Those who remember former Hokie basketball player Coleman Collins remember him as one of the great ambassadors in the history of Virginia Tech’s basketball program. The guy may be the smartest player to ever come through the athletic department at VT. He enrolled at Tech when he was 16 and graduated with honors in three years. Oh, he also got a master’s degree before he could legally drink.

Well, old Coleman is up to his usual well-spoken ways again with a very thoughtful commentary on the events happening in Iran following last week’s disputed election. Read Collins’ feature Democracy Matters at ESPN.com

Read Coleman Collins’ Bio at HuffingtonPost.com:

“Considered one of the NBA Development League’s standout athletes and most civic-minded contributors, Coleman Collins, a native of Stone Mountain, Georgia, is a 6’9″ center for the NBA D-League’s Fort Wayne (Indiana) Mad
Ants. The former Chamblee High School athlete and academic standout enrolled in Virginia Tech at the remarkable age of 16. He graduated with honors in just three years — by the age of 19 — staying an additional year to play basketball and complete a Master’s degree program in Public Health. A fixture in Virginia Tech’s starting line-up, Collins led the Hokies to a 20-win season in 2007 and into the NCAA Tournament. After college, Collins played for the German club EnBW L’burg during the 2006-07 season and, last summer, participated in the Toronto Raptors’ Summer League and in the Phoenix Suns’ training camp.”

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Virginia Tech men’s basketball coach Seth Greenberg hired former virginia assistant Bill Courtney last week to fill the vacancy left by Stacey Palmore, who left to be an assistant with georgia. Courtney was an assistant at virginia for the past three seasons, but left after Dave Leito was fired. He took an assistant job with virginia commonwealth and had been there two months before Greenberg came calling.

Courtney is apparently a top notch recruiter, responsible for signing the core of the george mason Final Four team in 2006. He also recruited uva’s Sylven Landesberg, who was named the 2008-2009 ACC rookie of the year. He has strong ties to the Baltimore – D.C. corridor where a ton of talented players are recruited every year. Perhaps that will pay off soon. One thing is clear, Courtney is by far the best recruiter Greenberg has hired in his six year at Tech.

Read more at HokieSports.com and at Roanoke.com.

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Here’s an interesting Roanoke Times article about one time VT verbal commit momo jones.  Apparently he wants out of usc (trojans) now that Head Coach Tim Floyd has left.  jones verballed to two schools (louisville and VT) and will now have signed with two others.  Probably for the best VT won’t have to deal with all this.

Also in the article it talks about Hank Thorns and how it looks like he will end up playing for a school in Texas.

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