Maryland Minute 8.30.12: Dez Wells Gets Out of Lexington, Still in Play for Terps

Football is, what, two days away? And the lead story in College Park: a potential basketball transfer. Just like old times. But don't worry, we have the oblong ball covered post-jump.

Dez Wells: Trying to make heads or tails of his eligibility situation - WaPo
The important stuff comes from John Infante, the Bylaw Blog guy.

"Well there’s two things bouncing around," Infante said in a telephone interview Thursday. "Will he enroll in a school? People have looked at drop/add dates, and that’s not really a big deal. When a school has a drop/add date, you can always have the dean or instructors override it to let a kid in classes.

When you have an athlete who will sit out for a year, as [Wells] will almost certainly have to, if they started after the 12th day of classes for a semester, that semester doesn’t count as one of the two they have to sit out. So a lot of semester schools started last week, so [Wells] is now getting into the second or third week of school. If he misses that date, he won’t be eligible until the middle of next season."

Darn. So there goes our ace-in-the-hole.

Oh, and he also thinks it's extremely unlikely he'll win a waiver.

...but he'll try anyway - ESPN
He'll definitely apply and Andy Katz seems to think it's a possibility. More interestingly, though:

Wells took a visit Thursday to Kentucky. If he doesn't commit to the Wildcats right away, according to a source, he likely would visit Maryland during the weekend. Terrapins assistant coach Bino Ranson was on the Xavier staff while Wells was being recruited to the school. Memphis is also very much in the mix.

Interesting that Memphis is sort of thrown in on the back, almost as an afterthought. If he gets to College Park, and I'm going out on a limb here, I'd guess Maryland becomes the favorite.

And the big news: Wells leaves Lexington, "unlikely" to be a Wildcat
Ohhhhhhh yeahhhhhhh. That's big. He'll be at Memphis tomorrow, presumably Maryland on Saturday and/or Sunday before making his call on Monday.

Actually, I think Matt Jones may not be entirely right here, since he seems to be assuming that he needs to be registered by Friday to get in classes at UK at all, but as Infante points out, he can easily be overridden into classes. The question is about the 12th-day thing, and he would still easily qualify for that. So maybe Kentucky's not out of play entirely. Still: getting him off their campus was huge. Did Maryland just become the favorite?

And now, switching gears entirely, to football.

Injury report for W&M
We already know about Ross and his replacement, but here's the full list.

And it is gruesome.

But hey, Tyrek Cheeseboro is probable, so there's that.

W&M preview from CBSSports.com
We haven't done a preview proper for a few reasons, but if you need one we redirect you to CBS. They call a 10-point Maryland win, which seems reasonable.

Randy Edsall lays out a few future opponents
Scheduling notes, always fun. West Virginia will be in Baltimore next year, then in Byrd in '14. Then two in Morgantown, and finally the series ends in CP in '17. Take a look through; things get pretty intense in 2017; 2015 is the easy, easy year.

Richie Anderson "thinking on" Penn State offer
His pops was a Nittany Lion so I wouldn't be shocked if he ended up jumping on that offer, even with the situation being what it is. And I'm pretty okay with that. Maryland already has huge depth at running back and Anderson was more likely to be a utility player type.

IMS at the Sun: Dwayne Morgan talks about 'really good visit' to Maryland
Morgan doesn't say anything hugely groundbreaking, but two things that sound good: his mom was there (the mom is almost always the key), and he called Nick Faust "my boy." Good, good signs.

Testudo Times Community ACC Pick'em
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