Monday, April 2, 2012: Lincoln star has surprising favorite college team

   Whitehead, a sophomore at Abraham Lincoln and one of the most highly regarded underclassmen basketball players in the country, said Syracuse University is the school he likes the most at this point.

   "It's a very good school, both academically and for basketball," Whitehead said.

   It will be interesting to see how that gets reconciled with his mother's (over)reaction during the early days of the Bernie Fine scandal.

   "They're definitely off his list," Ericka Rambert told The New York Post in late November. "Isaiah's not going there. That's out of the question. Once you have something like that in the program, you don't want to be a part of it. You don't know who else is involved. You don't know who else knew about it. It's a lot to deal with."

   Well, all's not lost if Whitehead can't talk his mother into reconsidering. The 6-foot-3 guard is also being recruited by the likes of Arizona, Kentucky, Rutgers and St. John's. But Syracuse, coming off a trip to the Elite Eight, is highest on his list.

   "(I like) the arena and they have great fan support," Whitehead said.

   Keep our name out of it, CHSAA says: CHSAA Brooklyn/Queens president Ray Nash and CHSAA Archdiocesan president Rich Tricario advised ADs last week to tell their players not to compete in the "Funsport Battle 4 the City," one of the many contrived "all-star" games that clutter the NYC landscape from roughly late March to late November to break up the monotone of AAU "championship events."

   Though neither organization sanctioned the event, organizer Rickey Rivers billed it as “CHSAA vs. PSAL” in advertising, and Nash and Tricario told the New York Post they were concerned about players’ eligibility in high school and college if they played in an unsanctioned game.

   The New York Daily News reported the CHSAA has rules forbidding underclassmen from playing in all-star games.

   Five CHSAA seniors took part in the game at Baruch College, but organizers had to abandon the CHSAA vs. PSAL format in order to fill out rosters over the weekend.

   The paper reported Rivers, a former Iona College player, was apologetic over using the league’s names, but he maintained players would not would face a penalty for competing. “I knew exactly what was needed to pull off this event,” Rivers said. “The things they tried to use to go against me were not valid points.”

   Given the thickness of the NCAA rule book alone, I'd say Rivers might be a tad presumptuous is saying he could be sure there would be no eligibility implications. (And he might want to ditch the reference on his website to a "March Madness" event; the trademark holder for that phrase has been known to be a bit snippy in recent years, the same way the NFL tightly protects "Super Bowl."

   St. Raymond star Daniel Dingle was one of the CHSAA players to participate.

   “I’ve known Rickey since I was a kid and I trust him,” he told The Daily News. “I know he wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize my eligibility or anything like that."

   Rivers said he wants to meet with the CHSAA to “repair relationships” that might have been damaged this week. He might want to start by explaining why he took the microphone and asked the crowd “Is Ray Nash in the house?”

   Southern hospitality: The St. Joseph by-the-Sea baseball team saw it's southern spring trip go south in a hurry late last week when its scheduled 10-plus-hour trip turned into a 21-hour ordeal courtesy of a fire that gutted their bus.

   While traveling on I-95 in North Carolina early Friday night, “we heard a big ‘pop’ that we thought was a blown tire,” coach Gordon Rugg tole The Advance. “Brian Russell, one of the players in the back, said he smelled smoke.”

   Veteran driver Paul Matthews pulled the chartered bus over and began investigating while the 34 passengers exited the bus but didn't find anything suspicious initially. A few minutes later, though, a fire erupted and the vehicle was heavily damaged. The only casualty was two bags of school clothes that the players had on from when they left Sea at 9 a.m., the paper reported.

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   A local TV station reported traffic was backed up for about three hours while firefighters put out the flames. That's when southern hospitality began to kick in. Rugg said a pastor from the nearby town who saw the fire showed up with a van and shuttled the traveling party to a rest shelter in Micro, N.C., (pop. 500) staffed by the Red Cross and envisioned for emergencies like this.

   By 2 a.m., three vans arrived to get the team down to Myrtle Beach, S.C., shortly before dawn.

   The Vikings are one of 30 teams in the Mingol Bay Baseball Classic beginning Monday morning.

   Change at Spencerport: Spencerport AD John Pelin told the Democrat and Chronicle he hopes to name a new wrestling coach by Memorial Day.

   Tony D’Ambra, 29, told the paper he was informed last week he was not wanted back for a fourth season on the job. The Rangers, one of the state's genuine dynasties in any sport over the last three decades, went 11-1 last season, losing only at the Union-Endicott Duals.

   D’Ambra, a part-time physical education teacher, said he had no indication that a change was being considered. Pelin told the paper he could not comment on personnel matters.

   D’Ambra spent a season as an assistant at Spencerport before he replaced the legendary Bill Jacoutot.

   Calling all helpers: Tom Vartanian, a sports reporter at the Cortland Standard, has stepped up to handle the NYSSWA baseball rankings this spring and has assembled a solid list of helpers who can supply regional updates each week on top area teams in each class.

   We still have two holes to plug, however. If you can help with either the Section 11 large-school divisions or Western New York -- supplying win-loss records and brief notes regarding significant results from the most recent week of action-- please make contact with Tom via e-mail.

   Retroactive championship: A Brentwood wrestler's ineligibility has resulted in Sachem North being awarded the Section 11 League 1 dual-meet championship and Longwood taking the postseason title, Patch.com reported.

   Brentwood AD Kevin O’Reilly notified his counterparts last month that Carlos Vasquez was a fifth-year senior and ineligible to participate this season, the website reported.

   The resulting forfeits left Sachem North 5-1, Longwood 4-2 and Brentwood 3-3 in the division.

    “It’s unfortunate that it had to happen this way, you never want to win a league title on a technicality,” Sachem North coach Ray Pickersgill said, “but I will accept it for the Sachem North wrestlers and all the hard work they put in.”

   Extra points: Mount Vernon guard Isaiah Cousins, on the short list for several of the state player of the year awards, will continue his basketball career at Oklahoma. He picked the Sooners last week during what turned out to be his only official visit. OKlahoma assistant Lew Hill is a 1983 Mount Vernon graduate who played at Wichita State.

   Interestingly, he'll be going head-to-head in the Big 12 with West Virginia's Jabarie Hinds. Mount Vernon coach Bob Cimmino said recently that their battles during Knights practices two seasons ago bordered on legendary.