The ball starts bouncing now
News you can use ... or maybe not.
n Warren High grad Brandon Paul, who is wearing No. 3 on his University of Illinois jersey, had 13 points as the Illini won an exhibition game over Missouri Southern 95-67. Paul came off the bench and scored 13 points on 7-of-10 shooting from the free-throw line and 3-of-7 shooting from the field in 17 minutes. Alas, he was 0 for 3 from behind the arc. He also had five boards and three assists.
If you're scoring at home, the guys Brandon needs to beat out are starting guards Demetri McCamey and Alex Legion.
Our guy's next chance to shine will be Sunday. It's another non-counting game against Quincy College.
n Romell Drake never actually got to finish what he started as varsity girls basketball coach at Waukegan High. With veteran James Askew sitting at his side as his No. 1 assistant, Drake's Bulldog squads improved from 8-18 to 11-19 and then to 20-12 in his three-year stint that went from 2005-2008 (Note that his 20-win season was boosted by star guard Bianca Jarrett transferring from Zion-Benton to Waukegan for her senior year).
At that point, he lost his coaching gig because he accepted a position as an assistant principal at Waukegan High, and his new job made it impossible to continue coaching for the Bulldogs.
But apparently not impossible to coach somewhere else.
Drake is still an administrator at what is now called Waukegan High's Washington Campus, and he's now back coaching girls basketball.
Only this time, he's on the bench at North Chicago High.
He was just hired to coach the Hawks' girls sophomore team this season. And his assistant coach? James Askew, who else?
The varsity girls coach at North Chicago High is Lawrence Brown. He was a winner while coaching junior-high boys teams in North Chicago, but scuffled a bit last winter in his first year at the wheel of the high-school team.
In case you're wondering, Romell and James will each receive $5,605 to coach the Warhawk girls.
The guess here is that it is $11,210 well-spent.
n And while girls basketball is on the brain ... After Bianca Jarrett graduated from Waukegan High, she played last year for Indiana State University and had a huge season.
Sort of.
After having a solid freshman year, and less than a week after scoring a career-high 32 points in a Missouri Valley Conference game in late February, the 5-foot-5 guard apparently got herself kicked off the team for what ISU people refer to as a "violation of team rules."
This winter, she will play for Chipola College, which is a juco located in Florida.
n Bianca Jarrett isn't the only area prep basketball star who didn't stay in the same place very long. After accepting a scholarship offer to play hoops at Tennessee State University, Zion-Benton High graduate Markus Yarbrough never even made it to TSU, and instead will be toiling this winter on the basketball court for Kilgore Junior College in Texas.
Kilgore is located in the northeast corner of the huge state, and the school is best known for its women's dance squad -- the Rangerettes.
n Somehow, last summer, the negotiator for North Chicago native and NBA free-agent Shawn Marion managed to get a four-year, $31 million deal for the 31-year-old to play for the Dallas Mavs. At the time, it seemed like truly amazing work by the agent.
But two games into his Mavs career, and our Shawn looks like a bargain for the Mavs.
He's averaging 17 points and 6.5 boards, and Dallas already owns a convincing win over the defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers.
Shawn -- truly one of the good guys, as witness the free basketball camp he hosts every summer for North Chicago youngsters -- is best playing in a run-and-gun offense. Last season, he was bottled up by slowdown teams in Miami and Toronto.
The Mavs play the up-tempo style that suits him best.
n The last school not named North Chicago to win the North Suburban Conference Prairie Division boys basketball title was Lakes in 2006-2007. That team was led by the dynamic duo of Sean Hertz and Chuck Kempf.
Hertz opted for football in college, and he's now playing wide receiver for NCAA Division II Winona State in Minnesota.
In nine games this year, the redshirt sophomore caught 13 passes for 108 yards and 4 TDs. The team is 6-3.
As for Kempf, he is now a member of the hoops team at Western New Mexico State University, an NCAA Division II school that is located in Silver City, N.M.
If you are vacationing in Arizona and wind up in Silver City, you can pretty much assume that you are lost.
It is hundreds of miles away from everything.
Kempf transferred to WNMU after toiling last year at Trinidad, a juco in Colorado.
