In the past, I have tried diligently to avoid the recruiting aspect of college basketball. I was fine with hearing the the odd bit of news — Harrison Barnes Skyping his way onto North Carolina, for instance — but I didn't want to become one of the obsessives who tracked the changing emotional tides of a bunch of teenagers as they basked in the momentary suspense and adulation they drew like blood from rival fan bases.

And let's face facts — a number of these young men, perhaps even a majority, are equal parts stupid and egotistical. I don't even mean that as a slight; I was surely egotistical and stupid in high school too, the difference being that I didn't have anything to be egotistical about — except for that time senior year when I single-handedly annihilated our rivals in Quiz Bowl. But now, as an educated young American who reads important papers like the New York Times (before all that subscription talk — anything interesting happen in Libya since 2009?), I knew I would feel pathetic dipping anything more than a toe into the eddies of the recruiting world.