times he would stay for extra help, even it meant missing dinner before a game. They got his college counselor gushing, "A finer Pine Crest student I cannot imagine."
So that's what Kentucky is getting, along with arguably the greatest basketball player Broward County has ever produced, someone with skills to match those of other point guards (Derrick Rose, Tyreke Evans, John Wall) John Calipari has recently coached. They're getting someone who has a 4.3 grade-point average, someone physics teacher Naeemah Owens "would love to clone," someone who would ask for further explanation about the one question missed on a test, "not because he wanted the points, but just so he could understand."
They're getting one of the most special student-athletes this area has ever seen.
Knight made his announcement Wednesday afternoon in the standing-room-only Stacy Auditorium.
The clapping began at 3:58, then silence, then whispers, then a boy turning to his mother to tell her not to cough, then silence again, all as Efrem and Tonya Knight slid their chairs slightly forward on stage, and Brandon listened through an earpiece to questions coming from a studio in Bristol, Conn.
"The place where I plan to play my college basketball…"
He fumbled under the table for the hat that would reveal the secret his mother had kept for about a month, even as she wanted to scream it to all who asked.
"…is the University of Kentucky."
That was followed by 52 seconds of cheering, whistling and a "we love you" or two — from teammates, classmates, teachers, administrators, children and even a family that had flown down from Lexington, actually arranging a weeklong South Florida vacation around this sacred event.
"It was the obvious choice for him," said Mike Rankin, 35, wearing a Wildcats T-shirt. "When he goes to Kentucky, he'll be a rock star."
Instantly, Internet surfers started questioning the decision, wondering why such a strong student would play for a controversial coach who specializes in one-and-doners. That was my initial reaction, too. Why not go to, say, Duke? But Knight will get more out of one year of education, wherever, than most college students would get from four. As he told ESPNU, "Your mind is going to last you a lot longer than your legs, so I feel I have to try to get my education so I can be ready for life after basketball."
And if it's just one year, for now?
His mother won't mind.
"You know what, everybody's goal in life is to live their dream, whether you want to be a lawyer, an NBA player or whatever," Tonya Knight said. "If he has an opportunity to go the NBA, and that's his dream, why not live it? With the AP classes, he'll walk in with 20-something credits already. Get one year out of the way, maybe the summers, you know what, he can do the rest online."
As she spoke,15 minutes after the announcement, giddy children in green school uniforms had formed a line, all holding something for him to sign. He took a photo with a much bigger kid, a school security officer, who promised, "I'll keep this my whole life."
The kid's going places. Everyone knows it. Now we know the next place is Kentucky.
Copyright © 2010, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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